A worthy addition to the immigrant bookshelf. Though targeted at the Christian market, the book should have wider appeal.
With assistance from Downs (Wonders Never Cease, 2010, etc.), dermatologist Chung chronicles his family's flight from communist rule in Vietnam to their subsequent life in America.
The author describes his experiences beginning in 1978, when he was 3 and arrived in Arkansas, one of eight children in a destitute refugee family that “went to sleep in one world and woke up in another.” In Vietnam, his father managed his family's merchant empire in the Mekong Delta. As ethnic Chinese, they maintained traditional Asian values. His parents, whose marriage had been arranged, lived with their extended family in a compound, and his widowed grandmother controlled the money with an iron fist. Despite their great wealth, his mother was consigned to a life little better than that of a servant, while his father maintained a mistress. After the revolution, Chung’s parents and their children were part of the legendary exodus of the boat people. The author provides a harrowing account of their desperate escape and rescue at sea. Left adrift on the ocean by Malaysians who refused them refuge, the nearly 100 people on board were at the point of death by dehydration. Miraculously, they survived against the odds and were picked up by a boat on the lookout for boat people needing assistance. With the help of The World Vision National Leadership Council, the family received asylum in America. Chung tells of his father's uncomplaining struggle to support his family by working on a factory assembly line while raising his children in a culture whose ways and language were foreign to him. Like many children of immigrants, the author faced racism and discrimination, yet he achieved academic success at Harvard, pursued a distinguished career and “became more American than many who were born here.”
A worthy addition to the immigrant bookshelf. Though targeted at the Christian market, the book should have wider appeal.Pub Date: April 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8499-4756-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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