Naming the No-Name Woman
Naming the No-Name Woman

Author: Jasmine An

Publisher:

Published: 2016-02-17

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13: 9780692622711

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Naming The No-Name Woman by Jasmine An is the winner of the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize and was chosen by contest judge, Keetje Kuipers. Praise for Naming The No-Name Woman: "Fiercely sexual and frank, the speaker in Naming The No-Name Woman mythologizes her experiences as a Chinese-American woman, never flinching from the various overlapping identities she encounters. I am reminded of the fearlessness of Kimiko Hahn's work, and am stirred anew by Jasmine An's resistance to any kind of shame that identity-chosen and unchosen-is eager to place on us. The speaker's foil in these poems is the actress Wong Liu Tsong (Anna May Wong), "the open secret, the uninvited guest, the hand resting / in the small of my back." Jasmine An does not so much make use of Wong in an effort to compare and contrast, but instead, she joins with her, blending voices and giving new and roaring life to that long and still unfolding story of race, gender, and sexuality in our country." - Keetje Kuipers In clear and luxurious language, Jasmine An navigates the slippery worlds of identity politics, botany, and desire-and pulls us toward an elegant horizon. I'm grateful for such a sumptuous and (not-so) safe passage of fine poems and the fragrant world that she's created in such a small space, one where "...even the saplings wear crabs as crowns." - Aimee Nezhukumatathil The poems in Jasmine An's transformative, erotic collection teeter on the impossible border between consuming and rebuffing, naming and not naming the enigmatic presence of Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong. Likewise, An's formal choices tread a wavering line between poetry and prose, just as the poems draw as much from theory as memory and feeling. "I am afraid of writing myself into a story that isn't meant for my survival," An writes, and yet she does, allowing herself to be exquisitely haunted by Wong's performance of Asian-American femaleness, her beauty and her precarious legacy. In the process, An's speaker incorporates the shadow. She swallows. - Diane Seuss

The Woman Warrior
The Woman Warrior

Author: Maxine Hong Kingston

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2010-09-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0307759334

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American. • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER “A classic, for a reason.” —Celeste Ng, bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts, via Twitter As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother’s tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston’s sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family’s past and her own present.

The Girls with No Names
The Girls with No Names

Author: Serena Burdick

Publisher: Harlequin

Published: 2020-01-07

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1488050996

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INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A beautiful tale of hope, courage, and sisterhood—inspired by the real House of Mercy and the girls confined there for daring to break the rules. Growing up in New York City in the 1910s, Luella and Effie Tildon realize that even as wealthy young women, their freedoms come with limits. But when the sisters discover a shocking secret about their father, Luella, the brazen elder sister, becomes emboldened to do as she pleases. Her rebellion comes with consequences, and one morning Luella is mysteriously gone. Effie suspects her father has sent Luella to the House of Mercy and hatches a plan to get herself committed to save her sister. But she made a miscalculation, and with no one to believe her story, Effie’s own escape seems impossible—unless she can trust an enigmatic girl named Mable. As their fates entwine, Mable and Effie must rely on their tenuous friendship to survive. Home for Unwanted Girls meets The Dollhouse in this atmospheric, heartwarming story that explores not only the historical House of Mercy, but the lives—and secrets—of the girls who stayed there. “Burdick has spun a cautionary tale of struggle and survival, love and family — and above all, the strength of the heart, no matter how broken.” — New York Times Book Review “Burdick reveals the perils of being a woman in 1913 and exposes the truths of their varying social circles.” — Chicago Tribune

China Men
China Men

Author: Maxine Hong Kingston

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 1989-04-23

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0679723285

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The author chronicles the lives of three generations of Chinese men in America, woven from memory, myth and fact. Here's a storyteller's tale of what they endured in a strange new land.

All Our Names
All Our Names

Author: Dinaw Mengestu

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2014-03-04

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0385349998

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From acclaimed author Dinaw Mengestu, a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award, The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 award, and a 2012 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, comes an unforgettable love story about a searing affair between an American woman and an African man in 1970s America and an unflinching novel about the fragmentation of lives that straddle countries and histories. All Our Names is the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart—one into the deepest peril, as the movement gathers inexorable force, and the other into the safety of exile in the American Midwest. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into small-town life. Yet this idyll is inescapably darkened by the secrets of his past: the acts he committed and the work he left unfinished. Most of all, he is haunted by the beloved friend he left behind, the charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom. Elegiac, blazing with insights about the physical and emotional geographies that circumscribe our lives, All Our Names is a marvel of vision and tonal command. Writing within the grand tradition of Naipul, Greene, and Achebe, Mengestu gives us a political novel that is also a transfixing portrait of love and grace, of self-determination and the names we are given and the names we earn. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

We Need New Names
We Need New Names

Author: NoViolet Bulawayo

Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books

Published: 2013-05-21

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0316230839

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This unflinching and powerful novel tells the "deeply felt and fiercely written" story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe to America (New York Times Book Review). Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad. But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayo's debut calls to mind the great storytellers of displacement and arrival who have come before her — from Junot Diaz to Zadie Smith to J.M. Coetzee — while she tells a vivid, raw story all her own. "Original, witty, and devastating." —People

The Woman of a Thousand Names
The Woman of a Thousand Names

Author: Alexandra Lapierre

Publisher: Atria Books

Published: 2020-03-31

Total Pages: 640

ISBN-13: 1501197916

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From the internationally bestselling author of the “fascinating epic” (Associated Press) Between Love and Honor comes a rich, sweeping tale based on the captivating true story of the Mata Hari of Russia, featuring a beautiful aristocrat fighting for survival during the deadly upheaval of the Russian Revolution. Born into Russian aristocracy, wealth, and security, Moura never had any reason to worry. But in the upheaval of the Bolshevik Revolution, her entire world crumbles. As her family and friends are being persecuted by Vladimir Lenin’s ruthless police, she falls into a passionate affair with British secret agent Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart. But when he’s abruptly and mysteriously deported from Russia, Moura is left alone and vulnerable. Now, she must find new paths for her survival, even if it means shedding her past and taking on new identities. Some will praise her tenderness and undying loyalty. Others will denounce her lies. But all will agree on one point: Moura embodies Life. Life at all cost. Set against the volatile landscape of 20th-century Russia, The Woman of a Thousand Names brings history to vivid life in a captivating tale about an extraordinary woman caught in the waves of change—with only her wits to save her.

The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story
The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story

Author: Hyeonseo Lee

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2015-07-02

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0007554869

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom.

All the Names
All the Names

Author: José Saramago

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2001-10-05

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0547536852

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From a Nobel Prize winner: “A psychological, even metaphysical thriller that will keep you turning the pages . . . with growing alarm and alacrity.” —The Seattle Times A Washington Post Book World Favorite Book of the Year Senhor José is a low-grade clerk in the city’s Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily routine. But one day, when he comes across the records of an anonymous young woman, something happens to him. Obsessed, Senhor José sets off to follow the thread that may lead him to the woman—but as he gets closer, he discovers more about her, and about himself, than he would ever have wished. The loneliness of people’s lives, the effects of chance, the discovery of love—all coalesce in this extraordinary novel that displays the power and art of José Saramago in brilliant form.

The Book of Lost Names
The Book of Lost Names

Author: Kristin Harmel

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 198213190X

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Eva Traube Abrams, a semiretired librarian in Florida, is at the returns desk one morning when her eyes lock on to a photograph in a newspaper nearby. She freezes; it's an image of a book she hasn't seen in sixty-five years--a book she recognizes as the Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article describes the looting of libraries across Europe by the Nazis during World War II--an experience Eva remembers all too well. As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in the Book of Last Names will become even more vital when the Resistance cell they work with is betrayed and Rémy disappears. As the Germans close in, Eva records a last, vital message in the book. Decades later, does she have the strength to seek out its answer--and help reunite those lost during the war?