Happy Lunar New Year, one and all. May the Year of the Tiger bless you and your family this year. In celebration of this event, I’m sharing a review of the books Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco by Judy Yung and A Larger Memory: A History of Our Diversity with Voices by Ronald Takaki. The thesis of Unbound Feet is that a storied and engaging history is found through the lens of Chinese American women, and their voices are as valid as any other. The thesis of A Larger Memory was that by telling…

I thought the book was well-written, but I wasn’t impressed by the pace of its events. I get that this was a fictional telling of a real woman’s life, presented as such from the beginning. However, it was hard for me to keep the details straight. I couldn’t quite place where we were from paragraph to paragraph sometimes. A new character would be introduced, and the implication was that you should already know who this person is. The author did a lot of deep research into Dorothy Hale and the Café Society crowd she hung around with then. I respect…

The author reflects on their fascination with stories about families and finds a connection in Shirley Jackson's "Let Me Tell You." Despite coming from a military family, the author identifies with universal family dynamics depicted in Jackson's work, appreciating how mundane family life influences her writing. They enjoyed the book's insight into Jackson's creative process.

The novel was published in 1920, in the 1870s, in New York society. It’s fascinating how one look, one casual phrase, could destroy a person’s entire reputation. I think that’s still true, but we can start over somewhere else and, for the most part, bounce back. If someone is ruined (the Beauforts, more so Regina than Julius, highlighting the gender discrimination of the time), it’s unheard of. The specter of New York looms as its character in the novel and all of its citizens play their lives out so spectacularly. Wharton paints this wonderfully manipulative underbelly even while its inhabitants…