Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

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Recent Goodreads Reviews

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China Stories

As the United States slides further into autocracy, the numbing freeze of fear is creeping back into my veins. I have accepted exile, but I’m not ready for imprisonment. I have left the old country, but I’m not ready to abandon the new one. Yet if I retreated to the cage of silence, what would I have given up a homeland for?

— Yangyang Cheng, “To Outlive Tyranny”

John Delury, “History on Parade”

For many journalists at RFA and Voice of America (VOA), the last few months have been particularly difficult. It hasn’t just been about losing journalism jobs, but about the journalistic values they were able to practice at these outlets — and facing the possibility of having no real place to exercise those values again, or even lacking the capacity altogether.

— Hsu Chia-Chi, “After the Layoffs”

Dake Kang and Yael Grauer, “US tech companies enabled the surveillance and detention of hundreds of thousands in China”

Judd Kinzley, “U.S.-China WWII Cooperation was Vital, but Not All on the Battlefield”

Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu, “What Do the Ghosts Want?”

For Chinese authorities, managing water resources in Tibet is not just about engineering and infrastructure—it is also a way to assert sovereignty over the region. This issue seems so sensitive in CCP ideology that it may be rivaled only by the goal of unification with Taiwan. In other words, Tibet’s water resources are part of a broader strategy for maintaining control over the snow-capped highland region. Thus, any criticism can trigger a barrage of strong, hostile reactions from Beijing, as the CCP views it as a challenge to its sovereignty over Tibet.

— Antonina Luszczykiewicz-Mendis, “When China Rules the Rivers”

Rebecca Tan, “How Cambodia, a staunch ally of China, became infatuated with Trump”

Wanderings Around the World

Gabby Keiser, “If the Slipper Doesn’t Fit”

As I listened, I didn’t hear reconciliation. I heard recognition—belated, partial, and ongoing. The city’s apology hadn’t healed the wound. It hadn’t tied the past to the present with a unifying metaphor or conjured some collective grace. The apology had done only what it could: made the silence harder to maintain.

— Beth Lew-Williams, “The Ritual of Civic Apology”

Featured photo: Kayaking at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, July 31, 2022.