Being a Mother in a Strange Land


Book Description

This text provides an alternative narrative to the humble and often exclusively male voices of first generation Chinese migrants. Despite Chinese migrants having migrated to the Netherlands since 1911, particularly after World War Two, and female migrants outnumbering male migrants, their everyday life and transnational motherhood experiences have remained largely unknown. Based on the narratives of 38 Chinese migrant women from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China, this book brings women, their lives and opinions to the center of Dutch migration history.




Travelling in a Strange Land


Book Description

Set in a frozen winter landscape, the new novel from the prize-winning, acclaimed author David Park is a psychologically astute, expertly crafted portrait of a father 's inner life and a family in crisis I am entering the frozen land, although to which country it belongs I cannot say. The world is hushed, cloaked in snow. Transport has ground to a halt, flights cancelled and roads treacherous. Yet Tom must venture out into this transformed landscape to collect his son Luke, sick and stranded in his student lodgings. During this solitary journey from Belfast to Sunderland by car and boat, Tom reflects on his life- the beloved wife he leaves behind, labouring to create the perfect Christmas and mend their family 's cracks with seasonal cheer; the son he is driving towards, yet struggles to connect with; the countless small disappointments of his photography career; and the absence that is always there as a voice in his head his other son, Daniel. In prose both lyrical and effortless, David Park vividly presents us with the inner life of a man grappling with existence 's challenges- the memories that haunt us, the secrets that divide us, and the bonds that strengthen us. Meditating on marriage, masculinity, parenthood and ambition, this novel encapsulates, with its exquisitely nuanced, precisely delineated depiction of human experience, the unsolved mystery at the heart of our lives.




Her Mother's Hope


Book Description

In this first of an epic family saga by Francine Rivers, mother and daughter relationships are challenged, setting their family on a course full of heartache.




Dying in a Strange Land


Book Description

Milton Murayama’s long-awaited Dying in a Strange Land brings to a close the saga of the Oyama family. Familiar faces from All I Asking For Is My Body, Five Years on a Rock, and Plantation Boy return to advance the story from the years immediately following World War II to the 1980s. After her husband sinks them deep in debt, strong-willed and pragmatic Sawa takes charge of the family. The war ends and her children leave the plantation camp for Honolulu and the Mainland, but Sawa has little time for loneliness or regret. When asked by her neighbors if she misses them, she replies, "They must look for what they want." However, Tosh, the eldest—who has long been saddled with the burden of his family’s failures in addition to his own—is wise to his mother’s "sob stories": "She going hold you to your samurai’s word," he warns his brothers. Even after he becomes an architect, Tosh is quick to blame his problems on "oya-koh-koh" (filial piety). Living on the East Coast and unable to make ends meet as a writer, Kiyo, the third son, takes any job that doesn’t leave him too word-weary or emotionally exhausted to write in his spare time. Chronic fatigue turns him into a minimalist. At 52 he finally finds acclaim when he publishes a novel about issei and nisei in rural Hawai‘i. Not much is expected of Miwa, the fifth child and second daughter. Pregnant at sixteen and forced to leave school, she is rejected by her family and bullied by her in-laws until she finds work as a maid at one of the new hotels in West Maui. A surprise promotion brings Miwa self-esteem and a good income—and respect from her relatives. Just as each generation of the Oyama family struggles to find a way to survive the diaspora from Japan to Hawaii and beyond, so must Sawa, Tosh, Kiyo, and Miwa deal individually with the collision between Japanese and American values, between duty to family and personal freedom.




The Joys of Motherhood


Book Description

...a graceful, touching, ironically titled tale. - John Updike A new edition of her classic novel to coincide with the publication of her other works in the African Writers Series. Nnu Ego is a woman devoted to her children, giving them all her energy, all her worldly possessions, indeed, all her life to them -- with the result that she finds herself friendless and alone in middle age. This story of a young mother's struggles in 1950s Lagos is a powerful commentary on polygamy, patriarchy, and women's changing roles in urban Nigeria.




In a Strange Land


Book Description

I wrote " A romp through post-conflagration Chicago, Pennsylvania's "Molly Maguire "coal mines, the great Log Jam in G I wrote " A romp through post-conflagration Chicago, Pennsylvania's "Molly Maguire "coal mines, the great Log Jam in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the demise of Brooklyn, New York as an independent city and a New Jersey land development scheme, "In a Strange Land" carries the reader forward as Mary Ann and William with their two surviving sons arrive in "turn of the century" United States and "Became American". Drawing on her grandmother's diary and father's photo album, author Lillian M. (Hooper) Henry, recreates that era of tumultuous growth and the " coming of age" of the country itself. Together with her earlier books, "the Real Yankee Doodle", "Tabitha's Tale", and "In Bristol Fashion", "In a Strange Land" provides insight into how historical events impact ordinary citizens. Lillian's next endeavor is "Son of the Kaiser?"...a rags to riches recreation of "The Era of Peace and Prosperity." She and her husband divide their time between Pennsylvania and Florida. rand Rapids, Michigan, the demise of Brooklyn, New York as an independent city and a New Jersey land development scheme, "In a Strange Land" carries the reader forward as Mary Ann and William with their two surviving sons arrive in "turn of the century" United States and "Became American". Drawing on her grandmother's diary and father's photo album, author Lillian M. (Hooper) Henry, recreates that era of tumultuous growth and the " coming of age" of the country itself. Together with her earlier books, "the Real Yankee Doodle", "Tabitha's Tale", and "In Bristol Fashion", "In a Strange Land" provides insight into how historical events impact ordinary citizens. Lillian's next endeavor is "Son of the Kaiser?"...a rags to riches recreation of "The Era of Peace and Prosperity." She and her husband divide their time between Pennsylvania and Florida.




Wandering in Strange Lands


Book Description

One of TIME's 100 Must Read Books of 2020 and one of Good Housekeeping's Best Books of the Year “One of the smartest young writers of her generation.”—Book Riot Featuring a new afterword from the author, Morgan Jerkins' powerful story of her journey to understand her northern and southern roots, the Great Migration, and the displacement of black people across America. Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Americans left their rural homes in the South for jobs in cities in the North, West, and Midwest in a movement known as The Great Migration. But while this event transformed the complexion of America and provided black people with new economic opportunities, it also disconnected them from their roots, their land, and their sense of identity, argues Morgan Jerkins. In this fascinating and deeply personal exploration, she recreates her ancestors’ journeys across America, following the migratory routes they took from Georgia and South Carolina to Louisiana, Oklahoma, and California. Following in their footsteps, Jerkins seeks to understand not only her own past, but the lineage of an entire group of people who have been displaced, disenfranchised, and disrespected throughout our history. Through interviews, photos, and hundreds of pages of transcription, Jerkins braids the loose threads of her family’s oral histories, which she was able to trace back 300 years, with the insights and recollections of black people she met along the way—the tissue of black myths, customs, and blood that connect the bones of American history. Incisive and illuminating, Wandering in Strange Lands is a timely and enthralling look at America’s past and present, one family’s legacy, and a young black woman’s life, filtered through her sharp and curious eyes.




Native in a Strange Land


Book Description

In this substantial selection of her occasional journalism, poet Wanda Coleman has judiciously reshaped articles, essays, interviews and columns written over three decades (for, among other places, the Los Angeles Times. L.A. Weekly and The Free Press) into a nearly-seamless personal narrative: "a tour through the restless emotional topography of Los Angeles as glimpsed through the scattered fragments of my living memory".




Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands


Book Description

WINNER OF THE PRESIGIOUS ETISALAT AWARD AN ADVENTURE-FILLED HISTORICAL-FOLKLORIC NOVEL ABOUT A PALESTINIAN GIRL WHO DEVELOPS GREAT HEALING SKILLS AND TRAVELS AROUND THE REGION, SOMETIMES DRESSED AS A MAN Sonia Nimr’s award-winning Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands is a richly imagined feminist-fable-plus-historical-novel that tells an episodic travel narrative, like that of the great 14th century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, through the eyes of a clever and irrepressible young Palestinian woman. The story begins hundreds of years ago, when our hero—Qamr—is born as an outcast, at the foot of a mountain in Palestine, near her father’s strange, isolated village. Qamr’s mother must solve the mystery of why only boys are born in this odd, conservative village. Then, in 1001 Nights style, this tale moves into another. Qamr’s parents die and a prince with many wives wants to marry her. Qamr takes her favorite book, Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands, and flees through Gaza, to Egypt, where she is captured, enslaved, and sold to the sister of the mad king in Egypt. After escaping, she flees to study with a polymath in Morocco. But when it’s discovered she’s a girl, she must leave again, disguising herself as a boy pirate to sail the Mediterranean. Through all her fast-paced battles, mysteries, and adventures, Qamr never finds a home, but she does manage to create a family.




Motherhood


Book Description

From the author of How Should a Person Be? (“one of the most talked-about books of the year”—Time Magazine) and the New York Times Bestseller Women in Clothes comes a daring novel about whether to have children. In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor that have won Heti international acclaim and made How Should A Person Be? required reading for a generation. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti’s intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home. Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.