Interface News Reporter | Yin Qinglu
Interface News Editor | Yellow Moon
The Fineness of the Mountains of Gold
"The Color of Jinshan" is the first full-length work of the post-90s Chinese-American writer Zhang Chenji, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. This is a novel set in the gold rush of Chinese people to the United States, and it is not about the glory of the fathers in this land, but about something heavier - the long-term erasure of the Chinese in the myth of American origins, the feeling of being alone in a foreign land and not being able to belong.
At the beginning of the story, the protagonist's parents have already died, and 12-year-old Lucy and 11-year-old Sam have fled the mountains of California with their father's body all the way, looking for a place that "feels like their homeland" to bury their father. The law stripped the family of their ownership of the gold, indicating that they did not belong to the land. There was no trace of Chinese in the history class at the local school, and the principal was interested in Lucy, but only to write her into that exotic ethnography. What Zhang Chenji does in the book is to refute the orderly history that preceded "progress" in California. Zhang's language style is strong and powerful, changing the clichés of Western novels, and in the words of USA Today, "interweaving Chinese phrases with cowboy accents, fusing tiger myths with fables of buffalo roaming, the writing is superb and engaging." ”
W: My Private Auschwitz
"I have no childhood memories. That great history, with its huge axe, has answered this question for me: wars, concentration camps. "W—My Private Auschwitz is a work between a biographical memoir and a novel, written by the Polish-Jewish novelist Georges Perek, whose father died in the war during World War II and his mother in a concentration camp. Perek does not directly describe the horrors of the concentration camps, but rather juxtaposes fictional stories with real memories, and the book has no table of contents, no preface, only interwoven texts.
In the fictional part, Perek imagines an island called W, where everything is built for the Olympiad, where servants must compete in sports in order to survive, where the winners receive privileges and the defeated are bullied and humiliated, where living seems to be a gift rather than a right. In the real part, he returns to his childhood memories, searching for the mystery of W Island, writing about the aftermath of the war and the persecuted family members who he feels firsthand, which are often fragmented and uncertain, but bring readers another way of interpreting Auschwitz, and a brutal history that belongs to the individual as well as the collective.
Never Stop: A Biography of Margaret Atwood
According to the book, this work is an authoritative biography of Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, but for Atwood, who is famous for his sharp and changeable style, what kind of narrative is considered "authoritative"? The answer lies in the book's title, "Never Stop." The author, Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan, argues that this is not a biography in the traditional sense, but a book about creative life – what drove Atwood to keep writing in the pre-feminist era?
In the preface, Rosemary chronicles an anecdote from Atwood's childhood: she watched the movie "Red Lingyan," about a young girl who wants to become a ballet dancer, but unfortunately ends her career as an artist because she is a woman. Frustrated, Atwood Jr. did not relent, choosing to join his contemporaries with female writers who turned the tide of Canadian literature. The author sees that the real reason for her relentless work is an inner self-confidence, which is evident in Atwood's personality: "She tends to be resourceful and refuses to be cornered, because she knows that this is what the world is trying to do." Standing on a bridge, with the jungle behind her and the city in front of her, Atwood dominates both worlds at once, loudly proclaiming to this reality age that thinking and imagination are at the heart of a truly happy life.
The World of Possibilities
"Possible Worlds" is Yang Xiao's new work after "Re-walking: Searching for the Southwest Associated University on Roads, Rivers and Post Roads", which records his travels, study visits and short-term residences in 12 countries including the United States, Egypt, Kenya, Myanmar and Germany from 2010 to 2019. This decade is a decade in which Chinese truly embrace the world, and it is also like a special favor in history.
Yang Xiao believes that what he explores in the book is not only the possibility, but also the structural factor that is difficult for people to change, that is, the "impossibility" – he observes how Japan has regained its place, in Myanmar he feels the mood of people under a certain rule, and in Serbia, Germany and Estonia, looking for traces of history, as he puts it: "People and countries are under a long shadow." At one scene after another, Yang Xiao brought today's eyes into the moment, and explored how we can learn to get along with the past in a world of transformation from multiple dimensions such as current affairs, humanities, history, and geography.
Shame: The Emotion of Discipline
Shame is not only a feeling hidden in everyone's heart, but also a means used by society to maintain order. In fact, shame and various forms of humiliation play an important role in many areas, including family, education, penal punishment, sports, politics, etc. In the book "Shame: The Emotion of Discipline," American history professor Peter J. N. Stearns, for example, reveals how shame as a discipline by interpreting the changes in shame over the past two or three centuries.
An important thread of the book is that, on the one hand, Western societies in the 19th and mid-20th centuries weakened the status of shame as the modern Enlightenment brought about a spirit of individualism and respect for the individual, but on the other hand, shame was also revived in the form of a makeover, such as being used by anti-smoking movements to restrain people's behavior, such as the promotion of slim aesthetic standards in the 1950s that contributed to obesity shaming. It is worth mentioning that Sterns also analyzes how contemporary social media has become a new platform for spreading shame, and people are increasingly exposing their privacy in the media, which is followed by public shaming, which has also led to a widespread discussion of personal privacy. Re-evaluating the emotion of shame is becoming an increasingly urgent issue today.
Visible Justice: The Culture of the Rule of Law in Film and Television
In film and television dramas throughout the ages, law has always been a common element, not only in legal dramas such as "Legal High" and "Legally Blonde", but also in "Game of Thrones", "Rashomon", "The Godfather" and other dramas or movies about human morality, the rule of law culture also plays a key role. Nowadays, the discussion of law and film and television has become very large, but there is a lack of methodological reflection on how to study the relationship between the two. It is this part of this book that I want to make up.
Wang Jinxia, a scholar of jurisprudence and a lecturer at the School of Law of Northwest University of Political Science and Law, tries to put film and television works in a broader theoretical vision and explain the intrinsic connection between law and film and television. In her opinion, the law is rigorous and rational, even a little boring, while film and television are usually lively and lively, allowing the audience's emotions to be cathartic, and the two are highly complementary. Then, in order not to be limited to the discussion from the perceptual perspective, it is necessary to watch film and television from the perspective of law, and then use film and television as a method to think about law. Wang Jinxia combines a number of works that have been hotly discussed in recent years, such as "Squid Game", "Prosecution Witness", "Juvenile Court" and "The Good Man of the Three Gorges", and analyzes it from the theoretical perspectives of the concept of justice, cultural conflict, and national character, showing many intrinsic relationships between law and film and television.
Poverty Travels
Born in 1937, Yoshiharu Seige is a Japanese manga artist who is on a par with Osamu Tezuka, as Angoome writes in the preface to his exhibition: Tezuka is the founder of modern manga and promoted the development of manga entertainment; Yoshiharu Tanue used his profound personal style to give comics a poetic experience, becoming a pioneer in the expression of the subconscious in comics, and deeply influencing authors in Japan and abroad.
This book is a collection of Yoshiharu's travelogues, which records the essays he wrote during his travels to the countryside of Japan from 1965 to 1975, including more than 100,000 words of travelogues, nearly 100 illustrations, and travel chronology. As Japan's "master of hidden manga", Yoshiharu is often on the fringes of the manga industry, which can also be seen in his travelogues, where he goes to untouched places such as the Izu Peninsula, Kamakura, Catmachi, Yujuku Onsen, and Runaway Inns, and also practices the principle of "poor travel", spending every penny carefully. Cartoonist Hu Xiaojiang commented on Zhezhi's travels: "I am not anxious for quick success, let alone as an experience, but absent-mindedly evaporated and quietly banished." ”
Zhezhi is deeply respected and loved by Chinese comic creators. The Chinese version of "Poverty Travel" includes a joint tribute to 59 domestic artists, including painter Chimney, architect Cangma, cartoonist Zuo Ma, I am Bai, Liu Wei and others.
Preparing for the Next Pandemic
The pandemic seems like a thing of yesterday, but there are still many challenges ahead for humanity. In the post-pandemic era, how can we prevent infectious diseases in the future? Peter Hotez is a Doctor of Medicine and Philosophy, Dean of the National Academy of Medicine, and an expert in vaccinology and tropical diseases. In this book, he hopes to advocate for and promote scientific and vaccine collaboration around the world to prepare for the next pandemic.
In his book, Hotez reviews a brief history of global vaccine cooperation in the Middle East, Africa, and North America, and finds that the causes of frequent outbreaks of infectious diseases and the decline in global cooperation and cohesion have many things in common, such as wars and conflicts, human migration, climate change, and urbanization, all of which are united by the theme of the "Anthropocene". He argues that we need to go beyond the traditional biomedical model and integrate social and natural determinants to solve global health problems beyond 2015. Rodney Hough, Ph.D., commented: "There are few books that have such a comprehensive and systematic analysis of vaccine design and vaccine coverage required for public health goals. ”