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China Cry: The Nora Lam Story
by Nora Lam Richard H. SchneiderChina Cry is the true story of the love, courage, and struggles of one woman -- Nora Lam -- whose Christian faith leads her to make the ultimate choice between life and death. Set in China some thirty years before the bloody Tiananmen Square massacre, this sweeping drama portrays the harsh reality of the repressive Communist regime and Nora Lam's indomitable will to survive.
China Hand
by John Paton Davies Jr. Todd S. Purdum Bruce CumingsAt the height of the McCarthyite hysteria of the 1950s, John Paton Davies, Jr., was summoned to the State Department one morning and fired. His offense? The career diplomat had counseled the U.S. government during World War II that the Communist forces in China were poised to take over the country--which they did, in 1949. Davies joined the thousands of others who became the victims of a political maelstrom that engulfed the country and deprived the United States of the wisdom and guidance of an entire generation of East Asian diplomats and scholars.The son of American missionaries, Davies was born in China at the turn of the twentieth century. Educated in the United States, he joined the ranks of the newly formed Foreign Service in the 1930s and returned to China, where he would remain until nearly the end of World War II. During that time he became one of the first Americans to meet and talk with the young revolutionary known as Mao Zedong. He documented the personal excesses and political foibles of Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. As a political aide to General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, the wartime commander of the Allied forces in East and South Asia, he traveled widely in the region, meeting with colonial India's Nehru and Gandhi to gauge whether their animosity to British rule would translate into support for Japan. Davies ended the war serving in Moscow with George F. Kennan, the architect of America's policy toward the Soviet Union. Kennan found in Davies a lifelong friend and colleague. Neither, however, was immune to the virulent anticommunism of the immediate postwar years.China Hand is the story of a man who captured with wry and judicious insight the times in which he lived, both as observer and as actor.
China in Ten Words
by Allan H. Barr Yu HuaFrom one of China's most acclaimed writers, his first work of nonfiction to appear in English: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades, told through personal stories and astute analysis that sharply illuminate the country's meteoric economic and social transformation. Framed by ten phrases common in the Chinese vernacular--"people," "leader," "reading," "writing," "Lu Xun" (one of the most influential Chinese writers of the twentieth century), "disparity," "revolution," "grassroots," "copycat," and "bamboozle"--China in Ten Words reveals as never before the world's most populous yet oft-misunderstood nation. In "Disparity," for example, Yu Hua illustrates the mind-boggling economic gaps that separate citizens of the country. In "Copycat," he depicts the escalating trend of piracy and imitation as a creative new form of revolutionary action. And in "Bamboozle," he describes the increasingly brazen practices of trickery, fraud, and chicanery that are, he suggests, becoming a way of life at every level of society. Characterized by Yu Hua's trademark wit, insight, and courage, China in Ten Words is a refreshingly candid vision of the "Chinese miracle" and all its consequences, from the singularly invaluable perspective of a writer living in China today.From the Hardcover edition.
China in Ten Words
by Yu Hua Allan H. BarrFrom one of China's most acclaimed writers, his first work of nonfiction to appear in English: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades, told through personal stories and astute analysis that sharply illuminate the country's meteoric economic and social transformation. Framed by ten phrases common in the Chinese vernacular--"people," "leader," "reading," "writing," "Lu Xun" (one of the most influential Chinese writers of the twentieth century), "disparity," "revolution," "grassroots," "copycat," and "bamboozle"--China in Ten Words reveals as never before the world's most populous yet oft-misunderstood nation. In "Disparity," for example, Yu Hua illustrates the mind-boggling economic gaps that separate citizens of the country. In "Copycat," he depicts the escalating trend of piracy and imitation as a creative new form of revolutionary action. And in "Bamboozle," he describes the increasingly brazen practices of trickery, fraud, and chicanery that are, he suggests, becoming a way of life at every level of society. Characterized by Yu Hua's trademark wit, insight, and courage, China in Ten Words is a refreshingly candid vision of the "Chinese miracle" and all its consequences, from the singularly invaluable perspective of a writer living in China today.From the Hardcover edition.
China Journal 1889-1900: An American Missionary Family During the Boxer Rebellion
by Eva J. PriceBiography of an American family in China during the Boxer Rebellion, based on letters and diaries from the author.
China Mission: A Personal History from the Last Imperial Dynasty to the People's Republic
by Audrey Ronning Topping Lawrence R. SullivanWhen the Reverend Halvor Ronning, his sister Thea, and fellow missionary Hannah Rorem set out in 1891 to found a Lutheran mission and school in the interior of China, they could not have foreseen the ways in which that decision would ripple across generations of the Ronning family. Halvor and Hannah would marry, and their son Chester, born in Hubei Province in 1894, would spend over half his life in China as a student, teacher, and a Canadian diplomat. Chester's daughter, Audrey, studied at Nanking University during the Chinese Civil War and later spent decades reporting on the People's Republic of China for the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and many other publications. "During the last century," Audrey Topping notes, "a member of our family was there for almost every event of importance." China Mission presents a personal history of her family's ties to their adopted home and the momentous events that radically changed one of the most powerful countries in the world.The Ronnings found Imperial China at the end of the nineteenth century to be a nation on the cusp of change, and they were swept up as both observers and participants in these dramatic events. During their years as missionaries, the Ronnings witnessed the Boxer Uprising in 1898, the subsequent Palace Coup and the Siege of Peking, the death of the last emperor, and the collapse of China's dynasty system. They also endured personal challenges -- famine, births, deaths, and the almost constant threat of attack -- that were countered with songs, celebrations, friendship, and a deep appreciation for the culture of which they had become a part.Later, Chester Ronning would return to China, as would his daughter Audrey, bringing their family's story to the end of the twentieth century. This extraordinary account, compiled from the diaries, letters, and photographs of three generations, offers modern readers a rare and remarkable look at a world long gone.
A China Passage
by John Kenneth GalbraithIn 1972, John Kenneth Galbraith, with his two predecessor presidents of the American Economic Association, Professors Wassily Leontief of Harvard and James Tobin of Yale, was invited to visit China to obtain a privileged view of the Chinese economy.
China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power
by Rob GiffordNational Public Radios Beijing correspondent Rob Gifford recounts his travels along Route 312, the Chinese Mother Road, the longest route in the worlds most populous nation. Based on his successful NPR radio series, China Road draws on Gifford's twenty years of observing first-hand this rapidly transforming country, as he travels east to west, from Shanghai to China's border with Kazakhstan.
China to Me: A Partial Autobiography
by Emily HahnA candid, rollicking literary travelogue from a pioneering New Yorker writer, an intrepid heroine who documented China in the years before World War II. Deemed scandalous at the time of its publication in 1944, Emily Hahn&’s now classic memoir of her years in China remains remarkable for her insights into a tumultuous period and her frankness about her personal exploits. A proud feminist and fearless traveler, she set out for China in 1935 and stayed through the early years of the Second Sino-Japanese War, wandering, carousing, living, loving—and writing. Many of the pieces in China to Me were first published as the work of a roving reporter in the New Yorker. All are shot through with riveting and humanizing detail. During her travels from Nanjing to Shanghai, Chongqing, and Hong Kong, where she lived until the Japanese invasion in 1941, Hahn embarks upon an affair with lauded Chinese poet Shao Xunmei; gets a pet gibbon and names him Mr. Mills; establishes a close bond with the women who would become the subjects of her bestselling book The Soong Sisters; battles an acquired addiction to opium; and has a child with Charles Boxer, a married British intelligence officer. In this unflinching glimpse of a vanished world, Hahn examines not so much the thorny complications of political blocs and party conflict, but the ordinary—or extraordinary—people caught up in the swells of history. At heart, China to Me is a self-portrait of a fascinating woman ahead of her time.
China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation
by Xinran XueIn 1912, 5,000 years of feudal rule ended in China. Warlords, Western businessmen, soldiers, missionaries, and Japanese all ruled China, exploited, and fought one another, and the Chinese. In 1949, Mao Zedong came to power. China Witness is the personal testimony of a generation whose stories have not yet been told. Here the grandparents and great-grandparents of today sum up in their own words - for the first and perhaps the last time - the vast changes that have overtaken China's people over a century. The book is at once a journey by the author through time and place, and a memorial to those who have lived through war and civil war, persecution, invasion, revolution, famine, modernization, Westernization - and have survived into the 21st century. We meet everyday heroes, now in their seventies, eighties and nineties, from across this vast country - a herb woman at a market, retired teachers, a legendary 'double-gun woman', Red Guards, oil pioneers, an acrobat, a naval general, a shoe-mender, a lantern maker, taxi drivers, and more. Xinran travelled from west to east, between the Yellow River and the Yangtze, from the cities to the remote countryside of her homeland. She met and talked with a reticent generation, amongst whom the idea of collective guilt is deeply rooted, and freedom of speech can be a dangerous and unfamiliar concept. They spoke to her about their lives, their private hopes, fears and struggles, about what they witnessed and what they felt - about everything from the Long March to oil pipelines, from land reform to folk medicine, from Mao to marriage. Together their stories paint an unprecedented, intimate portrait of this vast and powerful country and its people. In such a rapidly changing world its aim, as Xinran says, is 'to help our future understand our past'.
Chinaberry Sidewalks
by Rodney CrowellFrom the acclaimed musician comes a tender, surprising, and often uproarious memoir about his dirt-poor southeast Texas boyhood. The only child of a hard-drinking father and a Holy Roller mother, Rodney Crowell was no stranger to bombast from an early age, whether knock-down-drag-outs at a local dive bar or fire-and-brimstone sermons at Pentecostal tent revivals. He was an expert at reading his father's mercurial moods and gauging exactly when his mother was likely to erupt, and even before he learned to ride a bike, he was often forced to take matters into his own hands. He broke up his parents' raucous New Year's Eve party with gunfire and ended their slugfest at the local drive-in (actual restaurants weren't on the Crowells' menu) by smashing a glass pop bottle over his own head. Despite the violent undercurrents always threatening to burst to the surface, he fiercely loved his epilepsy-racked mother, who scorned boring preachers and improvised wildly when the bills went unpaid. And he idolized his blustering father, a honky-tonk man who took his boy to see Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash perform live, and bought him a drum set so he could join his band at age eleven. Shot through with raggedy friends and their neighborhood capers, hilariously awkward adolescent angst, and an indelible depiction of the bloodlines Crowell came from, Chinaberry Sidewalks also vividly re-creates Houston in the fifties: a rough frontier town where icehouses sold beer by the gallon on paydays; teeming with musical venues from standard roadhouses to the Magnolia Gardens, where name-brand stars brought glamour to a place starved for it; filling up with cheap subdivisions where blue-collar day laborers could finally afford a house of their own; a place where apocalyptic hurricanes and pest infestations were nearly routine. But at its heart this is Crowell's tribute to his parents and an exploration of their troubled yet ultimately redeeming romance. Wry, clear-eyed, and generous, it is, like the very best memoirs, firmly rooted in time and place and station, never dismissive, and truly fulfilling.
China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors
by Frances WoodUnifier or destroyer, law-maker or tyrant? China's First Emperor (258-210 BC) has been the subject of debate for over 2,000 years. He gave us the name by which China is known in the West and, by his unification or elimination of six states, he created imperial China. He stressed the rule of law but suppressed all opposition, burning books and burying scholars alive. His military achievements are reflected in the astonishing terracotta soldiers—a veritable buried army—that surround his tomb, and his Great Wall still fascinates the world.Despite his achievements, however, the First Emperor has been vilified since his death. China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors describes his life and times and reflects the historical arguments over the real founder of China and one of the most important men in Chinese history.
China’s Heritage through History: Reconfigured Pasts
by Yujie ZhuChina’s Heritage through History employs a longue durée approach to examine China’s heritage through history. From Imperial to contemporary China, it explores the role of practices and material forms of the past in shaping social transformation through knowledge production and transmission.The art of collecting, reproducing, and reinterpreting the past has been an enduring force shaping cultural identity and political legitimacy in China. Offering a unique, non-Western perspective on the history of heritage in China, Zhu considers who the key players have been in these ongoing processes of reconfigured pasts, what methods they have employed, and how these practices have shaped society at large. The book tackles these questions by delving into the transformation of practices related to heritage through examples such as the book collection at Tianyi Private Library, the reproduction of the Orchid Pavilion Preface calligraphy and its associated sites, and the dynamics of exchange within the Liulichang antique market. Zhu reveals how these practices, once reserved for elites, have become accessible to the broader public. These processes of transformation, embodied in various forms of reconfigured pasts, have given rise to modern approaches to preservation, digitisation, museums, and the burgeoning heritage tourism industry.China’s Heritage through History will be an invaluable resource for academics, students, and practitioners working in the fields of heritage, museum studies, and art history.
China's Son: Growing Up in the Cultural Revolution
by Da ChenA candid memoir about growing up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, adapted by the author from his Colors of the Mountain, published by Random House. Da Chen was born in China in 1962. The grandson of a landlord, he and his family were treated as outcasts in Communist China. In school, Da was an excellent student until a teacher told him that, because of his “family’s crimes,” he could never be more than a poor farmer. Feeling his fate was hopeless, Da responded by dropping out and hanging around with a gang. However, after Mao’s death, Da realized that an education and college might be possible, but he had to make up for the time he’d wasted. He began to study–all day and into the night. His entire family rallied to help him succeed, working long hours in the rice fields and going into debt to ensure that Da would have an education. When the final exam results were posted, he had one of the highest scores in the region and had earned a place at the prestigious Beijing University. Now his family’s past would not harm their future. From the Hardcover edition.
Chindit Affair: A Memoir of the War in Burma
by Frank BainesIn March 1944, some 2,200 battle trained men of 111 Brigade flew from India into northern Burma to land on improvised airstrips cleared from the jungle, They were part of General Orde Wingates Chindit force sent to fight the Japanese deep behind their lines. Five months later, 111 Brigade was down to 118 fit men eight British officers, a score of British soldiers and 90 Gurkhas. One of those eight officers was Frank Baines, and in Chindit Affair he tells, in vivid language and with shrewd insight, what happened.Frank commanded two platoons of young Gurkhas and was attached to 111 Brigade Headquarters, serving under John Masters, where he had a close-up view for most of the time. His account throws new light on the leadership of the Chindit campaign, but above all it is a soldiers story.All the horrors of jungle warfare are here bodies blood-sucked by leeches and corpses impaled by bamboo; Japanese soldiers reduced to eating human flesh; a court martial and execution; soldiers falling sick and dropping by the wayside, and being killed and wounded in action. He also captures the atmosphere of the jungle; its watercourses, trees, birds and the Kachin villagers simple way of life. No other account of the Chindit operations touches the same raw nerves, and none recreates so immediately the sensations of being there in the jungle and hills which devoured nearly all of them.ABOUT THE AUTHORBorn in 1915, the son of a prominent architect, Frank Baines ran away from school and went to sea on a Finnish four-masted grain sailing ship. He enlisted at the outbreak of the Second World War, trained as an artillery officer in India, saw action on the Northwest frontier before being seconded to 111 Brigade. After the war, he spent three years as a Hindu monk in a Himalayan monastery and he then moved to Calcutta where he set up a business repairing tea chests and started writing. Frank returned to England in 1956 and published four books, including Look Towards the Sea, a widely acclaimed account of his Cornish childhood. At the age of 62, still seeking adventure, he cycled back to India from his home in Coggershall, Essex. He died in 1987 leaving behind this unpublished memoir.
Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter
by Adeline Yen MahA riveting memoir of a girl's painful coming-of-age in a wealthy Chinese family during the 1940s.A Chinese proverb says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother dies giving birth to her. Life does not get any easier when her father remarries. She and her siblings are subjected to the disdain of her stepmother, while her stepbrother and stepsister are spoiled. Although Adeline wins prizes at school, they are not enough to compensate for what she really yearns for -- the love and understanding of her family.Following the success of the critically acclaimed adult bestseller Falling Leaves, this memoir is a moving telling of the classic Cinderella story, with Adeline Yen Mah providing her own courageous voice. Includes 6-page photo insert.From the Hardcover edition.
Chinese Communists and Hong Kong Capitalists: 1937–1997
by Cindy Yik-yi ChuThis book examines Chinese Communist activities in Hong Kong from the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to the handover in 1997. It reveals a peculiar part of Chinese Communist history, and traces six decades of astounding united front between the Chinese Communists and the Hong Kong tycoons and upper-class business elite.
The Chinese Ginger Jars
by Myra Scovel Nelle Keys BellThe Chinese Ginger Jars is a bright and intimate portrait of the adventures, trials, and achievements of an American (Presbyterian Missionary) housewife who lived through dangerous days in China. When Myra Scovel arrived in Peking in 1930 with her medical missionary husband and infant son, China was a land steeped in an ancient culture, mellow as the smooth cream ivory of its curio shops, relaxed as the curves of a temple roof against the sky. Twenty-one years later as the Scovels were forced to leave China by the Communists--it was a country of fear, of terror, of hatred toward the foreigner. The dramatic events that transformed China are recounted here from the fresh and poignant viewpoint of an extraordinary American wife and mother. Drawing on her deep love for the Chinese people, earthy common sense, and sparkling sense of humor, Myra Scovel carried out the everyday activities of a busy household and nurtured a healthy family life in the face of incredible adversity and danger. Mrs. Scovel's gallantry, courage, and faith strengthened and sustained her as she aided refugees who fled to the mission compound, befriended people of many nationalities and faiths, helped treat opium addicts, took her family across battle lines, was strafed and bombed by planes, discovered her husband shot in the back by a drunken soldier, lived under Japanese house arrest for a year, kept her family fed while in a Japanese internment camp, and was ostracized and threatened at last by the very Chinese people she and her husband had loved and served. Deep and moving. It is a picture of faith, dedication, courage, endurance, and wisdom.
Chinese Girl In The Ghetto
by Ying Ma<P><P>As China opens itself to the world and undertakes historic economic reforms, a little girl in the southern city of Guangzhou immerses herself in a world of fantasy and foreign influences while grappling with the mundane vagaries of Communist rule. She happily immigrates to Oakland, California, expecting her new life to be far better in all ways than life in China. Instead, she discovers crumbling schools, unsafe streets, and racist people. In the land of the free, she comes of age amid the dysfunction of a city's brokenness and learns to hate in the shadows of urban decay. This is the unforgettable story of her journey from China to an American ghetto, and how she prevailed. <P><P> "Direct and unvarnished, this book describes the endless possibilities of a free society that allows its citizens to chart their own destiny. Ying Ma takes her readers to dark corners where poverty, crime, and racism reign, all the while reminding us that even amid a sea of hate, individuals can choose to believe in kindness, decency, personal responsibility, and racial equality." -- Ward Connerly, Founder and President, American Civil Rights Institute, and author, Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences "A beautiful account of a young girl's encounter with the insidiousness of authoritarianism in China and the tragedies of inner-city America. Ying Ma boldly details some of the worst imperfections of American society, all the while showing, with her own example, why freedom is worth choosing." -- Xiao Qiang, Adjunct Professor, University of California at Berkeley, and Founder and Editor-in-Chief, China Digital Times
Chinese Hordes and Human Waves: A Personal Perspective of the Korean War, 1950–1953
by Brigadier Brian Parritt General Mike SwindellsThe North Koreans attack on their Southern neighbors shocked and surprised the World. The conflict rapidly escalated with China soon heavily involved on one side and the United States and United Nations on the other.The author, then a young Gunner officer, found himself in the midst of this very nasty war. He describes first hand what it was like to be at the infamous Battle of the Hook, where UN troops held off massed attacks by the Communists. Few outside the war zone realized just how horrific conditions were.As a qualified Chinese interpreter and, later, a senior military intelligence officer, Parritt is well placed to analyze why the Commonwealth got involved, the mistakes and successes and the extreme risk that the war represented.This is not only a fine memoir but a unique insight into a forgotten War.
The Chinese Kitchen Garden: Growing Techniques and Family Recipes from a Classic Cuisine
by Wendy Kiang-SprayWinner of the Garden Writers Association 2018 Silver Medal of Achievement Wendy Kiang-Spray’s family has strong culinary and gardening traditions. In The Chinese Kitchen Garden, she beautifully blends the story of her family’s cultural heritage with growing information for 38 Chinese vegetables—like lotus root, garlic, chives, and eggplant—and 25 traditional recipes like congee, dumplings, and bok choy stir-fry. Organized by season, you’ll learn what to grow in spring and what to cook in winter.
Chinese Lives: The People Who Made a Civilization
by Victor H. Mair Frances Wood Sanping Chen3000 years of Chinese history presented through the lives of ninety-six illustrious participants from all periods and all parts of the country China is the most populous country on earth, with the longest history of any modern nation. Here, the full range of Chinese cultural and scientific achievements, as well as its military conquests, wars, rebellions, and political and philosophical movements, are told through the eyes of real people who created or were involved in them. The subjects include emperors and empresses, concubines, officials and political figures, rebels, exiles, philosophers, writers and poets, artists, musicians, scientists, military leaders, and committed pacifists. From Fu Hao, an early warrior lady of the thirteenth century BC, to the late twentieth-century leader Deng Xiaoping, their careers, achievements, misdeeds, disasters, punishments, ideas and love stories make this an unforgettable read. Illustrated with portraits, paintings, written documents, bronzes, sculptures, and location maps, and written in an authoritative yet accessible style, Chinese Lives provides the perfect introduction to China's history and her peoples.
Chinese Rules: Mao's Dog, Deng's Cat, and Five Timeless Lessons from the Front Lines in China
by Tim ClissoldFrom the author of the acclaimed Mr. China comes another rollicking adventure story—part memoir, part history, part business imbroglio—that offers valuable lessons to help Westerners win in China.In the twenty-first century, the world has tilted eastwards in its orbit; China grows confident while the West seems mired in doubt. Having lived and worked in China for more than two decades, Tim Clissold explains the secrets that Westerners can use to navigate through its cultural and political maze. Picking up where he left off in the international bestseller Mr. China, Chinese Rules chronicles his most recent exploits, with assorted Chinese bureaucrats, factory owners, and local characters building a climate change business in China. Of course, all does not go as planned as he finds himself caught between the world’s largest carbon emitter and the world’s richest man. Clissold offers entertaining and enlightening anecdotes of the absurdities, gaffes, and mysteries he encountered along the way.Sprinkled amid surreal scenes of cultural confusion and near misses, are smart myth-busting insights and practical lessons Westerns can use to succeed in China. Exploring key episodes in that nation’s long political, military, and cultural history, Clissold outlines five Chinese Rules, which anyone can deploy in on-the-ground situations with modern Chinese counterparts. These Chinese rules will enable foreigners not only to cooperate with China but also to compete with it on its own terms.
Chinook Crew 'Chick': Highs and Lows of Forces Life from the Longest Serving Female RAF Chinook Force Crewmember
by Liz McConaghyLiz McConaghy, from a small town in County Down, spent a total of seventeen years flying with the RAF’s Chinook Fleet. Aged just 21, she was the youngest aircrew member to deploy to Iraq and was also the only female ‘crewman’ on the Chinook wing for four years. In her astounding career Liz McConaghy completed two deployments to Iraq followed by ten deployments to Helmand province in Afghanistan in support of the enduring Operation Herrick campaign. Liz’s inspiringly honest story reveals the highs and lows that she witnessed at war, and the cost that came with that both, physically and mentally for those involved. During her deployments, she survived not only a near fatal wire strike onboard her CH47, but numerous enemy fire ‘contacts’ defending her crew by returning fire from both the M134 ‘Minigun’ and M60 weapons entrusted to her to operate. Her biggest honor of all her duties, however, was serving on the Medical Emergency Response Team, or MERT, flying ambulance as it was more commonly known. This involved recovering wounded soldiers from the battlefield, often under fire, and witnessing them both die and indeed come back to life at her feet in the cabin of her Chinook. Liz saw Camp Bastion grow from a barbed wire fence surrounding an area of tents in the sand to the huge Operating Base it became. She was also on the last 1310 Flight deployment there as the British forces withdrew 10 years later handing it back to the Afghan National Army. Very few Chinook crew members, if any, spanned the length of time deployed as Liz McConaghy did. This is a genuinely unique tale that only Liz could tell, which ends with her battling the memories that haunted her, long after she had left the battlefield. Her own war within took her to the point of suicide once she had left the service. Her survival from both the battles in foreign lands and in her own head led her to begin telling her story, in the hope she can help others win their wars.
Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder's Lens
by José VadiA memoir-in-essays about how skateboarding re-defines space, curates culture, confronts mortality, and affords new perspectives on and off the boardChipping a board—where small pieces of deck and tape break off around the nose and tail—is a natural part of skateboarding. Novice or pro, you&’ll see folks riding chipped boards as symbols of their stubborn dedication toward a deck, a toy, and aging bodies that will also reach their inevitable end. In Chipped, José Vadi personalizes and expands upon this symbol. Written after finishing his debut collection Inter State: Essays From California, Vadi used these essays to explore his own empathy in aging, and to elaborate on the impact skateboarding has had on culture, power, and art. From tracing a critical mass skater takeover of San Francisco&’s streets, to an analysis of visceral &‘90s skate videos and soundtracks, to the solace found skating a parking lot during a global pandemic, Vadi expands our understanding of the ways skateboarding can alter one&’s life. Vadi acts as a &“ethnographer on a skateboard,&” writing, living, and animating an object, likening the board and skate ephemera to the fear of being discarded, wanting to be seen as useful, functional, living. These essays analyze the legacy of seminal texts like Thrasher Magazine, influential programming giants like MTV, and skateboard artists like Ed Templeton. They imagine jazz composer Sun Ra as a skateboarder to explore sonic connections between skateboarding and jazz, obsessively follow bands, chronicle tours, and discover the creative bermuda triangle Southern California suburbs have to offer. Chipped is an intimate, genre-pushing meditation on skateboarding and the reasons we continue to get up after every fall life throws our way.