Author: Suki Kim
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307720667
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
A haunting account of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields—except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has gone undercover as a missionary and a teacher. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them English, all under the watchful eye of the regime. Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues—evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. As the weeks pass, she is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. At the same time, they offer Suki tantalizing glimpses of their private selves—their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. She in turn begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own—at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. But when Kim Jong-il dies, and the boys she has come to love appear devastated, she wonders whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged. Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life in the world's most unknowable country, and at the privileged young men she calls "soldiers and slaves."
Author: Suki Kim
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429923784
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
A striking first novel about the dark side of the American Dream Suzy Park is a twenty-nine-year-old Korean American interpreter for the New York City court system. Young, attractive, and achingly alone, she makes a startling and ominous discovery during one court case that forever alters her family's history. Five years prior, her parents--hardworking greengrocers who forfeited personal happiness for their children's gain--were brutally murdered in an apparent robbery of their fruit and vegetable stand. Or so Suzy believed. But the glint of a new lead entices Suzy into the dangerous Korean underworld, and ultimately reveals the mystery of her parents' homicide. An auspicious debut about the myth of the model Asian citizen, The Interpreter traverses the distance between old worlds and new, poverty and privilege, language and understanding.
Author: Anthony Rapp
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743269772
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Anthony Rapp's first audition for the workshop production of Rent begins a journey that takes him all the way to Broadway as the star of the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, experiencing tragedy, loss, and enlightenment along the way. When Rent's brilliant young creator, Jonathan Larson, dies suddenly of an aneurysm the night before the show's first performance, Anthony and the rest of the cast are devastated and open the show that night only to friends and family, performing a tribute to their dear friend and gifted artist. Shortly thereafter, Anthony's mom receives a devastating cancer diagnosis and during the Anthony's first year on Broadway as Mark in Rent, he makes frequent trips to visit her, hoping for her to come to terms with his being gay, as he comes to terms with her impending death. With atmospheric, nostalgic flashbacks to his childhood in small-town Joliet, Illinois, he shares his first experiences discovering his sexuality, the tension it created with his mother, and his struggle into adulthood to gain her acceptance. This is a beautiful, haunting memoir of the world of theatre, the love of son for his mother, sexual awakening, and maturity won at far too early an age.
Author: Beth Revis
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101627840
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
What would you do to bring back someone you love? After the unexpected loss of his girlfriend, a boy suffering from delusions believes he can travel through time to save her in this gripping new novel from New York Times bestselling author Beth Revis. "A story that’s both heartbreaking and hopeful." —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Revis’s account of grief, loss, first love, and anguish, presented through a lens of mental illness, is a must-read.” —VOYA, starred review “A heartrending, beautifully complex look at mental illness, life, and loss. I tore through the pages, and, days later, this story still has a hold on me.” —Alexandra Bracken, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Darkest Minds series and Passenger Seventeen-year-old Bo has always had delusions that he can travel through time. When he was ten, Bo claimed to have witnessed the Titanic hit an iceberg, and at fifteen, he found himself on a Civil War battlefield, horrified by the bodies surrounding him. So when his concerned parents send him to a school for troubled youth, Bo assumes he knows the truth: that he’s actually attending Berkshire Academy, a school for kids who, like Bo, have "superpowers." At Berkshire, Bo falls in love with Sofia, a quiet girl with a tragic past and the superpower of invisibility. Sofia helps Bo open up in a way he never has before. In turn, Bo provides comfort to Sofia, who lost her mother and two sisters at a very young age. But even the strength of their love isn’t enough to help Sofia escape her deep depression. After she commits suicide, Bo is convinced that she's not actually dead. He believes that she's stuck somewhere in time — that he somehow left her in the past, and now it's his job to save her. Not since Ned Vizzini’s It’s Kind of a Funny Story has there been such a heartrending depiction of mental illness. In her first contemporary novel, Beth Revis guides readers through the mind of a young man struggling to process his grief as he fights his way through his delusions. As Bo becomes more and more determined to save Sofia, he has to decide whether to face his demons head-on, or succumb to a psychosis that will let him be with the girl he loves.
Author: Dan Matovina
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780965712224
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 478
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Book Description
Book and CD. The story of Badfinger is among the most tragic in the history of rock'n'roll. They were championed by the Beatles, yet their two principal songwriters committed suicide. An expose of the music business, Without You also serves as a tribute to the band's work. This revised edition includes a CD of over 72 minutes of music and interviews, 300 photos, complete listing of studio dates and concerts, and a discography.
Author: Peter Bognanni
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 0735228051
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
When tragedy strikes, Tess drops out of school and moves in with her funeral director dad, forcing her to examine life, death, and the boy she thought she knew and loved in a brand new light.
Author: John Vivian Everard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781931368254
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"Coverage of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea all too often focuses solely on nuclear proliferation, military parades and the personality cults around its leaders. As British Ambassador to North Korea, John Everard had the rare experience of living there from 2006 ... to 2008 ... While stationed in Pyongyang, Everard's travels around the DPRK provided him with numerous opportunities to meet and converse with North Koreans. [This] goes beyond the official North Korea to unveil the human dimension of life in that hermetic nation. Everard recounts his impressions of the country and its people, his interactions with them, and his observations on their way of life. He provides a picture as well of the life of foreigners in this closed society, considers how the DPRK evolved to its current state, and discusses the failure of current approaches to tackle the challenges that it throws up"--Publisher's description.
Author: Joshua Henkin
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307277186
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
It's July 4, 2005, and the Frankel family is descending upon their beloved summer home in the Berkshires. They have gathered to memorialize Leo, the youngest of the four siblings and an intrepid journalist killed on that day in 2004, while on assignment in Iraq. But Leo’s parents are adrift in a grief that’s tearing apart their forty-year marriage, his sisters are struggling with their own difficulties, and his widow has arrived from California bearing a secret. Here award-winning writer Joshua Henkin unfolds this family story, as, over the course of three days, the Frankels contend with sibling rivalries and marital feuds, with volatile women and silent men — and, ultimately, with the true meaning of family.
Author: Mary Karr
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062223089
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well. For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told— and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate. Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms—a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft.
Author: Jenny Han
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416995560
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
In Jenny Han's follow-up to The Summer I Turned Pretty, Belly finds out what comes after falling in love. Now available in paperback!
