Pretty Woman Spitting: An American's Travels in China


Leanna Adams - 2012
    Leanna Adams moved to China in 2006, was nearly robbed, held her co-worker’s hand as she died in a filthy, smoke-filled hospital, bonded with many of her three hundred students and left part of her heart in Wuhu, China. Adams’s contrasting experiences highlight the differences that make the two cultures unique and the similarities that make all people human.

Edgar Allan Poe: A Life From Beginning to End


Hourly History - 2018
    - The Poe Family and the Allan Family - Poe Joins the Military - Poor and Disowned - Writing Career and Famous Works - Poe's Mysterious Death And much more! Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most influential literary figures of all time. He did a lot to change the way people viewed writers and their value. This book dives into the life of this well-known poet and author and explores all the ways he impacted the literary world, both in his own time and up to date. Start reading and be transported back to the nineteenth century to learn about one of the most well-known American writers of all time.

Frontier


Can Xue - 2017
    Her publications in English include The Embroidered Shoes, Five Spice Street, Vertical Motion, and The Last Lover, which won the 2015 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction.Karen Gernant is a professor emerita of Chinese history at Southern Oregon University. She translates in collaboration with Chen Zeping.Chen Zeping is a professor of Chinese linguistics at Fujian Teachers' University, and has collaborated with Karen Gernant on more than ten translations.

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities


Chen Chen - 2017
    Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one’s own path in identity, life, and love.In the HospitalMy mother was in the hospital & everyone wanted to be my friend.But I was busy making a list: good dog, bad citizen, shortskeleton, tall mocha. Typical Tuesday.My mother was in the hospital & no one wanted to be her friend.Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Very reasonablepigeons. No one had the time & our solution to itwas to buy shinier watches. We were enamored withwhat our wrists could declare. My mother was in the hospital& I didn’t want to be her friend. Typical son. Tall latte, short tale,bad plot, great wifi in the atypical café. My mother was in the hospital& she didn’t want to be her friend. She wanted to be the familygrocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn’t trust my fatherto be it. You always forget something, she said, even whenI do the list for you. Even then.

To the Sky Kingdom


Tang Qi - 2009
    In its journey across worlds and time, it delves into the powerful forces that drive mortals and gods alike toward revenge, loyalty—and love.

Life


Lu Yao - 1982
    Against the vivid, gritty backdrop of 1980s China, Lu Yao traces the proud and passionate Gao Jialin’s difficult path to professional, romantic, and personal fulfillment—or at least hard-won acceptance.With the emotional acuity and narrative mastery that secured his reputation as one of China’s great novelists, Lu Yao paints a vivid, emotional, and unsparing portrait of contemporary Chinese life, seen through the eyes of a working-class man who refuses to be broken.

走得越远,离自己越近 The Farther I Walk, The Closer I Get To Me


Hong Mei - 2014
    Encountering Maoist insurgents in Orissa, performing in a Bollywood production alongside superstar Aamir Khan, befriending India's Hijra community, and being kidnapped - and subsequently arrested - in the Dharavi slums are among her many unique experiences.Written from the unique perspective of a young Chinese woman of the 1980s generation, and heralding the transformative nature of independent travel, Hong's groundbreaking journey and book have been covered extensively in the international media. Husband Tom Carter, the critically acclaimed photographer and author of CHINA: Portrait of a People, adds a wonderful dimension with his numerous beautiful photographs.《走得越远,离自己越近》是中国女孩洪梅与外国男友背包走印度的深度游走纪行。一年之内四进印度,走遍印度东西南北,我和汤姆以最平和的心态接受了一切。有时被瑰美的建筑震撼,有时被当地人的虔诚感染,有时因为突如其来的遭遇饱受冲击,有时又懒散地躺在海滩边晒太阳。前一刻被半大小子戏弄,在孟买贫民窟遭遇绑架,下一刻在恒河边漫步,在红堡遥看泰姬陵,在圣河瓦拉纳西洗涤尘埃。这一村惊叹悬崖上养蜂人勇敢矫健,那一寨遭遇牛尿液酿饮料骇人听闻。这一端凡间生活生机盎然,另一端生命终结古老圣洁。我们拿笔和相机记录下一路的感受,没有什么真知灼见,要的是真实的自己。

Slow Boats to China


Gavin Young - 1983
    Take a series of ships of different sizes and kinds, go where they lead and see what happens. Inspired by great sea writers like Jack London, Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad, Gavin Young decided he would port-hop to some far destination on the other side of the world. The end of the line would be China."With its magical evocation of the past and the present, of far-off lands and people, vivid skies and bizarre flora and fauna, SLOW BOATS TO CHINA is compulsively readable and a travel book of rare distinction." (Publisher's Source)

Last Kiss in Tiananmen Square


Lisa Zhang Wharton - 2011
    The novel follows a young woman, Baiyun, a junior in college, trying to reconcile her upbringing while in the midst of the rising political movement in Beijing, China. Baiyun grew up in a strange and cold household. In order to cope with her dysfunctional family, Baiyun worked as hard as she could, eventually getting herself in the prestigious Beijing University. Baiyun joined the Pro-democracy movement to vent her frustrations. While protesting, she met the man of her dreams, Dagong, a handsome and charismatic factory technician who was orphaned at birth and lost his only relative during the Cultural Revolution. But even Dagong couldn’t fully take Baiyun away: his face reminded her of one of her mother’s lovers, both attracting her and drawing her back. “Last Kiss in Tiananmen Square” is a coming-of age story set against the historic and devastating era in Chinese history. With the cultural significance and family bonds of “The Kite Runner”, this book explores the way in which one’s past is never forgotten.

This Generation: Dispatches from China's Most Popular Literary Star (and Race Car Driver)


Han Han - 2010
    Now, with this collection of his essays, Americans can appreciate the range of this rising literary star and get a fascinating trip through Chinese culture. This Generation gathers his essays and blogs dating from 2006 to the present, telling the story of modern China through Han Han’s unique perspective. Writing on topics as diverse as racing, relationships, the Beijing Olympics, and how to be a patriot, he offers a brief, funny, and illuminating trip through a complex nation that most Westerners view as marching in lockstep. As much a millennial time capsule as an entertaining and invaluable way for English readers to understand our rising Eastern partner and rival, This Generation introduces a dazzling talent to American shores.

The Lost Daughters of China


Karin Evans - 2000
    Presents a cultural history of the events that led to the controversial one-child policy in China and the subsequent generation-long abandonment of Chinese daughters to American families.

Vita Nuova


Dante Alighieri
    The thirty-one poems in the first of his major writings are linked by a lyrical prose narrative celebrating and debating the subject of love. Composed upon Dante's meeting with Beatrice and the "Lord of Love," it is a love story set to the task of confirming the "new life" inspired by this meeting. With a critical introduction and explanatory notes, this is a new translation of a supreme work which has been read variously as biography, religious allegory, and a meditation on poetry itself.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress


Dai Sijie - 2000
    There they meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, they find transit from their grim surroundings to worlds they never imagined.

Death of a Red Heroine


Qiu Xiaolong - 2000
    As Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau struggles to trace the hidden threads of her past, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. Chen must tiptoe around his superiors if he wants to get to the bottom of this crime, and risk his career—perhaps even his life—to see justice done.

Poems and Songs


Robert Burns - 1906