#leslie chang

[littlefrustrations-blog]

Xiao Wen Ju by Leslie Zhang, WSJ China, April 2021

[bermudianabroad]

2016 Reading Roundup

  Don’t Waste Your Time Reread Highly Recommended *Nobel Recipient*

Translations include poetry, fiction, non-fiction and anthologies.

Total 41  63% women writers  22% translations Best Fiction- A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki / Black Madonna by Doris Lessing Best Non-Fiction: Factory Girls by Leslie Chang 

Everything I read under the cut with thoughtful thoughts to follow. 

-Fiction- 1. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton 2. The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood 3. The Position by Meg Wolitzer 4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 5. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill 6. An English Bride in Scotland by Lynsay Sands 7. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi 8. A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin 9. I Am China by Xiaolu Guo 10. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki 11. Black Vodka by Deborah Levy 12. Shogun by James Clavell 13. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer 14. Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh

-Non-Fiction- 1. Wild by Cheryl Strayed 2. Letters to my Daughter by Maya Angelou 3. Other People’s Countries: a Journey into Memory by Patrick McGuiness 4. How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen 5. Girl With a One Track Mind: Confessions of the Seductress Next Door by Abby Lee 6. The World of Sex by Henry Miller 7. So, You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson 8. BFI: Eyes Wide Shut by Michel Chion 9. The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz 10. Factory Girls: Voices from the Heart of Modern China by Leslie Chang 11. Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron 12. The Snow Geese by William Fiennes

-Poetry- :(

-Translations- 1. Take This Man by Alice Zeniter [Jusque dans nos bras] French (France) 2. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende [La casa de los espiritus] Spanish (Chile) 3. Havana Jazz Club by Lola Marine [Habana Jazz Club] Spanish (Spain) 4. The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa [ ダイヴィング・プール / Daibingu puru — (妊娠カレンダー / Ninshin karendā) — (ドミトリイ / Dormitory)] Japanese (Japan) 5. Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa [ ホテル・アイリス/Hoteru Airisu] Japanese (Japan) 6. Revenge by Yoko Ogawa [ 寡黙な死骸　みだらな弔い ] Japanese (Japan) 7. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami [ 海辺のカフカ ] Japanese (Japan)

8. Fortunata y Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdós, Spanish (Spain)

-Short Stories- 1. Granta 124- Travel by Various (includes non-fiction, poetry and translations) 2. Black Madonna by Doris Lessing

-Kids and Young Adult- 1. The Queen’s Knickers by Nicholas Allan

-Graphic Novels- 1. Habibi by Craig Thompson 2. The Master and Margarita by Danusia Schejbal 3. The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon 4. Logicomix: an Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, Annie Di Donna

[bermudianabroad]

Migrant workers use a simple term for the move that defines their lives: chuqu, to go out. There was nothing to do at home, so I went out. This is how a migrant story begins.

Leslie T. Chang, Factory Girls: Voices from the Heart of Modern China

[sarahheidebrecht]

Just because a person spends her time making a piece of something does not mean that she becomes that, a piece of something.

 Leslie T. Chang | TED Talks

[motherground]

from In the Language of Here and Now

4.

My mother and my grandmother returning to China are ravenous, as if poised

on a threshold: October markets glimpsed from the taxi entice them, stalls with melons and persimmons, a Kodachrome

from childhood. They make a request to stop at the stand selling hot milk in wooden bowls.

My grandmother sniffs air thick with coal smoke for the scent of burnt sugar; she will follow her nose into a labyrinthine hutong, forsaking us.

For my mother, it’s the dried watermelon seeds she used to crack and eat compulsively, leaving a trail

in a dark wood. But nothing they buy on our way back from the Temple of Heaven tastes as they remember it.

5.

At the mouth of a lane snaking beyond the concourse, a river of bicycles swallowed me.

I was lost among crowded stalls, the air bruised with coal smoke, at some border between despair and wanting to be lost.

I hadn’t yet eaten the seeds that would keep me there, though the place

was what I hungered for: a forgotten past, the same iron weights and measures,

old men in a willow’s filigreed shade playing dominoes, their companions finches and canaries in bamboo cages, tiny souls

flickering like taillights on the bicycles I followed, hoping to be led back out into light and air.

-- leslie chang

[patrickboltze]

A video of a talk by Leslie T. Chang on female migrant workers in China, just like my previous post. This time Chang focuses on how moving from rural Western China to the urban centers of Eastern China in search of factory jobs has changed the personal lives of the women who took this step. It's especially interesting to see how dating has changed for the women and how different they think about marriage compared to their parents. That part is from 12:44 mins. to 20 mins.; the view of the parents is explained from 6:26 mins. to 7:21 mins. The whole video is 45 mins.

[patrickboltze]

This one's about globalization, specifically about migrant workers in factories in China. Leslie T. Chang, former China correspondent for "The Wall Street Journal", wrote a book called "Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China". In the video above Chang talks about something she found out in her book: that most of the female migrant workers in China to whom Chang has talked see their hard factory jobs as an improvement compared to the lives they left behind. That perspective seems quite different from common Western views on how Chinese factory workers feel about their situation. Chang's talk is informative and thought-provoking, and even witty at times. The video is 14:26 mins.

[journolist]

In the ongoing debate about globalization, what's been missing is the voices of workers -- the millions of people who migrate to factories in China and other emerging countries to make goods sold all over the world. Reporter Leslie T. Chang sought out women who work in one of China's booming megacities, and tells their stories.