In the dazzling global metropolis of Shanghai, what has it meant to call this city home? In this account—part microhistory, part memoir—Jie Li salvages intimate recollections by successive generations of inhabitants of two vibrant, culturally mixed Shanghai alleyways from the Republican, Maoist, and post-Mao eras. Exploring three dimensions of private life—territories, artifacts, and gossip—Li re-creates the sounds, smells, look, and feel of home over a tumultuous century. First built by British and Japanese companies in 1915 and 1927, the two homes at the center of this narrative were located in an industrial part of the former "International Settlement." Before their recent demolition, they were nestled in Shanghai's labyrinthine alleyways, which housed more than half of the city's population from the Sino-Japanese War to the Cultural Revolution. Through interviews with her own family members as well as their neighbors, classmates, and co-workers, Li weaves a complex social tapestry reflecting the lived experiences of ordinary people struggling to absorb and adapt to major historical change. These voices include workers, intellectuals, Communists, Nationalists, foreigners, compradors, wives, concubines, and children who all fought for a foothold and haven in this city, witnessing spectacles so full of farce and pathos they could only be whispered as secret histories.

The first book to tell the stories of some of the most revered living Japanese ceramists of the century, tracing the evolution of modern and contemporary craft and art in Japan, and the artists’ considerable influence, which far transcends national borders. Listening to Clay: Conversations with Contemporary Japanese Ceramic Artists is the first book to present conversations with some of the most important living Japanese ceramic artists. Tracing the evolution of modern and contemporary craft and art in Japan, this groundbreaking volume highlights sixteen individuals whose unparalleled skill and creative brilliance have lent them an influence that far transcends national borders. Despite forging illustrious careers and earning international recognition for their work, these sixteen artists have been little known in terms of their personal stories. Ranging in age from sixty-three to ninety-three, they embody the diverse experiences of several generations who have been active and successful from the late 1940s to the present day, a period of massive change. Now, sharing their stories for the first time in Listening to Clay, they not only describe their distinctive processes, inspirations, and relationships with clay, but together trace a seismic cultural shift through a field in which centuries-old but exclusionary potting traditions opened to new practitioners and kinds of practices. Listening to Clay includes conversations with artists born into pottery-making families, as well as with some of the first women admitted to the ceramics department of Tokyo University of the Arts, telling a larger story about ingenuity and trailblazing that has shaped contemporary art in Japan and around the world. Each artist is represented by an entry including a brief introduction, a portrait, selected examples of their work, and an intimate interview conducted by the authors over several in-person visits from 2004 to 2019. At the core of each story is the artist’s personal relationship to clay, often described as a collaboration with the material rather than an imposing of intention. The oldest artist interviewed, Hayashi Yasuo, enlisted in the army during WWII at age fifteen and trained as a kamikaze pilot. He was born into a family that had fired ceramics in cooperative kilns for generations, but he rejected traditional modes and went on to be the first artist in Japan to make truly abstract ceramic sculpture. In the late 1960s, another artist, Mishima Kimiyo, developed a technique of silkscreening on clay and began making ceramic newspapers to comment on the proliferation of the media. She became fascinated with trash, recreating it out of clay, and worked in relative obscurity for decades until she had a major exhibition in Tokyo in 2015. Featuring a preface by curator, writer, and historian Glenn Adamson, and a foreword by Monika Bincsik, the Associate Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Listening to Clay has been a project more than fifteen years in the making for authors Alice and Halsey North, respected and knowledgeable collectors and patrons of contemporary Japanese ceramics, and Louise Allison Cort, Curator Emerita of Ceramics, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution. The book also includes conversations with five important dealers of contemporary Japanese ceramics who have played and are playing a critical role in introducing the work of these artists to the world, several detailed appendices, and a glossary of terms, relevant people, and relationships. Listening to Clay is a long-overdue and insightful book that, for the first time, spotlights some of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary ceramic artists through personal, idiosyncratic accounts of their day-to-day lives, giving special access to their creative process and artistic development.

An essential introduction to the life, writings, and legacy of one of Japan's most prolific Buddhist masters. The founder of the Soto school of Zen in Japan, Eihei Dogen (1200–1253) is one of the most influential Buddhist teachers of all time. Although Dogen’s writings have reached wide prominence among contemporary Buddhists and philosophers, there is much that remains enigmatic about his life and writings. In Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher, respected Dogen scholar and translator Steven Heine offers a nuanced portrait of the master’s historical context, life, and work, paying special attention to issues such as: The nature of the “great doubt” that motivated Dogen’s religious quest The sociopolitical turmoil of Kamakura Japan that led to dynamic innovations in medieval Japanese Buddhism The challenges and transformations Dogen experienced during his pivotal time in China Key inflection points and unresolved questions regarding Dogen’s teaching career in Japan Ongoing controversies in the scholarly interpretations of Dogen’s biography and teachings Synthesizing a lifetime of research and reflection into an accessible narrative, this new addition to the Lives of the Masters series illuminates thought-provoking perspectives on Dogen’s character and teachings, as well as his relevance to contemporary practitioners.

A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower. Through the stories of three generations of women in her family, Karoline Kan, a former New York Times reporter based in Beijing, reveals how they navigated their way in a country beset by poverty and often-violent political unrest. As the Kans move from quiet villages to crowded towns and through the urban streets of Beijing in search of a better way of life, they are forced to confront the past and break the chains of tradition, especially those forced on women. Raw and revealing, Karoline Kan offers gripping tales of her grandmother, who struggled to make a way for her family during the Great Famine; of her mother, who defied the One-Child Policy by giving birth to Karoline; of her cousin, a shoe factory worker scraping by on 6 yuan (88 cents) per hour; and of herself, as an ambitious millennial striving to find a job--and true love--during a time rife with bewildering social change. Under Red Skies is an engaging eyewitness account and Karoline's quest to understand the rapidly evolving, shifting sands of China. It is the first English-language memoir from a Chinese millennial to be published in America, and a fascinating portrait of an otherwise-hidden world, written from the perspective of those who live there.

This collection of seventy-three letters written in 2020 captures an unprecedented moment in politics and society through the experiences of Asian-American artists, curators, educators, art historians, editors, writers, and designers. The form of the letter offers readers intimate insights into the complexities of Asian American experiences, moving beyond the model-minority myth. Chronicling everyday lives, dreams, rage, family histories, and cultural politics, these letters ignite new ways of being, and modes of creating, at a moment of racial reckoning.

"In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.

"Hip, entertaining...imaginative."—Kirkus, starred review *"Essential." —Min Jin Lee * "A Herculean effort."—Lisa Ling * "A must-read."—Ijeoma Oluo * "Get two copies."—Shea Serrano * "A book we've needed for ages." —Celeste Ng * "Accessible, informative, and fun." —Cathy Park Hong * "This book has serious substance...Also, I'm in it."—Ronny Chieng RISE is a love letter to and for Asian Americans--a vivid scrapbook of voices, emotions, and memories from an era in which our culture was forged and transformed, and a way to preserve both the headlines and the intimate conversations that have shaped our community into who we are today. When the Hart-Celler Act passed in 1965, opening up US immigration to non-Europeans, it ushered in a whole new era. But even to the first generation of Asian Americans born in the US after that milestone, it would have been impossible to imagine that sushi and boba would one day be beloved by all, that a Korean boy band named BTS would be the biggest musical act in the world, that one of the most acclaimed and popular movies of 2018 would be Crazy Rich Asians, or that we would have an Asian American Vice President. And that’s not even mentioning the creators, performers, entrepreneurs, execs and influencers who've been making all this happen, behind the scenes and on the screen; or the activists and representatives continuing to fight for equity, building coalitions and defiantly holding space for our voices and concerns. And still: Asian America is just getting started. The timing could not be better for this intimate, eye-opening, and frequently hilarious guided tour through the pop-cultural touchstones and sociopolitical shifts of the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and beyond. Jeff Yang, Phil Yu, and Philip Wang chronicle how we’ve arrived at today’s unprecedented diversity of Asian American cultural representation through engaging, interactive infographics (including a step-by-step guide to a night out in K-Town, an atlas that unearths historic Asian American landmarks, a handy “Appreciation or Appropriation?” flowchart, and visual celebrations of both our "founding fathers and mothers" and the nostalgia-inducing personalities of each decade), plus illustrations and graphic essays from major AAPI artists, exclusive roundtables with Asian American cultural icons, and more, anchored by extended insider narratives of each decade by the three co-authors. Rise is an informative, lively, and inclusive celebration of both shared experiences and singular moments, and all the different ways in which we have chosen to come together.

A collection of head-on portraits and quotes in which men and women whose mixed racial heritage includes Asian or Pacific Island descent discuss what their heritage means to them and how it defines them.

Two hundred and twenty tales from medieval Japan—tales that welcome us into a fabulous faraway world populated by saints, scoundrels, ghosts, magical healers, and a vast assortment of deities and demons. Stories of miracles, visions of hell, jokes, fables, and legends, these tales reflect the Japanese civilization. They ably balance the lyrical and the dramatic, the ribald and the profound, offering a window into a long-vanished culture. With black-and-white illustrations throughout Part of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library