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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Jenny Xie, Holding Pattern, Riverhead Books, 2023. 288 pgs. Jenny Xie’s novel Holding Pattern follows 28-year-old Kathleen Cheng as she returns home to Oakland, California, where she is roped…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Karen Tei Yamashita, Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Coffee House Press, 1990. 212 pgs. Through the Arc of the Rain Forest opens with a memory—a memory, that…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Sayantani Dasgupta, Brown Women Have Everything: Essays on (Dis)comfort and Delight, The University of North Carolina Press, 2024. 180 pgs. When you cheerfully but firmly believe that your brown-woman…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Zhang Yimou (director), Raise the Red Lantern, 1991. 125 min. Raise the Red Lantern, directed by Zhang Yimou and based on Su Tong’s novella Wives and Concubines (1987), begins…
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Editor’s note: Read an excerpt from Lydia Kwa’s A Dream Wants Waking HERE. Lydia Kwa, A Dream Wants Waking, Buckrider Books, 2023. 226 pgs. In my latest novel A Dream Wants Waking (Buckrider Books, 2023), excerpted here, there is a…
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Editor’s note: Read Lydia Kwa’s essay “Alternative Intelligence: On Brains, Being and the Nonhuman” HERE. Lydia Kwa, A Dream Wants Waking, Buckrider Books, 2023. 226 pgs. Dr. Wen sits down at her desk and checks her messages, monitors the electrolyte levels…
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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Pawo Choyning Dorji (director), The Monk and the Gun, 2023. 107 min. The Kingdom of Bhutan, 2006. Bhutan enters the modern world, becoming the last country in the world…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Shuang Xuetao (author), Jeremy Tiang (translator), Rouge Street: Three Novellas, Metropolitan Books, 2022. 216 pgs. Over the past few years, China has seen a resurgence of interest in its…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Click HERE to read all entries in Cha on Life Ceremony. Sayaka Murata (author), Ginny Tapley Takemori (translator), Life Ceremony, Granta Books, 2022. 266 pgs. A human heart, resting on a bed of rice noodles,…


![[FIRST IMPRESSIONS] “The Science of Intimacy: Jenny Xie’s 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑃𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛” by Anna Chung](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/holding-pattern-riverhead-books-1.jpg?w=993)
![[REVIEW] “A Stage for Life and Death: Karen Tei Yamashita’s 𝑇ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑟𝑐 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡” by Anna Chung](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/through-the-arc-of-the-rain-forest.png?w=683)
![[REVIEW] “Expanding Our World: Sayantani Dasgupta’s 𝐵𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑊𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛 𝐻𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔” by Donna Miscolta](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/brown-women.jpg?w=970)
![[FIRST IMPRESSIONS] “The Absence of Female Desire and Patriarchal Oppression: Zhang Yimou’s 𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑑 𝐿𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛” by Fathima M](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/raise-the-red-lantern_cha_banner.jpeg?w=1024)
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Alternative Intelligence: On Brains, Being and the Nonhuman” by Lydia Kwa](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/a-dream-wants-waking-lydia-kwa.jpg?w=1000)
![Protected: [EXCLUSIVE] “Ashen and Split: A Correspondence with Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng” by Alex Tan](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/qnh_history-draft.png?w=1024)
![[REVIEW] “Democracy Should Be Thought of as a Verb: Pawo Choyning Dorji’s 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑜𝑛𝑘 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑢𝑛” by Jennifer Eagleton](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/pawo-choyning-dorji-.jpg?w=1024)
![[REVIEW] “Finding Hope in Despair: Shuang Xuetao’s 𝑅𝑜𝑢𝑔𝑒 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑡” by Kammy Lee](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/rouge-street-three-novellas.jpg?w=971)
![[REVIEW] “A Hearty Feast: Food, Cannibalism, and the Human Condition in Sayaka Murata’s 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝐶𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑦” by Lucy Hamilton](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/life-ceremony.jpg?w=1000)