Category: Books
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Weekly Wanderings: September 29, 2024
September 28, 2014 marked the start of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. While these protests were by no means the first mass activism in Hong Kong agains Beijing’s rule, they captured worldwide attention in a way that previous demonstrations had not. Student movement leaders like Joshua Wong and Nathan Law became media celebrities; photographers and journalists…
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Weekly Wanderings: August 25, 2024
At 4:00pm this past Friday, I shut down the computer in my office at the Association for Asian Studies and officially started a month-long sabbatical. I like my job very much—I’m fortunate to have found a position that keeps me tied in to academia while also devoting my days to reading, writing, and editing. After…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 31, 2024
Sometimes … well, sometimes a week is more like 10 days, which feel like a month. Can’t explain it, time works in mysterious ways. Thanks for reading. Recent Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories David Bandurski, “Xi’s Ten-Year Bid to Remake China’s Media” Cate Cadell, Nick Miroff, and Li Qiang, “Walk the Line: Chinese migration surge…
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Weekly Wanderings: July 15, 2024
No note from me up top this week because (a) What a wild weekend we’ve just had in the United States, and (b) I flew back from Indonesia on Friday-Saturday so my brain is nothing but mush at the moment. I do have a new piece of writing to share. The Wall Street Journal has…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 30, 2024
At the AAS #AsiaNow blog, I have a new interview in my series of exchanges with authors (which you can now find all linked here at my website). This time, I talked with historian Douglas Ober about his first book, Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India. Ober takes on the…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 16, 2024
A few years ago I ate dinner at The Delft Bistro in Marquette, the largest city on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I could guess from the large marquee outside and the film-themed decor inside that the building had once been a movie theater, and that the restaurant’s owners had decided to pay homage to that history…
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Weekly Wanderings: June 2, 2024
June! How nice to see you. At the Association for Asian Studies #AsiaNow blog, I continue my series of interviews with new authors, speaking with ethnomusicologist Ying Diao about her book, Faith by Aurality in China’s Ethnic Borderland: Media, Mobility, and Christianity at the Margins. Recommendations China Stories ChinaFile Conversation, “The Future According to Xi…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 26, 2024
If you regularly scroll through Instagram, it’s almost impossible not to know that we’re in peony season. Explosions of pink and white and purple appear in post after post, everyone trying to find the best shot before the petals suddenly drop off and we’re once again peony-less until next spring. Maybe it was due to…
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Weekly Wanderings: May 19, 2024
Recent Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories Gordon Corera, “The escaped dissident still pursued decades on by China”Helen Davidson and Chi Hui Lin, “Lai Ching-te, the political brawler who went from a Taiwan mining village to the presidency” The truth of whether the Wangs were small-time innkeepers or a secret weapon in Beijing’s decadelong effort to…
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Weekly Wanderings: April 28, 2024
My brain felt chaotic and restless as I walked through the Toledo Museum of Art yesterday morning, taking in the works surrounding me in each room but not settling on anything long enough to fully consider it. Scuffed parquet floors creaked underneath my steps as I moved through rooms offering a special exhibit on African…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 