Lucy Tan

Ex-library book in good condition, with the exception of the front, cover and spine, which contain library stickers, as well as a library stamp on the third page. ￼

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Maryland

Named one of "60 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2018"by Huffington Post Set in modern Shanghai, a debut by a Chinese-American writer about a prodigal son whose unexpected return forces his newly wealthy family to confront painful secrets and unfulfilled promises. After years of chasing the American dream, the Zhen family has moved back to China. Settling into a luxurious serviced apartment in Shanghai, Wei, Lina and their daughter, Karen, join an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have returned to a radically transformed city. One morning, in the eighth tower of Lanson Suites, Lina discovers that a childhood keepsake, an ivory bracelet, has gone missing. The incident contributes to a wave of unease that has begun to settle throughout the Zhen household. Wei, a marketing strategist, bows under the guilt of not having engaged in nobler work. Meanwhile, Lina, lonely in her new life of leisure, assumes the modern moniker tai tai-a housewife who does no housework at all. She spends her days haunted by the circumstances surrounding her arranged marriage to Wei and her lingering feelings for his brother, Qiang. Lina and Wei take pains to hide their anxieties, but their housekeeper, Sunny, a hardworking woman with secrets of her own, bears witness to their struggles. When Qiang reappears in Shanghai after decades on the run with a local gang, the family must finally come to terms with the past. From a silk-producing village in rural China, up the corporate ladder in suburban America, and back again to the post-Maoist nouveau riche of modern Shanghai, WHAT WE WERE PROMISED explores the question of what we owe to our country, our families and ourselves.

What We Were Promised

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Judy Fong Bates

Hyper factbook in like new condition, with the exception of a name written on the first page and the mailing label fixed to the inside front cover.

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

Su-Jen Chou, a Chinese immigrant growing up in 1950s Ontario finds herself shouldering the weight of her mother's hopes and dreams as her isolated family attempts to forge a life for themselves in a small town. Original. 20,000 first printing.

Midnight at the Dragon Cafe

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This is a first edition, autographed copy. It’s in pristine condition!

New Mexico

The color of Air (signed)

Excellent condition, climate controlled home. Dust jacket is in excellent condition, additional Mylar cover by request for protection. No tears, no markings, unbroken spine. 

Virginia

Melissa Fu

Kentucky

A moving debut novel about war, migration, and the power of telling stories, Peach Blossom Spring follows three generations of a Chinese family on their search for a place to call home. With every misfortune there is a blessing and within every blessing, the seeds of misfortune, and so it goes, until the end of time. It is 1938 in China and, as a young wife, Meilin's future is bright. But with the Japanese army approaching, Meilin and her four year old son, Renshu, are forced to flee their home. Relying on little but their wits and a beautifully illustrated hand scroll, filled with ancient fables that offer solace and wisdom, they must travel through a ravaged country, seeking refuge. Years later, Renshu has settled in America as Henry Dao. Though his daughter is desperate to understand her heritage, he refuses to talk about his childhood. How can he keep his family safe in this new land when the weight of his history threatens to drag them down? Yet how can Lily learn who she is if she can never know her family's story? Spanning continents and generations, Peach Blossom Spring is a bold and moving look at the history of modern China, told through the story of one family. It's about the power of our past, the hope for a better future, and the haunting question: What would it mean to finally be home?

Peach Blossom Spring

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C. C. Tsai

Brian Bruya

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Ohio

The Music of Nature

Selections from the sayings of Zhuangzi rendered into cartoon form and translated into English.

Zhuangzi Speaks

5fa5ba7e-1f83-41d2-b5f6-dfa08da492c4-0

William Andrews

Nevada

A Comfort Woman's Story

When twenty-year-old Anna Carlson travels from America to a Korean orphanage to locate her birth mother, she's devastated to learn the woman is already dead. But just when it seems her search is over, a stranger hands her a parcel containing an antique comb--and an address. That scrap of paper leads Anna to the Seoul apartment of the poor yet elegant Hong Jae-hee. Jae-hee recounts an epic tale that begins with the Japanese occupation of Korea and China during World War II, when more than two hundred thousand Korean women were forced to serve the soldiers as "comfort women." Jae-hee knows the story well--she was one of them. As Jae-hee's narrative unfolds, Anna discovers that the precious tortoiseshell comb, with its two-headed ivory dragon, has survived against all odds through generations of her family's women. And as its origins become clearer, Anna realizes that along with the comb, she inherits a legacy--of resilience and courage, love and redemption--beyond her wildest imagination.

Daughters of the Dragon

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Thanhhà Lai

First Edition 
The author is a National Book Award medalist and a Newberry Honor winner.

Ex-library book in excellent condition. Does have library stickers on the front and spine as well as the library stamp on the first page.

Perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, Ibi Zoboi, and Erika L. Sanchez, this gorgeously written and deeply moving own voices novel is the YA debut from the award-winning author of Inside Out & Back Again. In the final days of the Việt Nam War, Hằng takes her little brother, Linh, to the airport, determined to find a way to safety in America. In a split second, Linh is ripped from her arms—and Hằng is left behind in the war-torn country. Six years later, Hằng has made the brutal journey from Việt Nam and is now in Texas as a refugee. She doesn’t know how she will find the little brother who was taken from her until she meets LeeRoy, a city boy with big rodeo dreams, who decides to help her. Hằng is overjoyed when she reunites with Linh. But when she realizes he doesn’t remember her, their family, or Việt Nam, her heart is crushed. Though the distance between them feels greater than ever, Hằng has come so far that she will do anything to bridge the gap.

Butterfly Yellow

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Gail Tsukiyama

Tsukiyama Gail

Hardcover with dust jacket. See pictures for detail. More pictures upon request. 

Wisconsin

""Just remember," Yoshio said quietly to his grandsons. "Every day of your lives, you must always be sure what you're fighting for.""
It is Tokyo in 1939. On the Street of a Thousand Blossoms, two orphaned brothers are growing up with their loving grandparents, who inspire them to dream of a future firmly rooted in tradition. The older boy, Hiroshi, shows unusual skill at the national obsession of sumo wrestling, while Kenji is fascinated by the art of creating hard-carved masks for actors in the Noh theater.
Across town, a renowned sumo master, Sho Tanaka, lives with his wife and their two young daughters: the delicate, daydreaming Aki and her independent sister, Haru. Life seems full of promise as Kenji begins an informal apprenticeship with the most famous mask-maker in Japan and Hiroshi receives a coveted invitation to train with Tanaka. But then Pearl Harbor changes everything. As the ripples of war spread to both families' quiet neighborhoods, all of the generations must put their dreams on hold---and then find their way in a new Japan.
In an exquisitely moving story that spans almost thirty years, Gail Tsukiyama draws us irresistibly into the world of the brothers and the women who love them. It is a world of tradition and change, of heartbreaking loss and surprising hope, and of the impact of events beyond their control on ordinary, decent men and women. Above all, "The Street of a Thousand Blossoms" is a masterpiece about love and family from a glorious storyteller at the height of her powers.

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms

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#hardcover #asianliterature #fiction #filipinoauthors #historicalfiction 

Idaho

"A bravura performance."--The New York Times

Histories and personalities collide in this literary tour-de-force about the Philippines' present and America's past by the PEN Open Book Award-winning author of Gun Dealers' Daughter.
 
Two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, go on a road trip in Duterte's Philippines, collaborating and clashing in the writing of a film script about a massacre during the Philippine-American War. Chiara is working on a film about an incident in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, when Filipino revolutionaries attacked an American garrison, and in retaliation American soldiers created "a howling wilderness" of the surrounding countryside. Magsalin reads Chiara's film script and writes her own version. Insurrecto contains within its dramatic action two rival scripts from the filmmaker and the translator--one about a white photographer, the other about a Filipino schoolteacher.
 
Within the spiraling voices and narrative layers of Insurrecto are stories of women--artists, lovers, revolutionaries, daughters--finding their way to their own truths and histories. Using interlocking voices and a kaleidoscopic structure, the novel is startlingly innovative, meditative, and playful. Insurrecto masterfully questions and twists narrative in the manner of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch, and Nabokov's Pale Fire. Apostol pushes up against the limits of fiction in order to recover the atrocity in Balangiga, and in so doing, she shows us the dark heart of an untold and forgotten war that would shape the next century of Philippine and American history.

Insurrecto

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Kristina McMorris

New York

The New York Times bestselling author of Sold on a Monday and The Ways We Hide shines a light on shocking events surrounding Portland's dark history in this gripping novel of love, lore, and betrayal She came from a lineage known for good fortune...by those who don't know the whole story. Oregon, 1888. Amid the subterranean labyrinth of Portland's notorious Shanghai Tunnels, a woman awakens in an underground cell, drugged and disguised. Celia soon realizes she's a "shanghaied" victim on the verge of being shipped off as forced labor, leaving behind those she loves most. Although well accustomed to adapting for survival--being half-Chinese, passing as white during an era fraught with anti-Chinese sentiment--she fears that far more than her own fate hangs in the balance. As she pieces together the twisting path that led to her abduction, from serving as a maid for the family of a dubious mayor to becoming entwined in the case of a goldminers' massacre, revelations emerge of a child left in peril. Desperate, Celia must find a way to escape and return to a place where unearthed secrets can prove deadlier than the dark recesses of Chinatown. A captivating tale of resilience and hope, The Girls of Good Fortune explores the complexity of family and identity, the importance of stories that echo through generations, and the power of strength found beneath the surface.

ARC The Girls of Good Fortune

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As World War II threatens their comfortable life in Hong Kong, young Joan and Emma Lew escape with their family to spend the war years in Macao. When they return home, Emma develops a deep interest in travel and sets her sights on an artistic life in San Francisco, while Joan turns to movies and thoughts of romance to escape the pressures of her real life. As the girls become women, each follows a path different from what her family expects. But through periods of great happiness and sorrow, the sisters learn that their complicated ties to each other--and to the other members of their close-knit family--are a source of strength as they pursue their separate dreams.

Night of Many Dreams

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Lisa See

Slight edge wear. Tight binding. Pages in very good condition.

California

Lily is haunted by memories–of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower, and asks the gods for forgiveness. In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communication: nu shu (“women’s writing”). Some girls were paired with laotongs, “old sames,” in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. With the arrival of a silk fan on which Snow Flower has composed for Lily a poem of introduction in nu shu, their friendship is sealed and they become “old sames” at the tender age of seven. As the years pass, through famine and rebellion, they reflect upon their arranged marriages, loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

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Gina Apostol

Louisiana

 #paperback #fiction #historicalfiction #asia #asianliterature #historical #china #bestseller #awardwinner ~ the top edge of the first 15 or so pages have minor moisture damage, worst pages are pictured

Oregon

An ambitious and dedicated Chinese doctor, Lin Kong finds himself torn between two very different women--the educated and dynamic nurse with whom he has fallen in love and the traditional, meek, and humble woman to whom his family married him when they were both very young. National Book Award & Pen/Faulkner Award Winner. Reprint. 125,000 first printing.

Waiting

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#fiction #paperback #historicalfiction #asianliterature #cultural #literaryfiction #adultfiction #japanese #preworldwar #lydiaminatoya #thestrangenessofbeauty 

Texas

"Minatoya offers a tenderly packaged gift. Unwrapping it is a pleasure." --Austin Chronicle


A quietly daring exploration of art, family, culture, and conscience, as three generations of women, American and Japanese, face a strained reunion in pre-World War II Japan. Etsuko and her six-year-old motherless niece return from jazz-age Seattle to the ancient Japanese household of Etsuko's mysterious samurai mother. With Japanese militarism mounting, the women must learn to make peace in an absorbing tale where mothers are childless, warriors are pacifists, and beauty is found in the common and the small.

Strangeness of Beauty

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Eto Mori

Rated an impressive, 4.1 out of five on Goodreads, over 1 million copies of this book have been sold!  Author is the recipient of numerous major awards in Japan.

A beloved and bestselling classic in Japan, this groundbreaking tale of a dead soul who gets a second chance is perfect for readers of The Midnight Library.

"Congratulations, you've won the lottery!" shouts the angel Prapura to a formless soul. The soul hasn't been kicked out of the cycle of rebirth just yet--he's been given a second chance. He must recall the biggest mistake of his past life while on 'homestay' in the body of fourteen-year-old Makoto Kobayashi, who has just committed suicide. It looks like Makoto doesn't have a single friend, and his family don't seem to care about him at all. But as the soul begins to live Makoto's life on his own terms, he grows closer to the family and the people around him, and sees their true colors more clearly, shedding light on Makoto's misunderstandings.

Since its initial release over twenty years ago, Colorful has become a part of the literary canon, not only in Japan--where it has sold over a million copies--but around the world, having been translated into several different languages. Now, Eto Mori's beloved classic is finally available in English.

Colorful

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C. K. Chau

Like new, has one small mark on the top from bookstore.

Tennessee

A whip-smart and charming debut novel that brilliantly reimagines Pride and Prejudice, set in contemporary Chinatown, exploring contemporary issues of class divides, family ties, cultural identity, and the pleasures and frustrations that come with falling in love. When Elizabeth Chen's ever-hustling realtor mother finally sells the beloved if derelict community center down the block, the new owners don't look like typical New York City buyers. Brendan Lee and Darcy Wong are good Chinese boys with Hong Kong money. Clean-cut and charismatic, they say they are committed to cleaning up the neighborhood. To Elizabeth, that only means one thing: Darcy is looking to give the center an uptown makeover. Elizabeth is determined to fight for community over profit, even if it means confronting the arrogant, uptight man every chance she gets. But where clever, cynical Elizabeth sees lemons, her mother sees lemonade. Eager to get Elizabeth and her other four daughters ahead in the world (and out of their crammed family apartment), Mrs. Chen takes every opportunity to keep her investors close. Closer than Elizabeth likes. The more time they spend together, the more conflicted Elizabeth feels...until a shocking betrayal forces her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, trust, and the kind of person Darcy Wong really is.

Good Fortune

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Mado Nozaki

Adam Martinakis

South Carolina

A human is recruited to be the therapist for a powerful AI in this critically acclaimed science fiction tale! By the writer of Babylon and HELLO WORLD (also from Seven Seas). In the distant future, society has all but eliminated the need for a sentient workforce. Thanks to an all-powerful AI network known collectively as Titan, humanity is now free to indulge in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. But one day, hobbyist psychologist Seika Naisho gets a job offer from a mysterious man by the name of Narain Srivastava—one of only a handful of people in the entire world who is still traditionally employed. Narain wishes to enlist her expertise in the wake of a sudden and inexplicable malfunction in the AI network: as a therapist for Titan itself.

Titan

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Bora Chung

Anton Hur

Pennsylvania

Stories

By the internationally acclaimed author of Cursed Bunny, in another thrilling translation from the Korean by Anton Hur, Your Utopia is full of tales of loss and discovery, idealism and dystopia, death and immortality. "Nothing concentrates the mind like Chung's terrors, which will shrivel you to a bouillon cube of your most primal instincts" (Vulture), yet these stories are suffused with Chung's inimitable wry humor and surprisingly tender moments, too--often between unexpected subjects. In "The Center for Immortality Research," a low-level employee runs herself ragged planning a fancy gala for donors, only to be blamed for a crime she witnessed during the event, under the noses of the mysterious celebrity benefactors hoping to live forever. But she can't be fired--no one can. In "One More Kiss, Dear," a tender, one-sided love blooms in the AI-elevator of an apartment complex; as in, the elevator develops a profound affection for one of the residents. In "Seeds," we see the final frontier of capitalism's destruction of the planet and the GMO companies who rule the agricultural industry in this bleak future, but nature has ways of creeping back to life. Chung's writing is "haunting, funny, gross, terrifying--and yet when we reach the end, we just want more" (Alexander Chee). If you haven't yet experienced the fruits of this singular imagination, Your Utopia is waiting.

Your Utopia

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Wesley Chu

Recently purchased brand new. Have not read. 

Utah

A "superb fantasy saga" (Helene Wecker) of martial arts and magic, about what happens when a prophesied hero is not the chosen one after all--but has to work with a band of unlikely allies to save the kingdom anyway, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lives of Tao
 
"An ambitious and touching exploration of disillusionment in faith, tradition, and family--a glorious reinvention of fantasy and wuxia tropes."--Naomi Novik, New York Times bestselling author of A Deadly Education

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Gizmodo, Kirkus Reviews, The Quill to Live

So many stories begin the same way: With a prophecy. A chosen one. And the inevitable quest to slay a villain, save the kingdom, and fulfill a grand destiny.
 
But this is not that kind of story. 
 
It does begin with a prophecy: A child will rise to defeat the Eternal Khan, a cruel immortal god-king, and save the kingdom. 
 
And that prophecy did anoint a hero, Jian, raised since birth in luxury and splendor, and celebrated before he has won a single battle. 
 
But that's when the story hits its first twist: The prophecy is wrong. 
 
What follows is a story more wondrous than any prophecy could foresee, and with many unexpected heroes: Taishi, an older woman who is the greatest grandmaster of magical martial arts in the kingdom but who thought her adventuring days were all behind her; Sali, a straitlaced warrior who learns the rules may no longer apply when the leader to whom she pledged her life is gone; and Qisami, a chaotic assassin who takes a little too much pleasure in the kill.
 
And Jian himself, who has to find a way to become what he no longer believes he can be--a hero after all.

The Art of Prophecy

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Yan Ge

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Puerto Rico

From multi-award-winning author Yan Ge, a shimmering, genre-bending English-language debut that announces the next phase in a major literary career. “A bewitching collection of stories that will leave you awestruck, shaken, and wanting to reach for it again and again.” —Paul Yoon, author of Run Me to Earth In twenty years, Yan Ge has authored thirteen books written in Chinese, working across an impressive range of genres and subjects. Now, Yan Ge transposes her dynamic storytelling onto another linguistic landscape. The result is a collection humming with her trademark wit and style—and with the electricity of a seasoned artist flexing her virtuosity with a new medium. A young woman bonds with an encampment of poets after a devastating earthquake. Against her better judgment, a college student begins to fall for an acquaintance who might be dead. And a Confucian disciple returns to the Master bearing a jar full of grisly remains. Weaving between reality and dreamy surreality, these nine stories wend toward elsewhere, a comforting, frustrating, just-out-of-reach place familiar to anyone who has ever experienced longing. Through it all Yan Ge’s protagonists peer thoughtfully at their own feelings of displacement—physical or emotional, the result of travel, emigration, or exile. Brilliant and irresistibly readable, Elsewhere explores the utility (or not) of art in the face of lonesomeness, quotidian, and spectacular. This highly anticipated collection is further proof that Yan Ge is a generational literary talent, to be watched closely for decades to come.

Elsewhere

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Amy Tan

Memories of a Writing Life

Delve into the stories from Amy Tan's life that inspired bestselling novels like The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement and the new memoir, Where the Past Begins

Amy Tan has touched millions of readers with haunting and sympathetic novels of cultural complexity and profound empathy. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her acclaimed novels, she now shares her insight into her own life and how she escaped the curses of her past to make a future of her own. She takes us on a journey from her childhood of tragedy and comedy to the present day and her arrival as one of the world's best-loved novelists. Whether recalling arguments with her mother in suburban California or introducing us to the ghosts that inhabit her computer, The Opposite of Fate offers vivid portraits of choices, attitudes, charms, and luck in action--a refreshing antidote to the world-weariness and uncertainties we all face today.

The Opposite of Fate

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Sent by her family to work in a silk factory just prior to World War II, young Pei grows to womanhood, working fifteen-hour days and sending her pay to the family who abandoned her

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Lucy Tan

What We Were Promised

Judy Fong Bates

Midnight at the Dragon Cafe

Gail Tsukiyama

The color of Air (signed)

Lucy Tan

What We Were Promised

Melissa Fu

Peach Blossom Spring

Tsai Chih Chung; Brian Bruya (translated by)

Zhuangzi Speaks

William Andrews

Daughters of the Dragon

Thanhhà Lai

Butterfly Yellow

Gail Tsukiyama; Tsukiyama Gail

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms

Gina Apostol

Insurrecto

Kristina McMorris

ARC The Girls of Good Fortune

Gail Tsukiyama

Night of Many Dreams

Lisa See

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Gina Apostol

Insurrecto

Ha Jin

Waiting

Lydia Minatoya

Strangeness of Beauty

Eto Mori

Colorful

C. K. Chau

Good Fortune

Mado Nozaki; Adam Martinakis

Titan

Bora Chung; Anton Hur

Your Utopia

Wesley Chu

The Art of Prophecy

Yan Ge

Elsewhere

Amy Tan

The Opposite of Fate

Gail Tsukiyama

Women of the Silk