White Flash/Black Rain

White Flash/Black Rain: Women of Japan Relive the Bomb 
edited by Vance-Watkins & Aratani 

 White Flash/Black Rain: Women Of Japan Relive The Bomb speaks of the shared accountability for bringing about war, any war. These women bear witness not only to the unspeakable mass destruction unleashed by the United States when it dropped the bomb, but also of the disastrous path Japan followed with its policy of conquest and Emperorism in Korea and China, and the abuse of the "comfort women" used by Japanese soldiers. White Flash/Black Rain is a book of peace. These women tell their stories in hope that what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never happen again.

Still Life With Rice

Still Life With Rice

by Helie Lee

In this radiant memoir of her grandmother's life, Helie Lee probes a history and a culture that are both seductively exotic and strangely familiar. And with wit and verve she claims her own Korean identity, illuminating the intricate experiences of Asian-American women.

Born in 1912 - "the year of the rat" - to aristocratic parents, Hongyong Baek came of age in a unified but socially repressive Korea, where she learned the roles that had been prescribed for her: obedient daughter, demure wife, efficient household manager. Ripped from her home first during the Japanese occupation and again during the bloody civil war that divided her country, Hongyong fought to save her family by drawing from her own talents and values. Over the years she provided for her husband and children by running a successful restaurant, building a profitable opium business, and eventually becoming adept at the healing art of Chiryo.

When she was pressured to leave her country, she moved with her family to California, where she reestablished her Chiryo practice. Writing in her grandmother's voice, Helie Lee depicts the concerns and conflicts that shaped one family's search for home. Evocative and keenly felt, Still Life with Rice interprets issues that touch all of us: the complex nature of family relations, the impact of social upheaval on an individual, and the rapidly changing lives of women in this century.

Quiet Odyssey

Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America
by Mary Paik Lee
edited by Sucheng Chan

Lee's indomitable spirit pervades this absorbing autobiography spanning much of the 20th century. Born in 1900, the author left Korea in 1905 with her family, as political refugees. Among the earliest Korean immigrants to America, they settled in California, where they faced a constant struggle for the bare necessities, living wherever Lee's father could find work, often as an agricultural laborer. In addition to economic adversity, Lee often encountered racism. Determined to attend high school, she endured lectures about "stinking Chinks and dirty Japs." After the attack on Pearl Harbor, she had to stop three teenagers from striking her child. Even such unreasoned hatred could not break Lee who, from the perspective of the 1980s, sees in her children's successes the triumph of a century of cultural change. Chan, author of This Bittersweet Soil and a professor of history and Asian American studies at UC Santa Barbara, supplements the memoir with historical background. Her notes help make this brief, accessible volume a worthwhile addition to the scholarship on Asian American culture.

Asian Tales and Tellers

Asian Tales and Tellers

edited by Cathy Spagnoli

In this abundant and kaleidoscopic collection, Spagnoli includes stories from Japan, India, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Laos, Tibet, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Burma, and Nepal. After profiling modern Asian storytellers practicing traditional storytelling styles, she arranges the stories around dominant Asian themes such as Harmony and Friendship

"What is carved on rocks will wear away in time, What is told from mouth to mouth will live forever." Spagnoli, herself a storyteller, uses this epigraph of Vietnamese origin to launch a glittering collection of tales. Here are stories from Laos, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Korea, Malaysia - the list goes on. Some of the stories carry ancient wisdoms, others bring us contemporary belly-laughs with equal flair. Prefatory chapters contain information on storytellers and storytelling from different regions of the continent, as well as on tools and techniques of this unique performing art. Stories are thematically grouped. Also included are notes, a glossary, and resources both online and print.