Khan recounts Taiwan’s story in a way that shows the importance of understanding the context of the conflict.
An expert in Asian geopolitics delves into Taiwan’s past, finding critical clues to the turbulent present.
Taiwan is often in the headlines as a possible trigger for a catastrophic war between China and the U.S., but behind the noise is a complex history, according to Khan, a senior academic at Tufts and author of Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy. Khan is skeptical of the Chinese view that Taiwan is historically part of China, although Beijing has made the claim since the defeated Nationalists retreated to the island in 1949. The U.S. supported the autocratic government of Chiang Kai-shek, arguing that it was the legitimate government of China. This idea evaporated when Nixon went to China and Taiwan’s position became ambiguous. In fact, ambiguity has since been the defining aspect of Taiwan’s place in the world, with the island locked in a non-country limbo while growing into a dynamic economy and thriving democracy. The U.S. stance has varied with the prevailing winds in Washington, D.C., although the past few years have seen a more pro-Taiwan attitude. The Taiwanese population seems to be leaning toward independence while aware of the difficulties such a move would entail. Beijing regularly makes threats and provocations, seemingly unaware that its belligerence usually backfires. Khan suggests ways to reduce the tension but also discusses options for increasing the deterrence factor, and he emphasizes that the U.S. should determine what future it wants to see. At the same time, it should keep communication channels with China open, so minor tiffs do not spin out of control. Most of all, writes the author, policymakers should be aware of the history that has built the present—but on the issue of Taiwan, there are no easy answers.
Khan recounts Taiwan’s story in a way that shows the importance of understanding the context of the conflict.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781541605046
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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