Category: books
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{Written by Jason G. Coe, this review is part of Issue 40 (June/July 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Christopher B. Patterson, Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific, Rutgers University Press, 2018. 256 pgs. Collective…
![[Review] Systems of Identification: Christopher B. Patterson’s Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/transitive.png)
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{Written by Kate Rogers, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Stephanie Han, Swimming in Hong Kong, Willow Spring Books, 2017. 134 pgs. On the surface, “Swimming in Hong…
![[REVIEW] “Connection and Marginalisation: Stephanie Han’s 𝑆𝑤𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝐻𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝐾𝑜𝑛𝑔” by Kate Rogers](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/swimming-in-hong-kong1.png)
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{Written by Goh Cheng Fai Zach, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Malachi Edwin Vethamani (author), Complicated Lives, Maya Press, 2016. 112 pgs. Malachi Edwin Vethamani (editor), Malchin…
![[REVIEW] “A Review of Two Books of Malaysian Poetry: 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝐿𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑠 and 𝑀𝑎𝑙𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑛 𝑇𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡” by Goh Cheng Fai Zach](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/malachi-edwin-vethamani.jpg)
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{Written by Michael Tsang, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Wesley Leon Aroozoo (author), Miki Hawkinson (translator), I Want to Go Home, Math Paper Press, 2017. 222 pgs.…
![[REVIEW] “Memory, Trauma, Love: Wesley Leon Aroozoo’s 𝐼 𝑊𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝐺𝑜 𝐻𝑜𝑚𝑒／帰りたい” by Michael Tsang](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/i-want-to-go-home.png)
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{Written by Kevin Tan Kwan Wei, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Warran Kalasegaran, Lieutenant Kurosawa’s Errand Boy, Epigram Books, 2017. 336 pgs. Warran Kalasegaran’s debut novel, Lieutenant…
![[REVIEW] “Burying the Spoils of War: Warran Kalsegaran’s 𝐿𝑖𝑒𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝐾𝑢𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑎𝑤𝑎’𝑠 𝐸𝑟𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐵𝑜𝑦” by Kevin Tan Kwan Wei](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ebfp-errandboy_cvf_300_1024x1.jpg)
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{Written by Matt Turner, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Paul French, Bloody Saturday: Shanghai’s Darkest Day, Penguin, 2017. 116 pgs. Most general summaries of Shanghai are too…
![[Review] Shanghai Swan Song: Paul French’s Bloody Saturday: Shanghai’s Darkest Day](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/bloody-saturday.jpg)
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{Written by Wong Wen Pu, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Boey Kim Cheng, Gull Between Heaven and Earth, Epigram Books, 2017. 288 pgs. The Chinese are never…
![[Review] Longing for Home: Boey Kim Cheng’s Gull Between Heaven and Earth](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/gull1.png)
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{Written by Brian Haman, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Mohamed Latiff Mohamed (author), Nazry Bahrawi (translator), Lost Nostalgia, Ethos Books, 2017. 200 pgs. One of modernity’s defining…
![[REVIEW] “There Is Much that His Narratives Can Offer the World: Mohamed Latiff Mohamed’s 𝐿𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑁𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑔𝑖𝑎” by Brian Haman](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/lost_big.jpg)
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{Written by Ilaria Maria Sala, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Wu He (author), Michael Berry (translator), Remains of Life, Columbia University Press, 2017. 352 pgs. Remains of…
![[REVIEW] “Remembering the Musha Incident: Wu He’s 𝑅𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒” by Ilaria Maria Sala](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/remains.jpg)
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{Written by Rochelle Potkar, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Kate Rogers, Out of Place, Aeolous House, 2017. 65 pgs. Kate Rogers’ latest collection of poetry, Out of…
![[REVIEW] The Solution Is to Read Slowly: Kate Rogers’s Out of Place](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/out-of-place1.jpg)
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{Written by Matt Turner, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Kaitlin Solimine, Empire of Glass, Ig Publishing, 2017. 297 pgs. When Wang Guanmiao, future husband of Huang Li-ming,…
![[Review] Revolutionary Practice: Kaitlin Solimine’s Empire of Glass](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/empire-of-glass1.png)
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{Written by Maja Milatovic, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Lachlan Brown, Lunar Inheritance, Giramondo Publishing Company, 2017. 96 pgs. Questions of identity and self-definition hold a special…
![[REVIEW] “Shifting Terrains: Movement and Identity in Lachlan Brown’s 𝐿𝑢𝑛𝑎𝑟 𝐼𝑛ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒” by Maja Milatovic](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/lunar-inheritance_brown.png)
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{Written by Jason S Polley, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} 📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Henry Wei Leung, Goddess of Democracy:…
![[REVIEW] “Eloquence, Anger, Sincerity—Henry Wei Leung’s 𝐺𝑜𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐷𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑐𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑦: 𝐴𝑛 𝑂𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑝𝑦 𝐿𝑦𝑟𝑖𝑐” by Jason S Polley](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/leung-goddess-cover-21.jpg)
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{Written by Mark Stevenson, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Nguyễn Hưng Quốc and Nhã Thuyên (editors), Poems of Lê Văn Tài, Nguyễn Tôn Hiệt & Phan Quỳnh…
![[Review] Three Vietnamese Voices in Australia: Poems of Lê Văn Tài, Nguyễn Tôn Hiệt & Phan Quỳnh](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/vagabond.jpg)
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{Written by Eleanor Goodman, this review is part of Issue 39 (April 2018) of Cha.} {Return to Cha Review of Books and Films.} Richard Berengarten, Changing, Shearsman Books, 2016, 563 pgs. What should one make of the Yijing (易經), that book that…
![[REVIEW] “Rich and Varied: Richard Berengarten’s 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔” by Eleanor Goodman](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/yi.jpg)
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We are currently looking for books on or about Hong Kong to review in the “Writing Hong Kong” edition of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, scheduled for publication in December 2017. We welcome submissions of review copies from publishers, authors…
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As most readers of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal will know, 1 July 2017 will mark the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China. This year also happens to be the tenth anniversary of our publication. And so while…
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[Click image to enlarge] In Ways of Seeing, John Berger answers: When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can…
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In Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence (1997), Geoff Dyer answers: I also thought of knocking on the door of our old house, explaining that I was born there, that I lived there until I was eleven,…
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In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins answers: A stable thing is a collection of atoms that is permanent enough or common enough to deserve a name. It may be a unique collection of atoms, such as the Matterhorn, that lasts…
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In her Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and The Imagination 1830-1880, Isobel Armstrong has this wonderful reflection on ‘black’ and ‘white’: White paper in full moonlight is darker than black satin in daylight, or a dark object with the sun shining…
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In The Anatomy of Influence (2011), Harold Bloom reminisces about W.H. Auden: I treasure ruefully some memories of W.H. Auden that go back to the middle 1960s, when he arrived in New Haevn to give a reading of his poems at Ezra…
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From Harold Bloom’s The Anatomy of Influence (2011), p. 249: “Naming” (as in Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin) is closer to the real concerns of literature. I am moved here by my own splendid name of “Bloom,” particularly since my personal…
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Christmas decoration from Joan in 2009. What is your favourite ‘snowflakes’ moment in literature? Tell me. Mine is: London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the…
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0 The quotes below are from Benjamin Markovits’s Childish Loves (2011). Some are from the ‘contemporary’ section and some from the 18thC and 19thC pastiche. Can you tell? (In my day maybe half the English department, and a quarter of the history…
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–W.H. Mallock’s A Human Document (1892).The quotes below are from the shorter New York version. “how deep in the mud must a woman walk before a man considers her progress interesting?” p. iv “you excite expectations, though you have not yet…
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“Odysseus and Penelope” (1563) by Francesco Primaticcio From Homer’s Odyssey (Book 23): For built into the well-constructed bedstead is a great symbol which I made myselfwith no one else. A long-leaved olive bush was growing in the yard. It was…
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Kim Newman in Anno Dracula (2011 [1991]) answers: The Chinese movie tradition of the hopping vampire (jiang shi or geung si) is one of the odder strains of vampirism. I saw Ricky Lau’s Mr Vampire (1985) in London’s Chinatown before the…
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James Joyce in Ulysses (1922) answers: A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if unexpectedly encountering female acquaintances in remote places at incustomary hours: quiet reflections…
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Jonathan Safran Foer wrote his first novel Everything is Illuminated (2002) when he was only 25.Some quotes from the book: 1. But first I am burdened to recite my good appearance. p. 3 2. … because unless I do not want…