Showing results by narrator "Tim Chiou" in All Categories

As Desmond Shum was growing up impoverished in China, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity he earned an American college degree and returned to his native country to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly intelligent and equally ambitious Whitney Duan who was determined to make her mark within China’s male-dominated society. Whitney and Desmond formed an effective team and, aided by relationships they formed with top members of China’s Communist Party, the so-called red aristocracy.

America Ferrera has always felt wholly American, and yet, her identity is inextricably linked to her parents’ homeland and Honduran culture. Speaking Spanish at home, having Saturday morning salsa-dance parties in the kitchen, and eating tamales alongside apple pie at Christmas never seemed at odds with her American identity. Still, she yearned to see that identity reflected in the larger American narrative. Now, in American Like Me, America invites 31 of her friends, peers, and heroes to share their stories about life between cultures. 

Zayneb’s teacher won’t stop reminding the class how “bad” Muslims are. But Zayneb, the only Muslim in class, isn’t bad. She’s angry. When she gets suspended for confronting her teacher and he begins investigating her activist friends, Zayneb heads to her aunt’s house in Doha, Qatar, for an early start to spring break. Fueled by the guilt of getting her friends in trouble, she resolves to try out a newer, “nicer” version of herself in a place where no one knows her. Then her path crosses with Adam’s. 

In the headline-making and best-selling tradition of Bill Browder’s Red Notice comes a unique and incendiary memoir from an entrepreneur who rose to the zenith of power and money in 21st-century China and whose wife was disappeared - and then mysteriously reappeared four years later on the eve of Red Roulette’s publication and global media coverage about it. 

Sean Suh is done with killing. After serving three years in a psychiatric prison, he’s determined to stay away from temptation. But he can’t resist Annabelle - beautiful, confident, incandescent Annabelle - who alone can see past the monster to the man inside. The man he’s desperately trying to be. Then Annabelle disappears. Sean is sure she’s been kidnapped - he witnessed her being taken firsthand - but the police are convinced Sean himself is at the center of this crime. And he must admit, his illness has caused him to “lose time” before. 

Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son. Now 40 million of them can't find wives. China's One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs has created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than 25 percent of men in their late 30s will not have families of their own. An Excess Male is one such leftover man's quest for love and family under a state that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.

Xuan Juliana Wang's remarkable debut introduces us to the new and changing face of Chinese youth. From fuerdai (second-generation rich kids) to a glass-swallowing qigong grandmaster, her dazzling, formally inventive stories upend the immigrant narrative to reveal a new experience of belonging: of young people testing the limits of who they are, in a world as vast and varied as their ambitions. In stories of love, family, and friendship, here are the voices, faces, and stories of a new generation never before captured in fiction.

Four teenage boys are high school seniors at two very different schools within the city of Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the nation with nearly 700,000 students. In this “exceptional work of investigative journalism…laced with compassion, insight, and humor” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) Jeff Hobbs stunningly captures the challenges and triumphs of being a young person confronting the future — both their own and the cultures in which they live — in contemporary America.