Japan


Lafcadio Hearn - 1904
    Perhaps more than any other single writer, Hearn is responsible for documenting and interpreting Japan for Western audiences. In this engrossing volume, Hearn undertakes his most comprehensive comparative analysis of Japanese culture.

Whites, Jews, and Us: Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love


Houria Bouteldja - 2016
    Of course, the West is not what it used to be. Hence my question: what can we offer white people in exchange for their decline and for the wars that will ensue? There is only one answer: peace. There is only one way: revolutionary love.—from Whites, Jews, and UsWith Whites, Jews, and Us, Houria Bouteldja launches a scathing critique of the European Left from an indigenous anti-colonial perspective, reflecting on Frantz Fanon's political legacy, the republican pact, the Shoah, the creation of Israel, feminism, and the fate of postcolonial immigration in the West in the age of rising anti-immigrant populism. Drawing upon such prominent voices as James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Jean Genet, she issues a polemical call for a militant anti-racism grounded in the concept of revolutionary love.Such love will not come without significant discomfort for whites, and without necessary provocation. Bouteldja challenges widespread assumptions among the Left in the United States and Europe—that anti-Semitism plays any role in Arab–Israeli conflicts, for example, or that philo-Semitism doesn't in itself embody an oppressive position; that feminism or postcolonialist theory is free of colonialism; that integrationalism is a solution rather than a problem; that humanism can be against racism when its very function is to support the political-ideological apparatus that Bouteldja names the “white immune system.”At this transitional moment in the history of the West—which is to say, at the moment of its decline—Bouteldja offers a call for political unity that demands the recognition that whiteness is not a genetic question: it is a matter of power, and it is high time to dismantle it.This Semiotext(e)/Intervention series English-language edition includes a foreword by Cornel West.

The Films of Akira Kurosawa


Donald Richie - 1965
    Through his long and distinguished career he managed, like very few others in the teeth of a huge and relentless industry, to elevate each of his films to a distinctive level of art. His Rashomon—one of the best-remembered and most talked-of films in any language—was a revelation when it appeared in 1950 and did much to bring Japanese cinema to the world's attention. Kurosawa's films display an extraordinary breadth and an astonishing strength, from the philosophic and sexual complexity of Rashomon to the moral dedication of Ikiru, from the naked violence of Seven Samurai to the savage comedy of Yojimbo, from the terror-filled feudalism of Throne of Blood to the piercing wit of Sanjuro.

Crazy Girl Shin Bia Volume 1


Mi-Ri Hwang
    But this necklace isn't ordinary, it is a sign from her past reincarnation that she will be moved to a different time period. In fact, the time when the imperial women were to be proper, elegant, and lady-like. Every thing she isn't. Crazy Girl Shin Bia tells of her time in an ancient Chinese Palace; trying to find her place in life.

Growing up in a Korean Kitchen: A Cookbook


Hi Sooshin Hepinstall - 2001
    With descriptions of the traditional Korean kitchen, preparations for special feast days, and the rituals of everyday family meals, author Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall draws an engaging portrait of a seldom glimpsed way of life. Easy-to-follow recipes, largely handed down through oral tradition, cover the wide range of main and side dishes, from the sumptuous elegance of "royal cuisine" to simpler countryside cooking. Korean cuisine has emerged as one of the most exciting and robust tastes of Asia, with great variety and some of the world's most sophisticated techniques for pickling and cooking with garlic and hot pepper. Cooks of all levels, as well as armchair travelers, will welcome this book to their collection.• Includes over 250 authentic recipes, a glossary, and a list of resources for finding uniquely Korean ingredients and utensils.• Illustrated with the author's travel and family photos, depicting the cultural and culinary traditions of Korea.For a list of markets that carry Korean ingredients visit www.koreanfeast.com

To Swim Across the World


Frances Park - 2001
    The Japanese occupy the country, and two young Koreans grow up in very different worlds. For Sei-Young Shin, a young man born into a poor family in the rural south, it is a time of oppression. The Japanese have issued strict prohibitions against the Korean language, religion, and food. For Heisook Pang, the daughter of a prosperous family from the north, life is easier. But the onset of World War II changes everything: Heisooks privileges are suddenly stripped away, and she is forced to make a daring escape, across the border into the south, where an encounter with Sei-Young changes their lives forever. Based on the real-life stories of the authors parents, To Swim Across the World is a wonderful love story and an intimate vision of a countrys terrible, recent past.

Selected Subaltern Studies


Ranajit Guha - 1988
    Said. Addressed to students and scholars throughout the humanities, these essays address what Antonio Gramsci--the founder of the Italian communist party--called the subaltern classes, reexamining well-known historical and political events, such as Gandhi's role in India, from a Marxist perspective. Together, the essays examine aspects of the analysis of domination, with special reference to the critique of imperialism, in an attempt to rectify the elitist bias characteristic of much academic work on India. A ground-breaking work of considerable pedagogical relevance for courses dealing with colonialism and imperialism in literature, sociology, anthropology, politics, and history, Subaltern Studies also features a comprehensive glossary of Indian terms for readers not familiar with Indian history.

The Korean Word For Butterfly


Jamie Zerndt - 2013
    tank, The Korean Word For Butterfly is told from three alternating points-of-view:Billie, the young wanna-be poet looking for adventure with her boyfriend who soon finds herself questioning her decision to travel so far from the comforts of American life;Moon, the ex K-pop band manager who now works at the English school struggling to maintain his sobriety in hopes of getting his family back;And Yun-ji , a secretary at the school whose new feelings of resentment toward Americans may lead her to do something she never would have imagined possible. The Korean Word For Butterfly is a story about the choices we make and why we make them. It is a story, ultimately, about the power of love and redemption.*The author would like to note that this book deals, in part, with abortion. It tries, as best it can, to explore the issue with compassion rather than judgement.*"5 stars...full of fresh and original writing." -Kindle Book Review

Contradictions (Ceas)


Yang Gui-ja - 1998
    Her most representative early work, the 1987 Wonmi-dong saramdeul, is available in English as A Distant and Beautiful Place. In the 1990s her writing took an increasingly personal turn with a series of popular works including Contradictions (Mosun), South Korea's best-selling novel in 1998.Contradictions is a coming-of-age tale that explores the paradoxes and contradictions of the human condition and delves into the meaning of personal happiness. The book opens with a moment of epiphany as the main character An Jin-jin awakens to the realization that her entire energy must be devoted to her own life. She struggles over whom to marry with an awareness of consequences gleaned from seeing the divergence in the lives of twin sisters--her mother and her aunt. A host of binary oppositions is also presented in the lives of the men around her: a wannabe gang boss brother, an Ivy League cousin, an alcoholic schizophrenic father, a steadfast but rigid uncle, and her two suitors. Yang skillfully develops these characters in increasingly complex threads as the novel unfolds in a series of surprises.

Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961


Christina Klein - 2003
    Meanwhile the U.S., competing with the Soviet Union for global power, extended its reach into Asia to an unprecedented degree. This book reveals that these trends—the proliferation of Orientalist culture and the expansion of U.S. power—were linked in complex and surprising ways. While most cultural historians of the Cold War have focused on the culture of containment, Christina Klein reads the postwar period as one of international economic and political integration—a distinct chapter in the process of U.S.-led globalization. Through her analysis of a wide range of texts and cultural phenomena—including Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and The King and I, James Michener's travel essays and novel Hawaii, and Eisenhower's People-to-People Program—Klein shows how U.S. policy makers, together with middlebrow artists, writers, and intellectuals, created a culture of global integration that represented the growth of U.S. power in Asia as the forging of emotionally satisfying bonds between Americans and Asians. Her book enlarges Edward Said's notion of Orientalism in order to bring to light a cultural narrative about both domestic and international integration that still resonates today.

The Turtle Ship


Helena Ku Rhee - 2018
    As a poor villager, though, his dream to travel seemed impossible. Then one day, the king's court announced a contest to find the best design for a new battleship to defend the land from invaders. The winner would sail the ocean with the royal navy.Determined to win, Sunsin attempts to build an indestructible battleship with a few found items. Each attempt fails miserably against the powerful sea, and with it Sunsin's dream also sinks to the bottom. Turning to Gobugi for comfort, Sunsin notices how his pet turtle is small but mighty, slow but steady, and impossible to sink. Suddenly, Sunsin has a great idea.Loosely based on Admiral Yi Sunsin and the Turtle War Ship (Keo-Book-Sun), debut author Helena Ku Rhee and debut illustrator Colleen Kong-Savage introduce young readers to a fascinating episode in Korean history and naval engineering.

Wanting Enlightenment Is a Big Mistake: Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn


Seung Sahn - 2006
    He taught that Zen is not about achieving a goal, but about acting spontaneously from "don't-know mind." It is from this "before-thinking" nature, he taught, that true compassion and the desire to serve others naturally arises. This collection of teaching stories, talks, and spontaneous dialogues with students offers readers a fresh and immediate encounter with one of the great Zen masters of the twentieth century.

Sony Vs Samsung: The Inside Story of the Electronics Giants' Battle for Global Supremacy


Sea-Jin Chang - 2008
    Samsung is business history at its best! It explores the divergent fortunes of these two electronics giants in the last decade and identifies the true reasons behind Sony's decline and Samsung's rise. Contrary to popular belief, Chang shows that success (or failure) does not simply arise from different strategies. Rather, it emerges from major decisions that are deeply rooted in the companies' organizational processes and their executives' political behavior. This book is a must-read for any senior executive. --Constantinos Markides, Robert P. Bauman Professor of Strategic Leadership and Chairman, Strategy Department, London Business School Sea-Jin Chang has produced that rarity in a business book--one that is as valuable to practicing managers as it is insightful to academic researchers. In this fascinating comparison of two modern global giants, he applies his high resolution research microscope to their changing fortunes by dissecting their contrasting strategies, and providing interesting insights into their divergent organizational processes and management practices. This is a very valuable contribution to the international business literature. It will end up in as many corporate boardrooms as faculty seminars. --Christopher A. Bartlett, Thomas D. Casserly Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School Sea-Jin Chang has written a fascinating comparison of Sony and Samsung that will be valuable to anyone interested in strategy, organizations or international business. The interwoven and very detailed case studies of two very different companies in overlapping industries illuminate problems such as adaptation to technological change (analog to digital), organizational flexibility and globalization. His attempt to analyze both strategic development and implementation is successful and very useful. Both academics and practitioners will learn a lot from this book. --Stephen J. Kobrin, William Wurster Professor of Multinational Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Refreshingly original and entertaining, this book analyzes major strategic decisions of Samsung and Sony and highlights organizational processes and top management leadership that have shaped their performances. This is a must-read for all executives who want to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Asian competitors. It also provides penetrating insights to other Asian companies with global ambitions. --Myoung Woo Lee, President and CEO, iriver

Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology


E. Patrick JohnsonCathy J. Cohen - 2005
    Bringing together essays by established and emergent scholars, this collection assesses the strengths and weaknesses of prior work on race and sexuality and highlights the theoretical and political issues at stake in the nascent field of black queer studies. Including work by scholars based in English, film studies, black studies, sociology, history, political science, legal studies, cultural studies, and performance studies, the volume showcases the broadly interdisciplinary nature of the black queer studies project.The contributors consider representations of the black queer body, black queer literature, the pedagogical implications of black queer studies, and the ways that gender and sexuality have been glossed over in black studies and race and class marginalized in queer studies. Whether exploring the closet as a racially loaded metaphor, arguing for the inclusion of diaspora studies in black queer studies, considering how the black lesbian voice that was so expressive in the 1970s and 1980s is all but inaudible today, or investigating how the social sciences have solidified racial and sexual exclusionary practices, these insightful essays signal an important and necessary expansion of queer studies.Contributors. Bryant K. Alexander, Devon Carbado, Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Keith Clark, Cathy Cohen, Roderick A. Ferguson, Jewelle Gomez, Phillip Brian Harper, Mae G. Henderson, Sharon P. Holland, E. Patrick Johnson, Kara Keeling, Dwight A. McBride, Charles I. Nero, Marlon B. Ross, Rinaldo Walcott, Maurice O. Wallace

The Lucky Gourd Shop


Joanna Catherine Scott - 2000
    A much-anticipated letter from Korea fails to satisfy them but sparks memories in the eldest. So begins the heartbreaking and inspiring tale of their birth mother's life as their adoptive mother imagines it. Abandoned as a baby and then again and again, Mi Sook is raised in a Korean coffee shop by its string of owner-mothers. She grows to adulthood fiercely independent and eventually comes to manage the shop. But her marriage to Kun Soo, with whom she has three children, begins a series of events that ultimately wrench her babies from her arms. Deceived by Kun Soo and his well-intentioned mother, and unsupported by a rigidly Confucian culture, Mi Sook emerges as a tragic and heroic figure who embodies the rich complexities of a nation -- and of the heart.