Product Description
Born to a British father and a Chinese mother, Winnifred Eaton (1875-1954) decided to capitalize on her exotic appearance while protecting herself from Americans' scorn of Chinese: she "became" Japanese, assuming the pen name Onoto Watanna. While her eldest sister (now acknowledged as the mother of Asian American fiction), was writing stories of downtrodden Chinese immigrants under the name Sui Sin Far, Winnifred's Japanese romance novels and stories became all the rage, thrusting her into the glittering world of New York literati. Diana Birchall chronicles the sometimes desperate, sometimes canny, and always bold course of her grandmother's amazing professional career as a journalist, a bestselling novelist, and a Hollywood scriptwriting protegee of Carl Laemmle at Universal Studios. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

This Shared Joy
I didn't mean to like Winnifred Eaton.After all, she was a bit of a fanfaronade and very much of a poseur, not at all the sort I wanted in my circle of intimates.

But Diana Birchall's sparkling biography changed my mind.Writing with unblinking honesty, Birchall describes the many lives that her chameleon grandmother lived, from journalist and novelist to story editor and screenwriter.Of most interest to me were the stories of her career as wife in two unconventional marriages and mother to four children.Birchall's graceful use of language is enhanced by her wit and intelligently ironic style.She concludes this delightful biography with the acknowledgment that sharing what she has learned about her grandmother has been a privilege and a joy.Surely it is no less a privilege and a joy for the reader.

A tour de force of self-invention
Birchall's fascinating and beautifully written account of her grandmother's life is an important work for scholars in women's studies, Asian-American or American studies, Canlit, and the movie industry, and for the general reader seeking a compelling biography.

Other reviewers have mentioned Eaton/Watanna's background. I will stress instead the absorbing interest of Winnifred's successive reinventions of herself in societies that had no ready place for her. Like a brilliant slackrope walker with an increasingly awkward load, Winnifred managed to shift her balance not only to survive, but pulled off one tour de force after another. Her performances as a Japanese-American novelist, as a screenwriter and as a rancher doyenne would win applause from Daniel Defoe.

Eaton/Watanna has become a focal interest of American scholars in recent years. As her granddaughter, Birchall had informaitonal advantages in writing on her. Her graceful, well-considered book shows how glad we should be for Birchall's advantages.

A jolly, laughing lady
"A jolly, laughing lady" are the first words of the bigraphy; the last ones are: "To be able to share what I have learned with others has been a privilege and a joy. Has not this journey been an enviable inheritance in itself?"

Inbetween these words Birchall indeed shares with the reader the life of Winnifred, in personal and intimate detail. Birchall alsoseduces the reader into not just reading, but thinking about the culture and times Winnifred faced in her own inimitable style, from her life in Canada as young girl down to the years of Hollywood.

Normally I am none too fond of biographies but this one enchanted me, by the content and by the style of Birchall's writing. Full of zest, lifely images and easy to read on and on. As non native reader I appreciated this very much; it was a joy and a privilege to share. Would that all biographies were such a good read!

A jolly, laughing lady,
"A jolly, laughing lady," those are the opening words of the biography.
The closing words are:
"To be able to share what I have learned with others is a privilege and a joy. Has not this journey been an enviable inheritance in itself?"

In between those personal words, I got the chance to intimately share the life of Winnifred Eaton. Birchall opens the family vaults, secrets and intimacies; shares her deductions and her thoughts about Winnifred with me as reader; and writes in a zesty, tangy language that kept seducing me to read on and on.
The things I learned about the early filmindustry in Hollywood and the look behind the screens, are as fascinating as all the facts about theworking conditions for women in the first half of the century in the USA

This biography by Birchall leads me to wonder and think about Winnifred as a human being and also about the culture and times that Winnifred went through in her life and tackled straight on, in her own inimitable style.
What more can a biography do?

Normally I am none too fond of biographies as genre. This one had me enthralled, qua content and style of writing.

Interesting history
In my library I have dozens of books inherited from my parents and my grandparents. We have been readers for several generations, and I grew up with many of these books. One of these books was a novel called "The Heart of Hyacinth" by an author mysteriously named Onoto Watanna. The author was unknown to me, but I thought the book was one of the most beautiful of all the books I'd inherited, with lovely Japanese-style illustrations and drawings.

But now I've had a chance to learn about the woman who lurked behind that exotic nom de plume. I learn she was not Japanese at all, but half Chinese and half English. Yet her true story seems to be as fully exotic as any of the character's lives from her books.

Diana Birchall has done a wonderful job of bringing her fascinating grandmother to life. The book give a wonderful look at a most unusual woman, and what life was like for young women at the turn of the last century. At least what life was like when the young women were as self-confident and gutsy as the young Winnifred Eaton. ... Read more

Product Description
As one of the few studies to focus on discourse analysis in this setting, through sociocultural and historical contextualization this detailed yet far-reaching book, investigates the development of an ethno-Christian identity among the congregants of a multilingual Chinese evangelical church.Detailing valuable anthropological data on the identity construction of a rapidly growing Chinese Christian population in the United States, this book provides significant linguistic data of sermons in Mandarin, Cantonese and English for an embryonic yet exceedingly important area of anthropological research. The scope of this book is wide-ranging; parallels between Confucianism and Christianity and the role of 'gradual evangelism' in identity and construction are discussed, as well as;* Asian American homiletics * discourse analysis and prosody * types of sermons* the roles of men and women in a diverse, multilingual church.Challenging current approaches to identity construction and the role of religion in immigrant communities, this book posits that the Chinese of the Boston church have developed an ethno-Christian identity, which, as demonstrated through ethnically marked prosodic cues, unites the congregation. Broad in scope with detailed information, this book will be a valuable resource for scholars of Asian American culture and history, anthropology and religious studies. ... Read more

Product Description
This comparative study of the Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese American communities in Philadelphia shows that each Asian American community maintains its own internal cultural boundaries, which are used to cultivate differences that become institutionalized over time. Socially constructed boundaries, such as ethnicity, gender, class and generation, intersect within and among ethnic groups.Based on a social anthropological framework, this study describes the mechanism of ethnic and class identity formations, and shows how identities are institutionalized through various organizations.By unraveling the complexity of Asian American communities and their boundary strategies, this study provides a look at the new political processes which Asian Americans are creating in a variety of social settings.
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994; revised with new preface, introduction) ... Read more

Product Description
The Chinese were a visible current in the tidal wave of humanity that rushed through San Francisco's Golden Gate in the mid nineteenth century. Known to their countrymen as Gam Saan Haak, guests of Gold Mountain, Chinese immigrants sought great fortune. Most found only hostility and hard work, often braving the most dangerous and loathsome jobs. They endured violence and injustice, yet clung to this land with tenacity and patience and made it their own.

With nearly 200 historic photographs gathered from notable collections, this book explores a century of Chinese progress in California. Retracing the immigrants' steps from the gold fields to the high Sierra railroad camps, to lettuce fields and olive groves, and the Monterey coast we visit Chinese enclaves throughout the state. We linger in San Francisco's old Chinatown, home to cherished children and notorious tong gangs, where new arrivals first found refuge and aging storefronts offered exotic merchandise and leaked pungent odors. These historic images recall a time when the Chinese community in California was still a world apart. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An important look at a vital part of Californian history.
Here are a couple of hundred fascinating photographs documenting the amazingly hard life of the early Chinese immigrants to California.Despite race based laws (The Exclusion Act of 1882) and bigotry aimed squarely at limiting competition from Chinese labor, and even competition in most businesses, the Chinese came and thrived.But Chinese men, by law, could not bring their wives from China or find wives among the Americans.This created a "bachelor" culture that also spawned prostitution and related enterprises. There are several sad pictures related to opium and opium smoking.

You will be able to see how the workers adopted more efficient local dress for work, while retaining traditional dress and culture for celebrating holidays and special events. I found it fascinating that one of the post 1906 San Francisco Earthquake trades was selling nostalgic photos of pre-quake scenes, including the "Old Chinatown". There are pictures of the devastation caused by the quake and the raging fires that did most of the damage to the city.I enjoyed the helpful information about the post-quake pictures that explains how they replaced what was lost in 1906.
As time goes on you will see how technology and Western manners of dress combined with the desire to retain Chinese culture while still becoming Americans.

The Chinatown in Los Angeles is given less prominence, but you get some photos, especially the decline of its "Old Chinatown" and the creation of the new version.The Chinese were also affected during World War II, especially when the Japanese were relocated.Some Chinese shops posted signs declaring "I am an American".Some Chinese took over leases on Japanese farms and so forth.Post War Chinatowns grew, prospered, and enjoyed the glitter and material prosperity of American life.

A really worthwhile look into an important and under examined part of American cultural life.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Saline, MI

A solid pick for a coffee table book or simply a photographic history collection
The land of opportunity brought many to American shores, from both the east and the west. "Historic Photos of the Chinese in California" is a collection of photos capturing the unique struggle of Chinese immigrants arriving in California and trying to make their place in society - a society that looked down upon them with contempt and distrust. Telling a story of the people and their determination to belong, survive, and prosper, "Historic Photos of the Chinese in California" is a solid pick for a coffee table book or simply a photographic history collection.
... Read more

Product Description

Ieoh Ming Pei (pronounced “pay”) is one of the most famous American architects in the world. Two of his most famous designs are the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, and a new entrance for the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. I. M. Pei believes

... Read more

Product Description
Chinese American Children and Families: A Guide for Educators and Service Providers "In my nearly 20 years of experience coordinating services for children and families in California, I have long realized the limited availability of multicultural information and resources. The information is even more scarce or non-existent as it pertains to working with Asian Americans. With the increasing number of Chinese Americans in the United States, it is more and more apparent that a book with insightful and pertinent information intended for educators and other practitioners is needed." Amy Lin Tan, Ph.D.

While the information presented in this book is pertinent to Chinese Americans, with relevant applications to East Asian Americans and Southeast Asian Americans, it has a broader application to all cultures. The main focus of the book is to present educators and service professionals with critical relevant, pertinent, and comprehensive information.

Trusting that educators and other professionals can easily come up with their own conclusions based on the information shared, Amy Tan leaves the professional decisions to the professionals. For those readers who desire more information the book's extensive reference section offers leads for further reading.

Combining bicultural insight and professional experiences while weaving in available literature, this book brings forth a perspective that straddles two worlds to give educators and other professionals the tools needed for providing culturally sensitive services.Amy Lin Tan, Ph.D, 2004. 125 pp. ISBN 0-87173-163-0

$22.00 ($14.40 ACEI members) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A summary of Chinese beliefs and cultural practices
Chinese American Children & Families: A Guide for Educators & Service Providers is a straightforward summary of Chinese beliefs and cultural practices that American educators, health care workers and service providers need to know when working with the Chinese-American community. Chapters address not only beliefs prevalent in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, but also how living amidst American culture has influenced the traditional ways of doing things especially for second and third-generation Chinese. Topics covered include cultural views of disabilities and emotional or belief-system oriented impediments to seeking help for a disabled child, folk nutritional practices, attitudes toward education, child-rearing practices, family composition and structure, and more among Chinese-Americans. A plain-terms, easy-to-understand overview, highly recommended for anyone who needs to work with Chinese-American communities.
... Read more

Product Description
Cassel's volume traces the history of the experience of Chinese immigrants to America. The recent extraordinary tragedy of Wen Ho Lee regarding accusations at the nuclear facility at Los Alamos point to an ongoing systemic and institutionalized racism in American society. The contributors to this volume review how the Chinese in America have alternately been courted as "model workers" by American business but also perceived as perpetual foreigners. These two opposing threads are examined in this collection, from a variety of disciplinary fields, to contribute to our understanding of the themes and issues that have shaped Chinese American studies, beginning with the arrival of Chinese gold miners in 1849 to the present. As we embark upon the "Pacific Century" with an increasingly large presence of Asians in America--in the United States, Canada, and Mexico--the authors trace the changes, heterogeneity and tenacity of immigrants who continue to live in a world in which a pervasive and simultaneous politics of polarity has come to define the Chinese experience on this continent. "The Chinese in America" is published in cooperation with the Chinese Historical Society of Greater San Diego and Baja California.The book should be a valuable text in Chinese American studies, Asian American history, immigration studies, and American history. ... Read more

Product Description
In an epic story that spans 150 years and continues to the present day, Iris Chang tells of a people’s search for a better life—the determination of the Chinese to forge an identity and a destiny in a strange land and, often against great obstacles, to find success. She chronicles the many accomplishments in America of Chinese immigrants and their descendents: building the infrastructure of their adopted country, fighting racist and exclusionary laws, walking the racial tightrope between black and white, contributing to major scientific and technological advances, expanding the literary canon, and influencing the way we think about racial and ethnic groups. Interweaving political, social, economic, and cultural history, as well as the stories of individuals, Chang offers a bracing view not only of what it means to be Chinese American, but also of what it is to be American. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (38)

Coming to America
The Chinese in America

"Chinese workers were prevented from immigrating to America by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Its passage was a watershed event in American history. Besides identifying for the first time a specific group of people by name as undesirable for immigration to the United States, the act also marked a fateful departure from the traditional American policy of unrestricted immigration." By William Wei
Professor of History, University of Colorado at Boulder
However, it was not the first, or the last, time that ethnic groups were singled out for ostracism or exclusion.Native Americans were the object of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which led to the dispersal of the indigenous population throughout the Southwest and set the stage for The Trail of Tears-- the dispersal of the Cherokee Nation.
Andrew Jackson's record regarding Native Americans was horrendous.He led troops against them in both the Creek War and the First Seminole War and during his first administration the Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830 which resulted in the massive relocation of Native Americans.

The Acadians of Canada were expelled, becoming Louisiana's Cajuns, the Inuit people of Canada were given their own homeland, Nunavut, after decades of discrimination, and the Japanese, Irish and hordes of other immigrants faced adversity in assimilating.Today, the Hmong of Laos, El Salvadorans, Mexicans and others join the list.Cuban émigrés from Castro's regime created a vibrant society in Miami and Tampa, Florida.
Russians, Armenians, and Iranians help populate Los Angeles. There is a Southeast Asian community in Portland, Maine--about as far away from Laos or Cambodia as you can get.

Against this background, Iris Chang has produced a memorable narrative history of the Chinese experience in America.Chang, who wrote the best-selling "The Rape of Nanking", committed suicide in 2004. Her writing on the experience of the Chinese Americans from the Gold Rush to the Internet follows in the tradition of Irving Howe's "World of our Fathers";Dee Brown's "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee", and other histories of American diasporas.
I make it a practice not to read other people's reviews before writing mine. Going back to them now I find some are understandably critical of Chang's emphasis on the worst-case-scenarios.
But she can hardly be blamed for chronicling the overt racism that including blaming Chinese women for spreading syphillis and a "Doctor" for labeling the whole population a vector for disease.On the whole, a constructive view of a bad time in our history.

Interesting but fatally flawed
The book is interesting and highly readable.I do not read much nonfiction intended for a mass market, so I found it at times condescending, simplistic, and repetitious, but it is much less so than the "how-to" books I have been given in the past.

The book is written in an engaging style and has numerous interesting and revealing stories.It attempts what few books do, and it is valuable to the casual reader.However, it suffers from a number of flaws.

1)The distortion of facts to prove a point.Chang often makes a big deal out of facts in a way that utterly distorts their meaning.For example, she makes a huge deal out of the fact that the a Chinese worker on the transcontinental railroad was paid less than half what was spent on each horse, apparently in order to point out that mere animals were valued more than people.She entirely ignores the declaration she had made just a few paragraphs back that the white workers were paid half again as much as the Chinese workers--therefore much less than the horses as well!This factoid, thrown in for shock value, is simply silly to anyone with the slightest knowledge of historic economics and particularly the sheer cost of maintaining horses.She makes blunders like this once every ten pages or so, and it leaves me in grave doubt about her overall comprehension of the history she is attempting to explain in the book.

2)The creation of a victimology.She rightly notes patterns of racism and records atrocities committed upon Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans, but she selects among the history of the people in order to form the ideology of a racial victimology without aknowledging, for example, the universality of certain kinds of atrocities (claim-jumping was hardly restricted to whites against Chinese, for example, even if race was part of what a particular group of whites used to justify a particular claim jump) or the commonness of certain patterns of behavior.

3)The confusion of stupidity and racism.Chang routinely identifies all ignorance and stupidity as racism.Sometimes, stupid and ignorant people are racist.Other times, they are merely stupid and ignorant.People ask my husband all the time if he's from "China or Japan"--since he's clearly East Asian, he must be an immigrant, and because those are the only two contries that such people even know about, those are the ones they list.He had also been asked--often!--if his family "eats Chinese all the time--even for breakfast!"These are in line with the questions we get about New Mexico ("Why did you move out of the US?") and that I get about being from Texas ("So do you ride horses everywhere there?Do you have cars?") rather than being fundamentally racist.There's a difference between dumb people and racist people.Chang can't see it.

4)Her deep ignorance about China and universal patterns of immigration.Chang fundamentally does not comprehend the horrific quality of life that drove people from China from the 1800s through the 1980s.Her muddled explanations of reasons for immigration focus mostly upon the exchange rate--but that's only a fraction of the story.And this makes her miss the biggest piece of the Chinese labor puzzle.The reason that the Chinese were willing to undersell so many other immigrant groups in the US (and so a major reason for early resentment) is because the quality of life that they were accustomed to was so horrible that they would unthinkingly accept wages that even people from other poor countries would reject.As a result, poor Chinese drove down labor prices wherever they went.The anti-Chinese feelings on the West Coast were mirrored by anti-Irish feeling on the East Coast and anti-Mexican feeling today.All these groups have embraced, in various points in history, an average quality of life that someone accostomed to the US rejects.Chang also fails to recognize that Chinese immigrants knew intimately about bureaucracies and had usually been treated very badly by their social superiors in China and so were prepared to navigate the legal system with ease while at the same time taking abuse largely in stride.(Watch the fine jockeying for status among supposed equals in China, the extreme focus on class, and the treatment by professionals of people in the service industries!)Chang is a third-generation Chinese American, and it shows badly in her misunderstanding of China and Chinese culture.

5)Her conflation of different groups of ethnically Chinese people living in America into a monolithic body.Chang regularly ignores the extremely important generational issues when discussing the position of Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants.She flatly does not recognize the great lack of English skills that many of even the very well-educated first-generation immigrants have.She doesn't recognize that many cannot speak or write fluent English after being in the country for decades--not because of unwillingness but because the language is so different from CHinese--nor that many of them do not ever understand American culture.While American students at my university were finding Chinese TAs obnoxious, braggadocious, rude, loud, and untrustworthy, these same TAs were being told by other first-gen Chinese that Americans respect people who brag and who are "clever"--cleverness being what in American eyes is underhanded and sly!The obnoxiousness, loudness, and rudeness (in AMerican eyes) is directly traceable to Mao's rejection of the Four Olds during the Cultural Revolution.Good citizens were supposed to reject all of the behaviors that had been honored in previous generations, including quietness, reserve, good table manners, politeness, etc., etc.Fortunately, China is returning more and more to more ingrained cultural patterns, but the good citizen of the Cultural Revolution is flatly incompatible with American culture.First-gen immigrants are seen as often dressing inappropriately and have culturally "wrong" body language, and they often say--with the best intentions--sentiments deeply offensive to American culture.This enormous cultural clash definitely goes both ways.For example, an American wife's behavior toward a husband or a younger person toward an elder or an American empoyee's behavior toward his boss is downright repulsive in Chinese culture, and Americans' inability to engage in expected complementing behaviors and prentended self-deprecation is seen as blatantly crass.However, the context here isn't cultural Americans trying to "get ahead" in China but of cultural Chinese trying to succeed in the US.There will be very, very few first-generation Chinese immigrants who become upper managers in American firms simply because there are very few who have the cultural awareness and skill and the English language abilities to succeed.What they see as prejudice against their Chinese origins is really, often enough, a rejection of their cultural and linguistic limitations in an American setting.A much, much better study than to lump all Chinese togather would be to see how second and third generation Chinese Americans do compared to average Americans of the same education.Then you would be comparing two culturally American populations!Chang also completely ignores the deep racism of Chinese culture by emphasizing the choice of some Chinese to identify themselves with blacks in Civil Rights issues.To put it succinctly:the Chinese side of our family would be OUTRAGED, and that would be by far the most common reaction of culturally Chinese people to such a suggestion.As a white person, I am tolerated, though a disappointment, and I'm sure the family back in China sighs over the fact that my husband married one of those white devils.If he had tried to marrya black woman, he would have been cut out of the family completely.

Even with these flaws, the story is so lively and the anecdotes so diverse that the book is fully deserving three stars.

An American Story
As a naturalized citizen originally from China, I particularly appreciate Chang's closing remarks that hopefully most readers can come to see the stories in The Chinese in America as ultimately stories of Americans. I'd imagine an Irish immigrant 100 years ago, or a Mexican immigrant today, could tell me many parallel stories like those in this book. Would love to read about their storeis too, and hope that one day these are all seen as true American stories as ones about the Plymouth Rock and Lewis and Clark.

By the way, I listened to the audio version. The reading is a bit dry, but good enough.

Chang's book a good place to start, but not a rigorous, scholarly account
Iris Chang's narrative history of the Chinese in America is engrossing and involving. It provides a generalized history of China and the Chinese that spans two continents -- by no means an easy feat to do. It is well researched, and has definitely stoked my interest in reading more about Chinese (and Chinese-in-America) history.

My problems with the book, however, lie mainly with her characterization of this text as a "narrative history", and the authorial liberties she takes as a consequence. Clearly, history is a subjective narrative from the get-go, and calling "The Chinese in America" a narrative history gives Chang leeway not otherwise allowed by a more rigorous, scholarly work. While this adds to the readability of the work, it detracts from its credibility.

For one thing, she infuses 21st century moral judgements onto historical occurrences and eras in which it was not even a question. In one instance, she calls Manifest Destiny "arrogant". I'm not arguing that it wasn't, but an outright moral judgement like that does not belong in a work of non-fiction, even if that work is a narrative history. Judgement like that is akin to calling Nazi Germany a period of deranged lunacy. Few would disagree with your assessment, but from a point of historical understanding, its benefits are at best minimal. It's just not good scholarly writing.

Similarly, why should I believe what "one Chinese woman" says from such and such a time, or an oral history as told to so and so who told Chang herself? And what is a floating quotation, supported by no evidence from the author, supposed to tell the reader?

What also bothers me about Chang's book is her use of (for lack of a better term) 'common sense wisdom'. The chapter on the Great Depression opens with a generalized statement about how people in times of trouble tend to turn to groups different from themselves in order to lay blame for all their woes and ills (in this case they turned to the Chinese), and she hearkens it back to caveman tribal instincts. Where is the basis for this anthropological assessment, and why is it applicable here in particular?

To Chang's credit, she was not a scholar at all and to have written the books she did and researched them the way she did without graduate training is an impressive achievement. Also, she was clear from the beginning that this was a narrative history, and not some scholarly work published by Yale or some such other academic institution. I enjoyed this book, and I would definitely recommend it as a starting point to further explorations in Chinese and Chinese American history. All I am saying is that it is by no means a perfect work.

Little known history of the Chinese in America

The Chinese are very much in the news.My son is dating a Taiwanese girl and I have been doing some reading about the Chinese.They are a very industrious people. The only thing I ever learned about the chinese in school was that they worked on the first intercontinental railroad but there is a great deal more to their history in the U.S.

Iris Chang is an excellent writer. ... Read more

Product Description
Seattle's International District: The Making of a Pan-Asian American Community traces the journey of early Asian immigrants to Seattle, describes their early settlements, and chronicles the evolution of the International District from its early times to the present. It covers the ebb and flow of the area, the struggles to preserve it, internal and external conflicts, and the important forces, government policies, events, and people who have shaped the District. It is a story about the movement of the Chinatowns, the heydays of the 1920s, Filipino immigrants and union organizing, the internment of Japanese Americans, the decline of the District and how it fought back, the changing social and political structure of the neighborhood, the areaís residential and commercial revitalization, and its emergence as a present-day pan-Asian American community. ... Read more

Product Description
The Poetics of Emptiness uncovers an important untold history by tracing the historically specific, intertextual pathways of a single, if polyvalent, philosophical term, emptiness, as it is transformed within twentieth-century American poetry and poetics. This conceptual migration is detailed in two sections. The first focuses on "transpacific Buddhist poetics," while the second maps the less well-known terrain of "transpacific Daoist poetics." In Chapters 1 and 2, the author explores Ernest Fenollosa's "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry" as an expression of Fenollosa's distinctly Buddhist poetics informed by a two-decade-long encounter with a culturally hybrid form of Buddhism known as Shin Bukkyo ("New Buddhism"). Chapter 2 explores the classical Chinese poetics that undergirds the lost half of Fenellosa's essay. Chapter 3 concludes the first half of the book with an exploration of the didactic and soteriological function of "emptiness" in Gary Snyder's influential poetry and poetics. The second half begins with a critical exploration of the three-decades-long career of the poet/translator/critic Wai-lim Yip, whose "transpacific Daoist poetics" has been an important fixture in American poetic late modernism and has begun to gain wider notoriety in China. The last chapter engages the intertextual weave of poststructural thought and Daoist and shamanistic discourses in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's important body of heterocultural productions. By formulating interpretive frames as hybrid as the texts being read, this book makes available one of the most important yet still largely unknown stories of American poetry and poetics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A key addition to any poetry or literary studies collection
America has changed the life of many and the culture of many more. "Poetics of Emptiness: Transformations of Asian Thought in American Poetry" discusses how Asian thought processes, spirituality, beliefs, and faith has been reflected in the past hundred years by using poetry as a chart of these changes. Scholarly and thoughtful, everything from Buddhism and tradition to the law is discussed and makes for a fascinating read. "Poetics of Emptiness" is a key addition to any poetry or literary studies collection.
... Read more

Product Description

When Steve grasped the painting, it tigled aainst his fingertips.He felt as if he had rubbed his shoes fast over a carpet.And the tingling spread through his whole hand."What's going on?" he asked, scared.

From the momen Grandfather gives Steve a magic paintbrush that grants wishes, life in Chinatown will never be the same.

Customer Reviews (4)

Better than You're Expecting
My son really enjoyed this book once he gave it a chance.He's eight and tends to literally judge a book by it's cover and this book doesn't have the coolest cover.Once he gave the book a chance he saw that there was lots of magical and funny things that happened in the story

go on a magic journey with the magic paintbrush
Steve is a young boy who lives with his grandfather.His parents dies and now Steve has moved in to Chinatown.He is great in art so his grandfather gives him a paintbrush that belonged to his grandfather.The brush turns out to be magical.Steves painting are brought to life when he paints them.Find out about all the adventures Steve and his grandfather have thanks to The Magic Paintbrush!



The book moved at a fast pace.The story was written well and it kept the readers attention.



The book is great for kids who are interested in fantasy, mystery, and family magic.

Treasure of a Novel
Award-winning Yep has proven again why he is a master of storytelling. In this treasure of a short novel, Yep offers fantasy, mystery, and family magic. Particularly strong is the characterization of the grandfather-grandson relationship. This is a perfect book for readers just taking hold of the novel. Highly recommended, especially for those with a love of intergenerational and Asian American literature.

Charming Fantasy
I was pleasantly surprised by the charm of this book. The factthat it is based on one of my favorite Chinese folktales made meskeptical, but Yep is such an excellent writer that characters in this magical fantasy charmed me. The ending gets a little schmaltzy, but it works. ... Read more

Product Description
"Yellowface details the theatrical and musical history of Chinese and Chinese American performance at a time when ‘Asian American’ identity was unheard of. It should be a welcome addition to Asian American studies and American cultural history, as well as theater and music history."—Josephine Lee, author of Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage

"Krystyn Moon has produced a finely detailed and nuanced study of China and Chinese Americans on the nineteenth-century American musical stage. Yellowface is an important work for anyone interested in the history of American popular culture and race."—Robert G. Lee, author of Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture

Music and performance provide a unique window into the ways that cultural information is circulated and perceptions are constructed. Because they both require listening, are inherently ephemeral, and most often involve collaboration between disparate groups, they inform cultural perceptions differently from literary or visual art forms, which tend to be more tangible and stable.

In Yellowface, Krystyn R. Moon explores the contributions of writers, performers, producers, and consumers in order to demonstrate how popular music and performance has played an important role in constructing Chinese and Chinese American stereotypes. The book brings to life the rich musical period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this time, Chinese and Chinese American musicians and performers appeared in a variety of venues, including museums, community theaters, and world’s fairs, where they displayed their cultural heritage and contested anti-Chinese attitudes. A smaller number crossed over into vaudeville and performed non-Chinese materials. Moon shows how these performers carefully navigated between racist attitudes and their own artistic desires.

Although many scholars have studied both African American music and blackface minstrelsy, little attention has been given to Chinese and Chinese American music. This book provides a rare look at the way that immigrants actively participated in the creation, circulation, and, at times, subversion of Chinese stereotypes through their musical and performance work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Unstable performances
Krystyn Moon has written a necessary text in the history of Chinese impersonation 'yellowface' performance.The text includes music and lyrics of the many songs that have been researched. Although I am not specifically interested in the music of the time I found the historical and cultural context of performing Chinese in America in the nineteenth century valuable to my own study of Chinese diaspora.

Chinese American Art Lives in History
With a title like "Yellowface,"I thought this would be the Asian equivalent of Eric Lott's "Love and Theft" on black-defaming minstrelsy.However, Dr. Moon does not discuss non-Asians pretending to be Asian until one of the last chapters of the book.This text really dealt with non-Chinese artistic responses to the Chinese and Chinese Americans and those two groups' counter response.Most cultural studies focuses upon visual art or writings because any modern can read a book or use their eyes to analyze something.However, and surprisingly, the focus in this book is on music.Moon is knowledgeable about Chinese instruments and musical writing.Music majors may be especially appreciative of this text.

This text must be a celebration of tenure, because I can't imagine a graduate student being able to pick up so much for a dissertation.Further, this tenure is well-deserved:it must have taken a lot to be a professor in Georgia and pull up so much historical evidence from San Francisco and New York City.Sometimes the text is repetitive, but the reader can still notice that it took a lot of hard work to pull together and analyze all this material.

This book does not treat "white" and "yellow" exclusively; Native Americans, African-Americans, and even Eurasians are brought up.Still, at one point Dr. Moon mentions a Black vaudevillian who take on the name Ding-a-Ling.She totally fails to recognize the racialized phallocentricity here.

Dr. Moon is great at not seeing things as absolutes.The time periods of the chapters overlap, as history actually doesn't have sharp beginnings and endings.English Americans first dismiss Chinese music as "noise" but by comparing it to Scottish music, they recognize its musicality, at least somewhat.Chinese music is seen as primitive by the white Americans mentioned here, yet they also use it to innovate or rejuvenate Western music.Non-Chinese Americans deem the Chinese as perpetual foreigners, but Chinese Americans resist that label by mastering both Occidental and Oriental musical styles.

This book moves slowly, just like most history and academic books.Still, it may be a great tool for ethnic studies majors and many other learners. ... Read more

Product Description
The history of Chinese Milwaukee begins in April 1874, with the opening by Wing Wau of a Chinese laundry at 86 Mason Street. Other Chinese soon followed, and by 1888, there were at least 30 Chinese laundries operating in the city. Charlie Toy moved to Milwaukee in 1904 and within two decades had built both one of the largest Chinese trading businesses in the United States and a six-story Chinese-style building in downtown Milwaukee described as the largest and most luxurious Chinese restaurant building in the world. An example of the community's influence as a whole is the period 1937 to 1940, when the community of less than 300 residents contributed more money to the Chinese war effort against Japan than any other Chinese community in the United States except San Francisco. ... Read more

Product Description
This New Year, the Year of the Dragon, something magical happens. A young girl's grandmother tells her about dragons, and suddenly she finds herself on a dragon's back soaring over ancient China. Bright, colorful illustrations complement this informative and imaginative tale. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An EXCELLENT Book!
This is Chinese New Year as I know it. This book is 15 years old, so I was prepared to find it dated in both art and flow. Instead I found myself utterly drawn in, instantly comfortable with the way the people and their home and environments were rendered. Clothing and hair styles, home furnishings, food drawings--everything is spot on, plus, there's this education flavor to the drawings that makes me nostalgic for . . . my old Saturday morning Chinese school books? The text works great for me, too. The device of sharing so much information about usual Chinese New Year traditions via the opener "Just like any other year . . ." on every page, while we wait to hear what was different about THIS year, really drew me in.

The moment of dragon-riding fantasy is breathtaking.

So why am I giving this only 4 stars instead of 5? Well, it's crazy, but as much as I love this book and am getting it for myself, I'm still not sure this would be the first Chinese New Year book I'd give my FRIENDS' kids, these days, and that's my test for what gets 5 stars. I'm almost suspicious this book is TOO perfect for me, and that my friends' kids (the ones being born now) wouldn't relate the same way.

I could be wrong. I'm going to show it around and see what others think. I could just be in denial my friends and I have become our parents.

This book is wonderful.

But my 6 y.o. daughter likes it
She took it to bed to read to herself the other night.If you were doing Ch. New Year with a KG - 5th class, you could use the book, but only read selected paragraphs All the important bits of the celebration are there.

good general information for kids
This book contained very good general information for kids about Chinese New Year; however, it was written in a very choppy style and the ideas also did not flow from one to the next.Within the general information about the young girl's preparation and celebration was a brief one to two page story about flying on a dragon and seeing Chinese New Year in ancient times.This story was too short and really didn't say anything about how the celebrations might have differed; however, connecting current celebrations to ancient times was a nice idea. ... ... Read more