As China emerges as a global superpower with increasing global opportunities, an unprecedented number of students are pursuing Chinese studies in the US, primarily in Mandarin. Many universities offer special sections of their introductory courses for heritage speakers of Mandarin, who have grown up speaking Chinese at home but never in the classroom. These sections are tailored to the specific needs of heritage speakers, who tend to have strong speaking and listening skills and need more practice with reading and writing. Me and China was created specifically for these students, taking student-centered approach with topics that are relevant and engaging to American students of Chinese heritage. The text comes with two audio CDs, to be used in conjunction with an integrated workbook.

Me and China

History

Wu, Yenna

He, Qian

Ying, Yang

Asia

McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages

China is the only major world power to have entered the twenty-first century with a thriving prison camp network—a frightening, mostly hidden realm known since 1951 as the laogai system. This book, the most comprehensive study of China's prison camps to date, draws from a wide range of primary sources, including many compelling literary documents, to illuminate life inside China's prison camps. Focusing mainly on the second half of the twentieth century, Philip F. Williams and Yenna Wu outline the evolution of the laogai system, construct a vivid picture of prisoners' lives from arrest and interrogation to release, and provide a troubling new perspective on the human rights issues plaguing China.

The Great Wall of Confinement: The Chinese Prison Camp through Contemporary Fiction and Reportage

Literature & Fiction

Williams, Philip F.

History & Criticism

University of California Press

China is the only major world power to have entered the twenty-first century with a thriving prison camp network―a frightening, mostly hidden realm known since 1951 as the laogai system. This book, the most comprehensive study of China's prison camps to date, draws from a wide range of primary sources, including many compelling literary documents, to illuminate life inside China's prison camps. Focusing mainly on the second half of the twentieth century, Philip F. Williams and Yenna Wu outline the evolution of the laogai system, construct a vivid picture of prisoners' lives from arrest and interrogation to release, and provide a troubling new perspective on the human rights issues plaguing China.

Williams, Philip F. F.

 Drawing from literary, historical, dramatic, and anecdotal sources, Yenna Wu conducts a rich exploration of an unusually prominent theme in premodern Chinese prose fiction and drama: that of jealous and belligerent wives, or viragos, who dominate their husbands and abuse other women. Focusing on Chinese literary works from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, she presents many colorful perspectives on this type of aggression, reviewing early literary and historical examples of the phenomenon.  Wu argues that although the various portraits of the virago often reveal the writers' insecurities about strong-willed women in general, the authors also satirize the kind of man whose behavioral patterns have been catalysts for female aggression. She shows that various elements of these portraits constitute a subversive form of parody that casts a revealing light on the patriarchal hierarchy of premodern China. 

The Chinese Virago: A Literary Theme (HARVARD-YENCHING INSTITUTE MONOGRAPH SERIES)

Harvard University Asia Center

This interdisciplinary volume of essays studies human rights in political prison literature, while probing the intersections of suffering, politics, and aesthetics in an interliterary and intercultural context. As the first book to explore the concept of global aesthetics in political prison narratives, it demonstrates how literary insight enhances the study of human rights. Covering varied geographical and geopolitical regions, this collection encourages comparative analyses and cross-cultural understanding. Seeking to interrogate linguistic, structural, and cultural constructions of the political prison experience, it highlights the literary aspects without losing sight of the political and the theoretical.The contributors cross various disciplinary boundaries and adopt different interpretive perspectives in analyzing prison narratives, especially memoirs, from such diverse countries as China, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Romania, Russia, Uruguay, and the U.S. The volume emphasizes the literary works produced since the second half of the twentieth century, particularly since the political seismic shift in 1989. The authors treated range from the canonical to the less well-known: Nawal El Saadawi, Varlam Shalamov, Zhang Xianliang, Cong Weixi, Wumingshi, Carlos Liscano, Fatna El Bouih, Nabil Sulayman, Faraj Bayraqdar, Hasiba 'Abdalrahman, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Nicolae Steinhardt, Irina Ratushinskaya, etc. Critical issues investigated include how the writers represent their sufferings, experiences, and emotions during incarceration; their strategies of survival; and how political prison literature can reveal hidden violations of human rights, while resisting official discourse and serving other functions in society. Examining the commonalities and differences in global experiences of imprisonment, the eight chapters engage with the aesthetics of self-making and resistance, individual and collective memory, denial and conversion, catharsis and redemption, and the experiencing and witnessing of trauma.Topics also include the politics of remembering and the politics of representation, such as the problematic relationship between narrative, language, and representations of torture. Similarly under discussion are prison aesthetics of happiness, the role of spectacle in the criminal justice system, and the intersection of prison, gender, and silences.At a juncture when more and more people all over the world actively defy repressive regimes and demand political reform, this book makes a timely contribution to the advocacy and discourse of universal human rights.

Human Rights, Suffering, and Aesthetics in Political Prison Literature

Livescu, Simona

Lexington Books

This interdisciplinary volume of essays studies human rights in political prison literature, while examining the intersections of suffering, politics, and aesthetics in an interliterary and intercultural context. As the first book to explore the concept of global aesthetics in political prison narratives, it makes a timely contribution to the advocacy and discourse of universal human rights by demonstrating how literary insight enhances the study of this field and encouraging comparative analyses and cross-cultural understanding.

Reference

This lively volume makes speaking and understanding Chinese relatively easy for English-speaking learners. After outlining the sound system of Chinese, the book introduces basic sentence patterns and key vocabulary through a wide variety of practical, true-to-life, and often humorous conversational situations. The book's final chapter introduces readers to the use of written characters. Practice exercises.

Chinese: The Easy Way (Easy Way Series)

B E S Pub Co

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wu, Yenna. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wu, Yenna

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wu, Yenna. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Me and China

The Great Wall of Confinement: The Chinese Prison Camp through Contemporary Fiction and Reportage

The Great Wall of Confinement: The Chinese Prison Camp through Contemporary Fiction and Reportage

The Chinese Virago: A Literary Theme (HARVARD-YENCHING INSTITUTE MONOGRAPH SERIES)

Human Rights, Suffering, and Aesthetics in Political Prison Literature

Human Rights, Suffering, and Aesthetics in Political Prison Literature

Chinese: The Easy Way (Easy Way Series)