by Phoebe Eng ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 11, 1999
In this hybrid of inspirational creed, personal memoir, anecdotal reportage, and political pamphlet, Eng exhorts Asian-American women to face their issues—and conquer them. The author, one of the founders of A. Magazine, published for and about Asian-Americans, draws part of her inspiration here from Maxine Hong Kingston’s modern classic, The Woman Warrior. While Kingston serves as the starting point for Eng in her exploration of what it means to be an Asian-American woman, she also acknowledges the influence of other prominent feminist thinkers of the late 20th century and sprinkles her book liberally with remarks from those women, as well as with others from a disparate band of philosophers, psychologists, and self-help gurus. Early on, Eng quotes from Gloria Steinem’s Revolution From Within: “Most writers write to say something about other people and it never lasts. Good writers write to find out about themselves—and it lasts forever.” Eng interprets this statement as a license to bring her own experiences into a book that is essentially about other people. But regardless, Steinem’s quote seems a grievous one to guide any writer. Eng, while divulging the details of her personal life, is very fond of reminding us that she threw off the shackles of corporate lawyerdom to become a publisher of an idealistic magazine. Yet, when stripped of its pretensions, hers is essentially a self-help title—her reportage is unsystematic, her evidence sketchy, as she advises Asian women on how to deal with issues such as physical self-image (she notes a growing trend toward plastic surgery among Asian women) to her debunking of what she calls “power myths,” such as the belief that power can come from pretending to be like everyone else. Asian women who want to understand themselves in relation to language, history, and the rest of humanity would do better to reread The Woman Warrior. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-00957-5
Page Count: 359
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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