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The Chinese American Family Album
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Lord, Bette Bao / Hoobler, Thomas / Hoobler, Dorothy, PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press, USA, The Chinese American Family Album is a scrapbook of family letters and diary entries, official documents, newspaper articles, and excerpts from literature of the past and present--a personal remembrance of an extended family of Chinese immigrants and their descendants. As we read, we begin to know this family almost as well as our own. The letters written by the new immigrants to the folks left behind in China allow us to feel the ache of leaving home and family behind. Clippings from newspapers and personal memories tell of the pain and fear and prejudice in the new country. We learn about the building of the transcontinental railroad and how Chinese immigrants were the backbone of the work force, tailing long hours under the worst conditions. We see Chinatowns spring up wherever the immigrants landed, and we see how the traditions and culture of China were both preserved and altered as the immigrants became Americanized. But we also share the joy of first sighting the new homeland. We follow families through the generations and see how they are living now and what they have brought to our country. We read about famous Chinese Americans who have risen to the top of their fields, such as athlete Michael Chang, author Amy Tan, musician Yo-Yo Ma, and Senator Hiram Fong. And we see wonderful faces--husbands alone in the new world, families reunited, new babies, grandparents. The unique, carefully researched photographs make the participants in the Chinese American experience real people who have an impact on our lives. Thomas and Dorothy Hoobler's The Chinese American Family Album makes the past experiences of these immigrants--and those of their sons and daughters in all the generations since--as real and immediate as the stories told by a favorite grandmother. They bring us in, like an embrace, to the all-encompassing, ever-growing, multicultural family of Americans.
Apalachee
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Hudson, Joyce Rockwood, PUBLISHER: University of Georgia Press, Known mainly for her YA novels (To Spoil the Sun), Hudson turns to adult fiction in this sweeping novel of Native American life during the early colonial period. The focus is on the eponymous Apalachee people, the Native tribe that dominated northeastern Florida before the coming of Europeans. By the early 18th century, in which the story is set, the Apalachee have been greatly reduced by disease and other dislocations brought by the Spanish invaders. Besides sicknesses against which the Indians had no natural defenses, the Europeans also brought another influence, Christianity. The new religion has had devastating effects upon the tribe, undermining traditional culture and dividing family members against each other. Lucia, a member of the Hinachuba clan, has, like her mother and grandmother, resisted conversion to Christianity. Despite the fact that the old religious centers lie in ruins, they try to keep the old ways alive. A medicine man's vision tells Lucia she is to be the White Sun Woman, the priestess of the tribe. Meanwhile, more pressing concerns intervene. Armed by the English, a neighboring Creek tribe stages raids on the Apalachee mission settlements. War between Spain and England looms, promising doom for the Apalachee caught in the middle. Lucia, now married to Carlos, a Christian convert groomed by Spanish priests to be the chief of the Apalachee, is captured and sold into slavery. Carlos's struggle to recover his wife, who is toiling at a turpentine plantation in the colony of Carolina, seems hopeless. Spanning the years from to , this melancholy book chronicles multiple conflicts between Spanish and English, the details of plantation existence and the ultimatedestruction of the Apalachee way of life. An historical note and extensive bibliography demonstrate the author's attempt at verisimilitude. Despite employing a somewhat romantic and elegiac tone, Hudson presents the Apalachee as real human characters and evokes their culture vividly.
From a Clear Blue Sky. Timothy Knatchbull
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Knatchbull, Timothy, PUBLISHER: Hutchinson Radius, A powerful survivor's account of the IRA bomb that killed the author's 14-year-old twin brother, his grandparents and a family friend and was published on the 30th anniversary of the atrocity. On the August bank holiday weekend in the UK in -year-old Timothy Knatchbull went out on a boat trip off the shore of Mullaghmore in County Sligo, Ireland. It was a trip that would cost four lives -- and change his own for ever. The IRA bomb that exploded in their boat killed Knatchbull's grandfather Lord Mountbatten (cousin of the Queen), his grandmother Lady Brabourne, his twin brother Nicholas, and local teenager Paul Maxwell. In telling this story for the first time, Knatchbull is not only revisiting the terrible events he and his family lived through, but also writing an intensely personal account of human triumph over tragedy. For thirty years, Knatchbull has lived with the echoes of that day: the death of the twin from whom he had been inseparable; the loss of his adored grandparents, whose funerals along with his twin's he and his parents were too injured to attend; the recovery from physical wounds; and the emotional legacy that proved harder to endure. In From A Clear Blue Sky""Timothy Knatchbull delves into his past, present and future, and reveals a story of courage and fortitude as he, his family, and their English and Irish friends dealt with the shocking assassinations and their aftermath. Taking place in Ireland at the height of the Troubles, it gives a compelling insight into that period of Irish history. But more importantly it brings home that although tragedy can strike at any moment, the human spirit is able to recover and evolve over time. This book about truth and reconciliation, unflinching in its detail, asks searching questions about why human beings inflict misery on others, and holds lessons about how we can learn to forgive, to heal and to move on. It will resonate with readers the world over.
When Philosophers Were Kings (Hardcover)
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Best, S. M. / Best, Steven M., PUBLISHER: Sunstone Press, As the Confederacy celebrates its victory over Fort Sumter, Socrates Best and his wife, Ellen, are living in Northeast Texas where Socrates has been teaching school for five years. Educated in the philosophy of Plato and the religion of Knox, Socrates hopes to ignore the war and continue developing ruler guardians who will help make Texas great. But two former students, Buck Malneck and Billy Morse, seize this chance to put their former teacher to the test. Join the conflict or hang--those are their demands. Meanwhile, a thousand miles to the north stands Socrates' cousin Swift. Raised with Plato's Republican philosophies, but steeped in the passionate abolitionism of the Northern Methodists, Swift leaves law school to be part of the Second Wisconsin Infantry Regiment. Portage City explodes with joy as they send Swift's company off to war, but all the well wishing in the world could never prepare Swift for what awaits him at Bull Run. Amidst the revelry, Socrates' youngest brother, Ed, watches with bated breath. This crowd will one day cheer him, he decides, and everyone will know that he is finally a man. Fighting with the Army of the Cumberland across the Southeast, he will learn there is a far greater challenge in life then being a man--staying alive. This novel is based on the true story of a Wisconsin family caught up in the American Civil War, but it is also the story of the multidimensional human soul--spiritual, philosophical, and physical--and how it is affected by war. It is the story of man's ability to love, endure, survive, and find a meaningful purpose for life in a world turned upside down with hate.STEVEN M. BEST is a former military intelligence analyst, and retiredchiropractor. After being given an extensive letter written by his great grandmother detailing the family's experiences during the war, Best spent seven and a half years researching and writing his family story. He has visited every village and battlefield presented in this novel from Big Spring and Portage, Wisconsin, in the North, to Dangerfield, Texas, in the South; and from Perryville, Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) and Devil's Backbone in the West; to Perryville, Kentucky and Chickamauga at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, in the East.
One Amazing Thing
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee, PUBLISHER: Hyperion Books, "Divakaruni is a brilliant storyteller; she illuminates the world with her artistry; and shakes the reader with her love." --Junot Diaz Late afternoon sun sneaks through the windows of a passport and visa office in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers have come and gone, but nine people remain. A punky teenager with an unexpected gift. An upper-class Caucasian couple whose relationship is disintegrating. A young Muslim-American man struggling with the fallout of 9/11. A graduate student haunted by a question about love. An African-American ex-soldier searching for redemption. A Chinese grandmother with a secret past. And two visa office workers on the verge of an adulterous affair. When an earthquake rips through the afternoon lull, trapping these nine characters together, their focus first jolts to their collective struggle to survive. There's little food. The office begins to flood. Then, at a moment when the psychological and emotional stress seems nearly too much for them to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale, "one amazing thing" from their lives, which they have never told anyone before. And as their surprising stories of romance, marriage, family, political upheaval, and self-discovery unfold against the urgency of their life-or-death circumstances, the novel proves the transcendent power of stories and the meaningfulness of human expression itself. From Chitra Divakaruni, author of such finely wrought, bestselling novels as Sister of My Heart, The Palace of Illusions, and The Mistress of Spices, comes her most compelling and transporting story to date. One Amazing Thing is a passionate creation about survival--and about the reasons to survive. Praise for One Amazing Thing "The plot of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's new novel could be ripped from the horrifying headlines about Haiti in a strange case of art imitating life....One Amazing Thing, which was written well before the Haiti earthquake, is receiving high praise." --USA Today "The appeal of these life stories, like that of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, is that they throw the spotlight onto varied lives, each with its own joys and miseries. Together, the stories show how easy it is to divert young lives into unforeseen and restrictive channels, and how hard it is for people to realize their early dreams. Their shared experiences and fears form the frame that holds together this compendium of short stories into an absorbing novel....At the end of her novel, her readers are fully engaged in what will happen to those nine people." --Washington Post "Hauntingly beautiful....One Amazing Thing is a page-turner with high drama, elegant writing, and lots of helpful tips for teamwork in a crisis." --Houston Chronicle "Her fiction is so intimate that it often seems as if cultural context is irrelevant. Her character's dreams and disappointment