"Carefully balancing cool observation and compassion, Chong writes extraordinary history and gives voice to the Chinese immigrant experience."--ALA Booklist.

An evocative, multi-generational tale of a family haunted by the death of a young concubine. For fans of Dinah Jefferies and Amy Tan. In 1930s Malaya a sixteen-year-old girl, dreaming of marriage to her sweetheart, is sold as a concubine to a rich old man desperate for an heir. Trapped, and bullied by his spiteful wife, Yu Lan plans to escape with her baby son, despite knowing that they will pursue her to the ends of the earth. Four generations later, her great-grandson, Nick, will return to Malaysia, looking for the truth behind the facade of a house cursed by the unhappy past. Nothing can prepare him for what he will find. This exquisitely rich novel brings to life a vanished world – a world of abandoned ghost houses, inquisitive monkeys, smoky temples and a panoply of gods and demons. A world where a poor girl can be sold to fulfil a rich man's dream. But though he can buy her body, he can never capture her soul, nor quench her spirit. WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: 'Compelling, atmospheric and emotional' 'Well-written, compelling ... A tale of duty, treachery, misery and superstition' 'Wonderfully drawn characters, searing emotion, powerful intensity and nail-biting drama'.

‘Characters that jump from the page with an entertaining and engaging plot ... Domhnall’s novel ties Ireland to Istanbul in a surprising and hilarious way. The perfect antidote to a chilly winter.’ ’ – Áine Toner, Editor, Woman’s Way ‘Full of Irish nostalgia. Hilarious, charming and a little bit bonkers – I loved it!’ – Jennifer Zamparelli, 2FM Colin Saint James hates his older brother, Freddie - and for good reason. A true psychopath, Freddie has been hell-bent on destroying Colin's happiness since before he was born! Never one to admit defeat, Colin searches for opportunities to get one up on his sibling, even just once. When the heats for the final ever Housewife of the Year competition are announced, Colin sees his chance. The only problem is he needs a wife. Luckily, he lives next door to Navan's best-looking woman, Azra, who happens to be single and anxious to get a ring on her finger. But Azra is also a Turkish concubine and she and Colin don't exactly see eye-to-eye over her nocturnal activities. Will Colin be able to park his reservations about his X-rated neighbour if it gives him the chance to emerge triumphant over Freddie for once in his life?

"Finalist for the 1994 Governor General's Award" "The Concubine's Children" is the story of a family cleaved in two for the sake of a father's dream. There's Chan Sam, who left an "at home" wife in China to earn a living in "Gold Mountain"--North America. There's May-ying, the wilful, seventeen-year-old concubine he bought, sight unseen, who labored in tea houses of west coast Chinatowns to support the family he would have in Canada, and the one he had in China. It was the concubine's third daughter, the author's mother, who unlocked the past for her daughter, whose curiosity about some old photographs ultimately reunited a family divided for most of the last century.

Through close readings grounded in the socio-historical context of each work, Ty studies how authors and filmmakers meet the gaze of the dominant culture and respond to the assumptions and meanings commonly associated with Orientalized, visible bodies. Ty does not survey Asian Canadian and Asian America literature, but presents readings of selected texts that actively engage with issues of otherness, visibility, and identification. Many of them, she says, are in the process of working out how larger issues of representation, power, and history affect Asian North American subjectivity. Parts of the work have been published previously.

The Concubine's Children is the story of a family cleaved in two for the sake of a father’s dream. In 1913, Chan Sam left an “at home” wife in China to earn a living in “Gold Mountain.” Eleven years later, May-ying, the wilful, seventeen-year-old concubine he bought, sight unseen, travels to join him where she labors in tea houses of west coast Chinatowns to support the family in Canada, and the one in China. It was the concubine’s third daughter, the author’s mother, who unlocked the past for her daughter whose curiosity about some old photographs ultimately reunited a family divided for most of the last century. Heartfelt and beautifully written, The Concubine's Children is an inspiring story of the sacrifice that tore a family apart and the love that bound them back together.

Emlyn Eisenach uses a wide range of sources, including the richly detailed and previously unexplored records of nearly two hundred marriage-related disputes from the bishop’s court of Verona, to illuminate family and social relations in early modern northern Italy. Arguing against the common emphasis on the growth of law and government in this period, her study emphasizes the fluidity of the principles that governed marriage and its dissolution, and deepens our understanding of the patriarchal family and its complex relationship with gender and status during the sixteenth century. Peopled by characters from across the social spectrum of the city of Verona and its contado, Eisenach’s study moves between stories about specific individuals—serving girls seeking honorable marriage through the unlikely route of concubinage, peasant men in search of independence from their fathers, and aristocratic wives seeking revenge against adulterous husbands—and broader analyses of social, economic, and geographical patterns of behavior. She shows how the Veronese at all social levels attempted to better their familial and personal fortunes by creatively molding wedding rituals to fit their particular circumstances, or engaging in the significant but until now little understood practices of concubinage, clandestine marriage, or informal marriage dissolution. Eisenach also evaluates the first half-century of religious reforms in Verona as the leading pre-Tridentine bishop Gian Matteo Giberti and his successors challenged common practices and understandings in sermons, treatises, confessionals, and court. Emphasizing the limitations of what the religious authorities could impose on the people, she explores how learned and popular notions of marriage, family, and gender shaped each other as they were put into action in the strategies of individual Veronese.

Xuya Zhao runs from America to China, running away from her American problems. However, China is full of surprises for her, all kinds: the secrets her family has kept over the years, the unbreakable bond with her girlhood buddies, the magic power of her grandmother, the mystery of the jade pendants, the reunions and encounters with friends, sweethearts, acquaintances, and old enemies. Now she has a chance to settle those unsettled en en yuan yuan (passions and resentments) from the Cultural Revolution and to make sense of her complicated lives in both China and America. Thus, her return-home adventure turns into a journey of self-rediscovery.

An ambitious general study of the development of marriage, family and conjugal roles in the change from hoe to plough agriculture, relating African society to Asian and European.

All national identities are somewhat fluid, held together by collective beliefs and practices as much as official territory and borders. In the context of the Palestinians, whose national status in so many instances remains unresolved, the articulation and 'imagination' of national identity is particularly urgent. This book explores the ways that Palestinian intellectuals, artists, activists and ordinary citizens 'imagine' their homeland, examining the works of key Palestinian thinkers and writers such as Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Ghassan Kanafani and Naji Al Ali. Deploying Benedict Anderson's notion of 'Imagined Communities' and Edward Soja's theory of 'Third Space', Tahrir Hamdi argues that the imaginative construction of Palestine is a key element in the Palestinians' ongoing struggle. An interdisciplinary work drawing upon critical theory, postcolonial studies and literary analysis, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Palestine and Middle East studies and Arabic literature

If love could be betrayed, then it was only because the love was not deep enough! When revenge comes, do you have to change your original plan? His former lover was now his enemy! How can you talk about our country under heaven when you're bathing in blood ... Inside and outside the palace walls, my heart leaves you a blank space. [If you are familiar with the art, I will do it myself ...]