I was among a trio of authors who contributed reviews of Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden: Two Sisters Separated by China’s Civil War, a family memoir by Zhuqing Li, to the Education About Asia journal’s Spring 2023 issue. My review appeared in print then, and is now available to read online with no paywall:
Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden recounts an extraordinary family story that highlights several very ordinary themes in modern Chinese history. While the particulars of Jun and Hong’s saga are unique, millions of families endured long separations after the fall of the “Bamboo Curtain” closed off mainland China. Hong, like so many others in the Mao era, grappled with how to ensure her family’s survival amidst frequent changes in the political landscape. On Taiwan, Jun and her husband worked hard to establish new lives and build a secure foundation for their children; in the United States, Jun used her restaurant earnings to bring over younger members of the family—including Zhuqing Li—and provide them with American educations. READ MORE
Last week I wrote here about visiting Fort Monroe National Monument during a trip to Virginia in October:
The National Park Service website described Fort Monroe as “Gibraltar of the Chesapeake,” explaining that in addition to being an important coastal defense, it was also the site where John Smith had landed, the place where enslaved Africans had first arrived in 1619, and the location of “Freedom’s Fortress” during the Civil War. Not entirely sure what to expect—would there just be a plaque on the waterfront?—but game for an outing, my mother and I drove down on a sparkling Wednesday afternoon. READ MORE
Recommendations
China Stories
Chris Buckley, “Abrupt Dismissals Point to Xi Jinping’s Quiet Shake-Up of China’s Military”
Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien, “Experts See a Message in Chinese Balloons Flying Over Taiwan”
Craig Calhoun, “History as Dissent: On Ian Johnson’s ‘Sparks’ and Tania Branigan’s ‘Red Memory’”
Eliot Chen and Katrina Northrop, “Washington’s Xinjiang Fix”
Scott Kennedy, “U.S.-China Relations in 2024: Managing Competition without Conflict”
Brian Spegele, “A Bowling Kingpin Lived the Chinese Dream. Now His Faith Is Being Tested.”
At a time of heightened competition with Beijing, our education system is not generating enough American citizens with Chinese language ability, meaningful lived experiences in China and deep area knowledge. And despite the ever-present refrain in Congress about the China threat, the U.S. government is actively disinvesting in China studies.
Rory Truex, “Where have all the American China experts gone?”
Chun Han Wong, “China’s Xi Is Resurrecting Mao’s ‘Continuous Revolution’ With a Twist”
Edward Wong and Amy Qin, “Asian American Officials Cite Unfair Scrutiny and Lost Jobs in China Spy Tensions”
Wanderings Around the World
Kaamil Ahmed, “‘I can ride the bus. I can walk the streets’: the joy of freedom for Rohingya resettled in the US”
Bathsheba Demuth, “A Major Climate Force Has Been Ignored for Decades”
As has happened historically, Dr. Gay’s detractors redefined merit to mean whatever they wanted it to mean, in practice turning bureaucratic minutiae into a political bomb. Joseph McCarthy could only have wished for the networked media power that today’s reactionary power-seekers possess. The speed, scale and amplification of the power to capture an aspect of routine workaday life and cast it as nefarious activity is staggering. What has happened at Harvard is not just a blueprint for taking over higher education; it is a strategy for taking over our information environment.
Tressie McMillan Cottom, “The Claudine Gay Debacle Was Never About Merit”
Vann R. Newkirk II, “How the Negro Spiritual Changed American Popular Music—And America Itself”
Tokyo really was destroyed, a reality the best Godzilla stories have always taken seriously. “Minus One” stays with the human victims as they race through the streets, horrified that their home is being destroyed, again, and so soon. Where Emmerich’s film exults in the carnage of laying waste to a city, Yamazaki’s insists on the damage, the destruction that recurs, returns, revictimizes. And he grounds it in very real terror; for all the seat-shaking power of Godzilla’s roar, there is no sound more unsettling than an air-raid siren.
Robert Rubsam, “The Newest ‘Godzilla’ Film Is Stranger Than Fiction”
Standout Story
Drafting the Past podcast
Over the past few weeks I’ve been working through the archives of Drafting the Past, hosted by Princeton University doctoral candidate Kate Carpenter. Carpenter interviews historians about their work, with a special emphasis on developing the craft of historical writing. Nearly every episode ends with me requesting the guest’s books from my local library, and I added even more titles to my wish list by reading the first issue of Carpenter’s newsletter, on books she anticipates in 2024. For more about Kate Carpenter’s background and professional interests, see this recent Contingent Magazine profile of her in its “How I Do History” series.
Feature Photo: Detroit, Michigan, from the 22nd floor of the Fisher Building, January 6, 2024.
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 
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