The Snakehead : An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe —2009 - 252 Pages

The Snakehead : An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe —2009 - 252 Pages

Earlier this month a read a master work of narrative nonfiction  Empire of Pain : The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe - 

Through the Chicago Public Library I was able to borrow another work by Patrick Radden Keefe, The  Snakehead : An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream,focusing on the trafficking of Undocumented immigrants from China to the New York City..  The leaders in this enterprise are called "snakeheads"

"In this thrilling panorama of real-life events, the bestselling author of Empire of Pain investigates a secret world run by a surprising criminal: a charismatic middle-aged grandmother, who from a tiny noodle shop in New York’s Chinatown managed a multi-million dollar business smuggling people.

“Reads like a mashup of The Godfather and Chinatown, complete with gun battles, a ruthless kingpin and a mountain of cash. Except that it’s all true.” —Time" From the publisher Penquin Random House

 

Keefe reveals the inner workings of Sister Ping’s complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of illegal immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them. Grand in scope yet propulsive in narrative force, The Snakehead is both a kaleidoscopic crime story and a brilliant exploration of the ironies of immigration in America.

In 1993, a cargo ship called the Golden Venture ran aground on a sandbar off the Rockaway Peninsula in New York. The ship, which had set off four months earlier from Bangkok, had stopped in Kenya and rounded the Cape of Good Hope to reach America. It carried a desperate cargo: 286 undocumented people from Fuzhou in China, who had made the voyage in the clothes they stood up in, without any kind of adequate sanitation on board, and little food or water. With the ship stranded offshore, most of the migrants, stick-thin and delirious, jumped into the freezing sea – it was 2am – to try to reach the promised land, the lights of Coney Island visible across the bay. Ten people drowned, the rest were picked up by the quickly scrambled authorities on the beach to be held in various prisons, some for four years, while they sought asylum. About half were eventually deported.

The Book goes back to Fuzhou China showing us why people would go into huge debt to try to get to America.  Keefe explains the complex international criminal conspiracies involved.  He follows the lives of the people who remained in America and those deported as well as Americans dedicated to helping them.

Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of the New York Times bestsellers Rogues, Empire of Pain and Say Nothing, as well as two earlier nonfiction books: The Snakehead and Chatter. 

Patrick started contributing to The New Yorker in 2006. He received the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing in 2014. Say Nothing received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, as well as the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and was selected by the New York Times as one of the “20 Best Books of the 21st Century.” Empire of Pain was awarded the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the FT Business Book of the Year. 

He is also the writer and host of WIND OF CHANGE, an 8-part podcast, which investigates the strange convergence of espionage and heavy metal music during the Cold War, and was named the #1 podcast of 2020 by The Guardian and Entertainment Weekly.  

Patrick grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts and went to college at Columbia. He received masters degrees from Cambridge University and the London School of Economics, and a law degree from Yale. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, and fellowships from the New America Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.  

Empire of Pain : The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe - 2021- 633 Pages

  Empire of Pain : The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe - 2021- 633 Pages 

"NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From the prize-winning and bestselling author of Say Nothing." From 

After reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver set in Lee County Virginia during the opiod epidemic brought on by the actions of a pharmaceutical company owned by the fabulously rich Sackler family, I wanted to learn more about the causes and effects of the epidemic.

Empire of Pain : The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe provides in an epic work of narrative nonfiction is the essential work.

 

 The Sackler name has adorned the walls of many storied institutions—Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, but the source of the family fortune was vague—until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis. Eventually most of these institutions removed the Sackler name from their walls not wanting to be associated with them.

Empire of Pain is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. It follows the family’s early success with Valium to the much more potent OxyContin, marketed with a ruthless technique of co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug’s addictiveness. Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability.

The Sacklers spent upwards of a hundred million dollars in an attempt to discredit their accusers and avoid any personal impact.

We encounter people trying to help the victims of the Sacklers, ultimately about 600,000 deaths, employees of the Sacklers  (they did treat loyal employees well and top sales representatives making huge salaries). The Sacklers, through proxies, bought off Federal Drug Agency employees , offering government employees making $50,000 a year  ten times that to go to work for them if they would back away from legal pursuits of the family.

"PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of the New York Times bestseller Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, was selected as one of the ten best books of 2019 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal, and was named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the decade by Entertainment Weekly. His previous books are The Snakehead and Chatter. His work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing."  From Penquin Random House 

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio- 2020 -

 

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio- 2020 - 

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.

FINALIST FOR THE NBCC JOHN LEONARD AWARD • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOOK RIOT, LIBRARY JOURNAL.

According to recent data about 10.5 million undocumented migrants lived in the United States in 2021, which constitutes roughly 3% of the total US population . Despite undocumented migrants’ impact on US society and its economy (especially in the agriculture, construction, and service work sectors and by paying billions of dollars in taxes each year), their voices rarely receive a platform due to a mix of the need for protective invisibility as well as xenophobia and racism.

 Villavícencío begin with a gripping vignette set during the night of the 2016 US presidential election. The author powerfully declares that she “understood that night would be her end, but she would not be ushered to an internment camp in sweatpants” . The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency propelled Villavícencío to profile migrants in ways that would reflect her family who are more than either “sufferers or dreamers” . Stressing her collaborators’ precarity, the author elucidates her methodology for collecting others’ stories: she changed all names in the book, did not make voice recordings of conversations, and destroyed all notes and transcriptions . The end result is a work that skillfully mixes the genres of political testimonio, biography, ethnography, and memoir. Having lived as an undocumented migrant herself and not identifying as a journalist set Villavícencío apart from other authors, as she cannot help but get deeply involved and “try to solve shit the way an immigrant’s kids try to solve shit for their parents because these people are all my parents” . She is open about her own mental health issues.

The Undocumented Americans was a very revelatory work for me.  I had no idea Undocumented people, subject to deportation, were on the front lines in the clean up efforts at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attack. In the author's account of the life of Undocumented immigrants living on Staten Island, I learned how vulnerable they are to exploitation by unscrupulous employers and how many were highly educated.  I was fascinated to learn that oatmeal, a staple of my diet, is considered as a sacred food by Vodou healers,  Villavicencio explains why undocumented Hatians spractice Vodou beliefs as part of an anti-colonial heritage.

In a chapter devoted to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan the author details how years of neglect and outright lies caused the many undocumented immigrants to be forced to drink water made toxic by lead pipes,  

Villavicencio focuses a lot on the heavy use of alcohol  by undocumented immigrants as a means of escape.  As a highly educated person many immigrants were leary about talking to her.  It was very gratifying to see how she developed close personal relationship among undocumented immigrant women.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is the author of the National Book Award finalist The Undocumented Americans. Her work, which focuses on race, culture, and immigration, has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, Elle, n+1, The New Inquiry, Interview, and on NPR.

The Book Lovers Library by Madeline Martin - 2024 - 396 Pages

 

The Book Lovers Library by Madeline Martin - 2024 - 396 Pages

The Book Lovers Library is the fourth novel  by Madeline Martin upon which I have posted.  

In December of 2021 I read The Last Bookstore in London by Madeline Martin, set in London during the Blitz years of World War Two. I loved this deeply moving vivid account of the impact of Germany's bombing of London on a small Bookstore.

Last year I read her The Libraian Spy set during World War Two in Paris as well as Lyon and Lisbon. Paris is occupied by the Germans. Portugal is neutral but in danger of being invaded. People come from all over Europe to Lisbon hoping to get a visa to go to America.

Last Month I read her The Keeper of Hidden Books, set, mostly in Warsaw during it occupation during World War Two by the Germans, centered on a library.

The Book Lovera! Library takes place in England during World War Two.  The library is a subscription based business.  I liked this book so much,  was drawn so deeply into the lives of the characters that I became afraid for them.

In Nottingham, England, widow Emma Taylor finds herself in desperate need of a job. She and her beloved daughter, Olivia, have always managed just fine on their own, but with the legal restrictions prohibiting widows with children from most employment opportunities, she's left with only one option: persuading the manageress at Boots' Booklover's Library to take a chance on her with a job.

When the threat of war in England becomes a reality, Olivia must be evacuated to the countryside. In the wake of being separated from her daughter, Emma seeks solace in the unlikely friendships she forms with her neighbors and coworkers, and a renewed sense of purpose through the recommendations she provides to the library's quirky regulars. But the job doesn't come without its difficulties. Books are mysteriously misshelved and disappearing, and the work at the lending library forces her to confront the memories of her late father and the bookstore they once owned together before a terrible accident.

As the Blitz intensifies in Nottingham and Emma fights to reunite with her daughter, she must learn to depend on her community and the power of literature more than ever,

I really liked Emma's neighbours in the tenement house where she lived, her land lady Mrs Pickering with her adorable dog Tubby, the seemingly gruff older Mr  Sanderson, most of her colleagues at the ,library as well as some of the library  (I learned how a lending library worked, there is an explanation of them by the author)

You will love the ending.   One of the marvellous aspects of the work is all the novels mentioned, watching Olivia learn to love reading.  Ok and Tubby is a joy for dog lovers.

. Madeline Martin is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance with books translated into over twenty-five languages. She lives in sunny Florida with her husband (known as Mr. Awesome), two amazing daughters, and two very spoiled cats.

The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain- 2015 - 244 Pages

 The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain- 2015 - 244 Pages

2015 Jewish Book of the Year.

"The Gustav Sonata is a work of extreme and painful beauty, the story of one profound love amid many failed relationships, and of the conflict between passion and self-control. Rose Tremain is one of the very finest British novelists, and deserves, with this brilliant novel, to reach a wide new audience."

― Salman Rushdie

The Gustav Sonata” primarily takes place in pre and post-WWII Switzerland. It offers an interesting slant on the war and the meaning of neutrality by focusing on the lives of two different families affected by the greater conflict. It’s a deeply immersive story about loyalty during times of conflict, ambition, betrayal and family strife.

The novel centres around a Swiss boy named Gustav whose single mother Emilie struggles to make ends meet while working in an Emmental cheese factory. His father Erich died at an early age, but was once an assistant police chief during the tense period in the lead up to the war. In 1948, a six year old Gustav befriends a new Jewish boy named Anton at school. Emilie resents her son’s companion because she blames their diminished circumstances on the influx of Jewish refugees. Despite his mother’s objections, Gustav and Anton form a special bond which continues throughout their lives. Questions raised about how Emilie got to this difficult point are answered in the second part of the novel which moves back to 1937 to recount her tumultuous marriage with Erich. The third part of the book then skips far forward to the end of the 20th century to show how dilemmas about his family and his country’s past still resonate for Gustav in his later years.

The Gustav Sonata is a very powerful account, with turns I never saw coming but once they happened it was inevitable and perfect.

Rose Tremain's best-selling novels have won many awards, including the Baileys Women's Prize, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Prix Femina Etranger. Restoration, the first of her novels to feature Robert Merivel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer Richard Holmes.

A Post in Observation of The 132nd Birthday of Katherine Mansfield

A post in observation of the 134 birthday of Katherine Mansfield 

Katherine Mansfield-A Getting Started Guide

As Irene Nemirovsky went to her death in a cattle car to Auschwitz, she had with her The Notebook of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield died January 9, 1923.   Like many another writer who died far too young (1888 to 1923-New Zealand) we wonder what she might have produced had she lived on another thirty years.    All of Mansfield's stories are now in the public domain so anyone can easily read them online.   I have read and posted on nearly all of her stories (the exceptions being a few very young age stories that I have not yet found online).     I have received number of E-mails asking me where one should start with Mansfield.    (I am a reader not a scholar.    I read a Mansfield story almost by accident ten  ago and fell in love with her work.   I also have read and posted on three great books about her as well.)

In observation of the anniversary of her death I have selected three Katherine Mansfield stories that will get a new reader into her work.   All of these stories are easy to read  and enjoyable.  

"Miss Brill"

Because I have a posting each one of Mansfield's stories, I found I can use my blogger stats to see which of her stories are being most widely read.  People from all over the world (including Bethlehem on Christmas Day!) have come  to my blog to read my post on "Miss Brill".   Most of the visitors were probably students so I can  for sure say "Miss Brill" is the most assigned in universities worldwide of her stories.     "Miss Brill" is my suggestion for your first (and if it comes to it your only) Katherine Mansfield story.   I have read it several times since my first  post and each time get more from my reading and continue to enjoy the experience.   The first time I read this wonderful story (about 5 pages) I was struck by how much Mansfield was able to put in a few pages and by the stunning undercutting of what I thought was my understanding of the plot as the story closes.     It is a very fun, sad, wise story.


from Katherine Mansfield journal



Villa Isola Bella, Menton, France
I mean something though. Its a very queer thing how craft comes into writing. I mean down to details. Par exemple. In Miss Brill I chose not only the length of every sentence, but even the sound of every sentence – I chose the rise and fall of every paragraph to fit her – and to fit her on that day at that very moment. After Id written it I read it aloud – numbers of times – just as one would play over a musical composition, trying to get it nearer and nearer to the expression of Miss Brill – until it fitted her.
Don't think I'm vain about the little sketch. Its the only method I wanted to explain. I often wonder whether other writers do the same. If a thing has really come off it seems to me there mustn't be one single word out of place or one word that could be taken out. Thats how I AIM at writing. It will take some time to get anywhere near there.

"The Doll''s House"

"The Doll's House" is set in the New Zealand of the 1890s.     Mansfield has a great passion for her native New Zealand.      "The Doll's House"  is a very closely observed account of children at play.   It showed me how the play of children reflects what they learn from their lives.    In the smallest of details Mansfield builds a world for us.  

"The Garden Party"

As "The Garden Party" opens Laura Sheridan under the supervision of her mother is planning a garden party.   Readers in the 1920s in England and New Zealand would be aware that a garden party was meant to be a prestigious near formal occasion and an affair that was found only among the upper classes.   One of the most coveted English society invitations was to the annual Garden party at Buckingham Palace.   Laura is supposed to be in charge but we can quickly see her mother is a bit overbearing.  Rather near the home of the Sheridan's there is what the Sheridan family views as a wretched squalid community.   Right before the party is set to begin they learn one of the workers for  their party who lives in that area was killed in an accident.   Laura wants to stop the party but her mother will not hear it.   After the party the mother has a jolly good charitable idea.   Why not pack up all the left over party food and take it to the family of the man that was killed?  (Of course with no thought to the fact that the cottagers had never eaten food like that all their lives.)   Laura goes into the area where the cottages are located.    Mansfield is such an artist that you can feel Laura's fear as she goes into this area.   It all seems dark and evil and ever so wretched.    Laura goes into the cottage and views the body of the deceased.   It is Laura's reaction to the body of the  man and the multiple interpretations that can be made of this that seem to give this story its power and lasting appeal.


"There lay a young man, fast asleep--sleeping so soundly, so deeply, that he was far, far away from them both. Oh, so remote, so peaceful. He was dreaming. Never wake him up again. His head was sunk in the pillow, his eyes were closed; they were blind under the closed eyelids. He was given up to his dream. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful. While they were laughing and while the band was playing, this marvel had come to the lane. Happy...happy...All is well, said that sleeping face. This is just as it should be. I am content."


Mansfield does not tell us what to make of this.   Is Laura just a silly rich girl who did not know that the poor have lives too or does she experience some kind of revelation when she sees the body?   Is this a mockery of  accepted views of death or is it a celebration of  them?   There is a nuch more to the story but I hope some may want to read it so I will not tell more of the plot.



I have read this story several times now and it is a marvelous account of class structures in the 1920s, among many other things.   I quoted a bit from the text so new readers can see her beautiful prose at work.

All these stories can be read at the New Zealand Electronic Text center, a great reading web page.   If you go to Youtube.com you will also find a number of videos relating to Katherine Mansfield.  

Here is a link to all of my Mansfield posts-The Reading Life Katherine Mansfield Project

http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/search/label/Katherine%20Mansfield

The best book on her life and work is Katherine Mansfield: The Story Teller by Kathleen Jones

http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/search/label/Katherine%20Mansfield

I highly recommend Katherine's Wish by Linda Lappin, a novel based on the last year of Mansfield's Life

http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/2016/02/katherine-wish-by-linda-lappin-2008.html

Morphologies Masterclass- Alison MacLeod on Katherine Mansfield 

I highly recommend this lecture - from the 2013 Manchester Literature Festival

https://youtu.be/a2DuHLQnFQM

The Katherine Mansfield Society website is a very valuable resource

https://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/

Mel u




Wine and War: the French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Don and Petie Kladstrup.- 2002 - 334 Pages

 

Wine and War: the French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Don and Petie Kladstrup.- 2002 - 334 Pages 

Very  soon after  France surrendered to the Nazis, in May of 1940, the Germans made it their goal to appropriate France's  wine.  Wine was a  important part of daily French life and the vast vineyards supported much of the population.  Top Nazis officials fancied themselves experts on wine.

 As the war went on the Germans soon required all wine to sold to Germans, served in restaurants only open to Germans.  Vineyard workers were conscripted to work in Germany.  Vital horses were taken.

Vineyard owners began to seek ways to hide their products. 

They hid their most prized wines immediately, knowing that the Germans would take them and, more importantly, not appreciate them. They built walls in their cellars, closing in the wines behind them, and had their children collect spiders so they'd spin webs to make the wall look older. Dust from old carpets were collected to put on cheap bottles to make them appear rare.

These are the true stories of vignerons who sheltered Jewish refugees in their cellars and of winemakers who risked their lives to aid the resistance. They made chemicals in secret laboratories to fuel the resistance and fled from the Gestapo when arrests became imminent.

There were treacheries too, as some of the nation's winemakers supported the Vichy regime, or the Germans themselves, and collaborated.

Don and Petie Kladstrup are former journalists who have written extensively about wine and France for numerous publications. Don, a winner of three Emmys and numerous other awards, was a foreign correspondent for ABC and CBS television news. Petie, an Overseas Press Club winner, was a newspaper journalist and more recently protocol officer for the U.S. ambassador to UNESCO. The Kladstrups divide their time between Paris and Normandy

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - 2022- 791 Pages

 Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - 2022- 791 Pages 

Demon Copperhead is set in western Virginia in the Appalacians.  It is the story of an orphan growing up in the midst of the opiod epidemic.  Kingsolver modeled it meticulously on another novel about an orphan, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.  Dickens would be proud.

A New York Times "Ten Best Books of 2022 * An Oprah's Book Club Selection * An Instant New York Times Bestseller *

 An Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller * A #1 Washington Post Bestseller

"Demon is a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even more resilient." —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

From the acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, a brilliant novel that enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero's unforgettable journey to maturity

Told my Damon (he his given a nickname of Damon), his unwed teenage mother gives birth to him in her trailer.

Kingsolver shows us the impact of the coal mines, the stripping of the forests,  the exploration of Appalacia going back two hundred years.  The only jobs are as coal miners, the schools are terrible, the health care worse and the foster system is a cruel joke.  

Purdue Pharmaceutical company has decided this would be the perfect place to market a pain killer, oxytocin which ends up furthering the destruction of the community.  Doctors get free trips for prescribing it.  Once you start on it, you are made miserable once the impact wears down.

We follow Demon through his relationship with a very abusive stepfather, the death of his mother, his time in foster care, his friendships and romances.  Football is every thing in his town and he becomes a star player.  Death and addiction rule until they don't thanks to the resliance of Damon and some help.  

You will love the ending. Like a Dickens novel, every chapter wants you waiting to find out what happens next.

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of nine bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, Prodigal Summer, and The Poisonwood Bible, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. With her husband and daughters she authored the influential Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2000 was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts. She lives with her husband on a farm in southern Appalachia.

Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley - 2024 - 233 Pages

 Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley - 2024 - 233 Pages

"The human race finds itself again under threat of a rising global fascist movement. In the United States, democracy is under attack by an authoritarian movement that has found fertile ground among the country’s conservative politicians and voters, but similar movements have found homes in the hearts and minds of people all across the globe. To understand the shape, form, and stakes of this assault, we must go back to extract lessons from our past.

Democracy requires a common understanding of reality, a shared view of what has happened, that informs ordinary citizens’ decisions about what should happen, now and in the future. Authoritarians target this shared understanding, seeking to separate us from our own history to destroy our self-understanding and leave us unmoored, resentful, and confused. By setting us against each other, authoritarians represent themselves as the sole solution.

In authoritarian countries, critical examination of those nations’ history and traditions is discouraged if not an outright danger to those who do it. And it is no accident that local and global institutions of education have become a battleground, the authoritarian right’s tip of the spear, where learning and efforts to upend a hierarchal status quo can be put to end by coercion and threats of violence. Democracies entrust schools and universities to preserve a common memory of positive change, generated by protests, social movements, and rebellions. The authoritarian right must erase this history, and, along with it, the very practice of critical inquiry that has so often been the engine of future progress.

In Erasing History, Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the authoritarian right’s attacks on education, identifies their key tactics and funders, and traces their intellectual roots. He illustrates how fears of a fascist future have metastasized, from hypothetical threat to present reality. And he shows that hearts and minds are won in our schools and universities—places, he explains, that democratic societies across the world are now ill-prepared to defend against the fascist assault currently underway.

Deeply informed and urgently needed, Erasing History is a global call to action for those who wish to preserve democracy—in America and abroad—before it is too late." From the publisher 

Jason Stanley employs details from the rise of Nazism in Germany to explain how authoritarians systematically destroy the knowledge of history, seeking to convince people they are aiming at restoring a period in which times were much better. They accuse one segment of society as out to destroy the country. In Nazi Germany it was the Jews, in India now it is Muslims, in America immigrants. Authoritarians universally vilify the LGTBQ in their societies, insist women should be first of all wives and breeders. In Russia, a totally authoritarianism culture, one man is the great leader.

In America the history of slavery was for generations taught as not harmful to the slaves. Some school text books said slaves were better off in America. In India, the role of Muslims in Indian history is not taught in schools, in Russia historical truths involving the past independence of the Ukraine have been transformed into the notion that it was always part of Russia.

In America absurdities are used to hide the genocide inflicted on Native Americans by Europeans. The American founding fathers are treated like saints. These things require a take over of how schools teach history.

  In the United States Stanley details how the governor of Florida as done all he can to turn schools into parrots for the views of trump and his sycophants.  

There is so much of great value in this book.  Sadly those supporters of authoritarians world wide, especially in America will not read this or probably any other book.

"I am the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. I am also an honorary professor at the Kyiv School of Economics, where I use my salary to support the Come Back Alive Foundation.

Before coming to Yale in 2013, I was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. I have also been a Professor at the University of Michigan (2000-4) and Cornell University (1995-2000). My PhD was earned in 1995 at the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT (Robert Stalnaker, chair), and I received my BA from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1990.

My first book is Knowledge and Practical Interests published in 2005 by Oxford University Press. It was the winner of the 2007 American Philosophical Association book prize. My second book, Language in Context, also OUP, was published in 2007. This is a collection of my papers in semantics published between 2000 and 2007 on the topic of linguistic communication and context. My third book, Know How, was published in 2011, also with OUP. My fourth book, How Propaganda Works, was published by Princeton University Press in May, 2015. It was the winner of the 2016 PROSE award for the subject area of philosophy. The proceeds from the sale of this book go to the Prison Policy Initiative. My fifth book is How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (Penguin Random House, 2018).

My last book, published in November, 2023, is The Politics of Language, co-authored with David Beaver, with Princeton University Press .  My newest book is Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, published in September, 2024 with One Signal Publishers, a division of Simon and Schuster." 

Everyone Who is Gone is Here : the United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer.-2024 -544 Pages

 Everyone Who is Gone is Here : the United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer.-2024 -544 Pages

I am very glad to begin October with Jonathan Blitzer's incredibly informative book.

"National Bestseller • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2024 • A Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Longlist Finalist 

“What an incredibly thorough documentation of the causes of the immigration crisis, the discussions that have been going on through multiple administrations.” —Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

“Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is sure to take its place as one of the definitive accounts of the U.S. and Central American immigration puzzle. . . . Hopefully, those with the power to change things will listen.” —Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post

An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate, by New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer"

Everything said by trump and his sycophants about immigration is false, much of it deliberate lies designed to terrify white Americans about millions of murders, gangsters and pet Eaters who are out to destroy America. As Blitzer explains elegantly Gangs in El Salvador,  Honduras and Guatemala originally developed when American authorities deported immigrants arrested for a crime of any kind.

Blitzer focues a lot  on El Salvador (I have been to Guatemala).  

 . . . "What could be a complex story is a stunning epic woven around the lives of four individuals seeking sanctuary from the death squads and murderous gangs that at different times dominated their homelands . . . While at times this is implicitly an indictment of the sometime short-termism and cynicism of Washington’s foreign, security and immigration policy, this is a novelistic account rather than a tract, and his tale is beautifully told. All four characters, whose lives he has followed over many years, linger in the reader’s mind.” —Financial Times  

Everyone Who is Gone is Here : the United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer will become a classic.  I thank Jonathan Blitzer for this beautiful heartbreaking and heartwarming work.

Jonathan Blitzer is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He has won a National Award for Education Reporting as well as an Edward R. Murrow Award, and was a 2021 Emerson Fellow at New America. He lives with his family in New York City.

The Reading Life Review - September 2024.

 The Reading Life Review - September 2024. 

In September I posted on two novels, a short story by Carol Shields as well as two novels.

Septemper Nonfiction 

1. The River of Doubt : Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard.—2006 -  an amazing book, combining a vivid description of the Amazon, an arduous journey with details about American political history.

2. River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana's Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon by Buddy Levy -2011  a fascinating exciting account of the first voyage by Europeans to transverse the Amazon

3.Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York by Ross Perlin - 2024 - 432 Pages

4. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis by Daniel B. Silver - 2003

September Novels

1.  Long Island by Colm Tóibín- 2024- A sequel to his Brooklyn 

2.  The Keeper of Hidden Books by Madeline Martin -2023 -413 pages 

September Short Stories

1. "Block Out" by Carol Shields - 2004

Home Countries of September Authors

1. USA- 5

2. Canada-1

3. Ireland- 1

Blog Stats 

As of today our posts have been viewed 8,012,930  times

In September we received  70,600 Pages views

Top Home Countries of September blog visitors 

1. Hong Kong

2. USA 

3. Singapore 

4. India

5. Philippines 

6. UK 

7. Netherlands 

8. Indonesia 

9. France

10. Germany 

The most viewed posts were on S. E. Asian short stories 

"Block Out" - A Shorf Story by Carol Shields - 17 Pages - Included with The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 Buriedinprint.com 

This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.

The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all.

"Blocked Out " is the 31th short story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted.

The story centers on a middle aged married couple from Ontario on a trip to Portugal. The man is a commercially successful writer of comic novels. For years prior to the death of his wife his current wife was his editor, loving him and his work.  

"THE WRITER MEERSHANK, vacationing in Portugal with his wife-cum-editor, Maybelle Spritz, became blocked. The two of them spent their first morning there exploring the coastal city of Porto, which is an airy gemlike city that, as Maybelle complained, had been severely underrated—given one lousy star in the Michelin Guide, that was all. This was plain crazy, a single star for a dozen broad sun-splashed terraces, for countless baroque churches, for the elegant iron bridges, and the lazy smoky river lined with pungent fishing boats and dark bars. Ridiculous! She was indignant. She slapped the green guidebook hard against her long thigh. Coming to Portugal had been her idea. She was the one who had thought of flight, of leaving the Ontario winter behind, who had persuaded and cajoled and weakened her husband, Meershank, and she was determined to unearth treasures for him hour by hour. Now this insult, this chintzy rating, a gorgeous city awarded one grudging star. “And just listen,” Maybelle said to Meershank, stopping in the middle of a steep, winding cobbled street to consult the despised guide. “We’re supposed to ‘note the gaily colored laundry flapping overhead.’ Laundry! I ask you. Never mind this incredible architecture all around us, we’re asked to gape at mended laundry"

Another marvelous story.

Long Island by Colm Toibin - 2024 - 304 Pages

 Long Island by Colm Toibin - 2024 - 304 Pages

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “Stunning.” —People * “Dazzling yet devastating...Tóibín is simply one of the world’s best living literary writers.” —The Boston Globe * “Momentous and hugely affecting.” —The Wall Street Journal *

From the beloved, critically acclaimed, bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving novel featuring Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work in twenty years.

Long Island is the 16th work by Colm Toibin upon which I have posted.

Long Island is a sequel to his novel Brooklyn.   Brooklyn is set in the 1950s.  It is about a young Irish woman, Eilis, who moves from rural Ireland to Brooklyn in hopes of  making a better life.

Eilis gets a job working in a big store and lives in a boarding house owned by an Irish woman and all of the other tenants are Irish women also. 

Eilis meets a man, a kind decent one but he Italian, not Irish. She goes to night school. Brooklyn is very much about the immigrant experience. It is about longing for home and the consequences of emigration on those who are left behind.  

Long Island jumps ahead twenty years.  Eilis Lacey is, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis is now forty with two teenage children. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, 

A man arrives at her door one day with such shocking news that Ellis feels a need to go back to Ireland to get away from her husband. 

The occasion is the 80th birthday of her mother. She takes her two teenage children with her.  

Lacy reconnects with her best friend and an old flame who owns a popular pub.

COLM TÓIBÍN is the author of eleven novels, including The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; and Nora Webster, as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. He was also awarded the Bodley Medal and the Würth Prize for European Literature. SimonandSchuster.com

The Keeper of Hidden Books by Madeline Martin -2023 -413 pages

 The Keeper of Hidden Books  by Madeline Martin -2023 -413 pages

This is the third novel by Madeline Martin I have had the extreme pleasure of reading.

In December of 2021 I read The Last Bookstore in London by Madeline Martin, set in London during the Blitz years of World War Two. I loved this deeply moving vivid account of the impact of Germany's bombing of London on a small Bookstore.

Last year I read her The Libraian Spy set during World War Two in Paris as well as Lyon and Lisbon. Paris is occupied by the Germans. Portugal is neutral but in danger of being invaded. People come from all over Europe to Lisbon hoping to get a visa to go to America

The Keeper of Hiden Books is set primarily in Warsaw during World War Two.  Like her other books, much of the plot action centers around the

 work of the Central characters in a library. 

Poland was the first country taken over by Nazi Germany. The Germans did all they could to destroy the culture of Poland, banning and destroying many of the books in the libraries of Warsaw.   

"The Keeper of Hidden Books is yet another expertly researched and inspiring work of historical fiction from Madeline Martin. As Zofia Nowak and her young friends fight for their fellow Polish and Jewish citizens during the horrific German occupation, they witness again and again the power of friendship and literature in even the darkest times. With her direct, brave and thoughtful manner (so wonderfully reminiscent of Jo March), loyalty and love for her Jewish best friend, and touching first love with a fellow resistance fighter, Zofia is destined to capture readers' hearts everywhere--rarely have I loved or admired a character more. A heart-pounding, illuminating, and very important addition to the canon of WWII fiction."–Natalie Jenner, bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls

I found myself caring deeply about some of people in The Keeper of Hidden Books.  Others, including all the Germans I hated.  Martin vividly brings to cinematic immediacy the way life in Warsaw keeps getting worse for the Poles and especially anyone Jewish.  

I do not want to give away much of the plot other than to say at times I was scared for the Central characters and at times elated.  I admit to enjoying death scenes of Germans and especially one collaborator.  OK and I howled over the way two tyrannical German female librarians died.

I loved this book.  Martin includes an account of her research and Warsaw history.

"Madeline Martin is a New York Times, USA Today, Publisher’s Weekly, and internationally bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance with books that have been translated into over twenty-five different languages.

She lives in sunny Florida with her two daughters (known collectively as the minions), two incredibly spoiled cats and a man so wonderful he’s been dubbed Mr. Awesome. She is a die-hard history lover who will happily lose herself in research any day. When she’s not writing, researching or ‘moming’, you can find her spending time with her family at Disney or sneaking a couple spoonfuls of Nutella while laughing over cat videos. She also loves to travel, attributing her fascination with history to having spent most of her childhood as an Army brat in Germany." From the author's website.

The River of Doubt : Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard.—2006 - 408 Pages

 

The River of Doubt : Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard.—2006 - is an amazing book, combining a vivid description of the Amazon, an arduous journey with details about American political history.

"NATIONAL BESTSELLER • At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait—the bestselling author of River of the Gods brings us the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.

“A rich, dramatic tale that ranges from the personal to the literally earth-shaking.” —The New York Times

The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.

After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.

Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived.

From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, here is Candice Millard’s dazzling debut." From the publisher,Anchor Books 

About 25 years ago I did a photographic trip on the Amazon, based out of Iquitos, Peru, the largest city in the world not accessible by road.  From this experience I developed an interest in the Amazon.  I am so glad I found this book  via Libby.  Millard made me feel I was along on the voyage.  I learned a lot about Theodore Roosevelt’s life and his family.  His son Kermit was on the trip.

CANDICE MILLARD is a former writer and editor at National Geographic magazine and New York Times bestselling author. She lives in Kansas City.

River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana's Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon by Buddy Levy -2011

River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana's Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon by Buddy Levy -2011 is a fascinating exciting account of the first voyage by Europeans to transverse the Amazon.  Years ago I made a photographic expedition the Amazon.  I saw pink dolphins, Indigenous villages, and much more,  My trip began in Iquitos, Peru, the biggest city in the world with no access by road. I am very glad I came upon Buddy Levy's fascinating book while browsing in Libby.

"From the acclaimed author of Conquistador comes this thrilling account of one of history’s greatest adventures of discovery. With cinematic immediacy and meticulous attention to historical detail, here is the true story of a legendary sixteenth-century explorer and his death-defying navigation of the Amazon—river of darkness, pathway to gold.

In 1541, the brutal conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his well-born lieutenant Francisco Orellana set off from Quito in search of La Canela, South America’s rumored Land of Cinnamon, and the fabled El Dorado, “the golden man.” Driving an enormous retinue of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, hunting dogs, and other animals across the Andes, they watched their proud expedition begin to disintegrate even before they descended into the nightmarish jungle, following the course of a powerful river. Soon hopelessly lost in the swampy labyrinth, their numbers diminishing daily through disease, starvation, and Indian attacks, Pizarro and Orellana made a fateful decision to separate. While Pizarro eventually returned home barefoot and in rags, Orellana and fifty-seven men, in a few fragile craft, continued downriver into the unknown reaches of the mighty Amazon, serenaded by native war drums and the eerie cries of exotic predators. Theirs would be the greater glory.

 

Interweaving eyewitness accounts of the quest with newly uncovered details, Buddy Levy reconstructs the seminal journey that has electrified adventurers ever since, as Orellana became the first European to navigate and explore the entire length of the world’s largest river. Levy gives a long-overdue account of the native populations—some peaceful and welcoming, offering sustenance and life-saving guidance, others ferociously hostile, subjecting the invaders to gauntlets of unremitting attack and intimations of terrifying rituals. And here is the Amazon itself, a powerful presence whose every twist and turn held the promise of new wonders both natural and man-made, as well as the ever-present risk of death—a river that would hold Orellana in its irresistible embrace to the end of his life.

Overflowing with violence and beauty, nobility and tragedy, River of Darkness is both riveting history and a breathtaking adventure that will sweep readers along on an epic voyage unlike any other." From Batam Books, the publisher 

The first European to ever set foot in the Amazon was Francisco de Orellana, a cousin of famous conquistador Francisco Pizarro. On a joint expedition with Pizarro's brother in 1541, de Orellana set off from Quito in search of the mythical El Dorado, a city allegedly overflowing with gold and riches 

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Amazon, European exploring and exploitation of the area.

In the elegant epilogue Levy details the on going degradation of the region in search of profit as well as efforts to safeguard this precious resource.

"Buddy Levy is the author of nine books and his work has been featured or reviewed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Kirkus Book Reviews, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, The Daily Beast, The A.V. Club and Library Journal. He was the co-star, for 25 episodes, on HISTORY Channel’s hit docuseries Brad Meltzer’s DECODED, which aired to an average of 1.7 million weekly viewers and is still airing as reruns today. In 2018 he was an on-camera expert on the 4-part TV Series THE FRONTIERSMEN: The Men Who Built America (HISTORY, Executive Producer Leonardo Di Caprio).

Levy’s most recent book is Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History’s Greatest Arctic Rescue (St. Martin’s Press, 2025)-- https://bit.ly/RealmOfIceAndSky. His other books include Empire of Ice & Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk (St. Martin’s Press, December 2022), winner of the 2023 National Outdoor Book Award. His 2019 book Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition (St. Martin’s Press), won the 2020 National Outdoor Book Award and the 2020 Banff Mountain Book Award in Adventure History.

Levy is also the co-author of the National Bestseller No Barriers: A Blind Man’s Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon (with Erik Weihenmayer; Thomas Dunne Books, 2017); GERONIMO: Leadership Lessons of An American Warrior (co-authored with Coach Mike Leach, Simon & Schuster, 2014) and River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana and the Deadly First Voyage Through the Amazon (Diversion Books, 2011, 2022). His other books include the critically acclaimed and Amazon #1 Bestseller Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs (Bantam Dell, 2008), which he is currently developing for a television series; American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett (Putnam, 2005, Berkley Books, 2006); and Echoes On Rimrock: In Pursuit of the Chukar Partridge (Pruett, 1998). His books have been published in ten languages.

Levy was a contributing writer on the 2018 documentary film The Weight of Water. The film was based in part on the book No Barriers, which Levy co-authored with blind adventurer Erik Weihenmayer. The film premiered at the 2018 Banff Mountain Book and Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prize and the Best Mountain Film Award. It has since won The People’s Choice Award for Best Documentary at the 2018 Denver Film Festival; Best Sport and Adventure Film at the 2018 Mendi Bilbao Film Festival; and Audience Choice Award at the 2019 Waimea Ocean Film Festival.

As a freelance journalist he has covered adventure sports and lifestyle/travel subjects around the world, including working with TV impresario Mark Burnett on numerous Eco-Challenges, and other adventure expeditions in Argentina, Borneo, Europe, Greenland, Morocco, and the Philippines. His interests are wide-ranging: discovery and

adventure, the mountain men, arctic exploration travail, clashes of empires and civilizations, conspiracy theories, and riveting human stories of survival." From the author's website.

Mel u

The Reading Life

Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York by Ross Perlin - 2024 - 432 Pages

Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York by Ross Perlin - 2024 - 432 Pages

Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York by Ross Perlin is an incredibly interesting beautifully written account of the amazing linguistic diversity of New York City with native speakers of over 800 languages in resident, many of the languages are Endangered.

"Half of all 7,000-plus human languages may disappear over the next century and—because many have never been recorded—when they’re gone, it will be forever. Ross Perlin, a linguist and co-director of the non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, is racing against time to map little-known languages across the most linguistically diverse city in history: contemporary New York. In Language City, Perlin follows six remarkable yet ordinary speakers of endangered languages deep into their communities, from the streets of Brooklyn and Queens to villages on the other side of the world, to learn how they are maintaining and reviving their languages against overwhelming odds. He explores the languages themselves, from rare sounds to sentence-long words to bits of grammar that encode entirely different worldviews.

Seke is spoken by 700 people from five ancestral villages in Nepal, and a hundred others living in a single Brooklyn apartment building. N’ko is a radical new West African writing system now going global in Harlem and the Bronx. After centuries of colonization and displacement, Lenape, the city’s original Indigenous language and the source of the name Manhattan (“the place where we get bows”), has just one native speaker, along with a small band of revivalists. Also profiled in the book are speakers of the Indigenous Mexican language Nahuatl, the Central Asian minority language Wakhi, and Yiddish, braided alongside Perlin’s own complicated family legacy.

On the 100th anniversary of a notorious anti-immigration law that closed America’s doors for decades and the 400th anniversary of New York’s colonial founding, Perlin raises the alarm about growing political threats and the onslaught of “killer languages” like English and Spanish. At the same time, Language City celebrates the profound linguistic diversity of a single city and the joy of tuning into this unprecedented Babel." From the publisher Grove Press

New immigrants arriving New York City are caught in extensial delima.  The want to Preserve their cultural identity, make sure their children know their heritage language while having to learn English to thrive in New York City.  Perlin shows how numerous communities of language Speakers develop communities.  

" I am a linguist, writer, and translator from New York City - 

My book Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York is now out with Grove in the US and the UK.

As a linguist, I serve as co-director of the non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, where since 2013 I have overseen research projects focused on language documentation, mapping, policy, and public programming. Himalayan languages are a focus – for my PhD, I created a trilingual dictionary, a corpus of recordings, and a descriptive grammar of Trung, an endangered language of southwest China, based on several years of fieldwork. I also teach linguistics at Columbia. 

As a writer, I have written on language, labor, and China for The New York Times, The Guardian, and Harper's, among other places, and I published a book on unpaid work and youth economics (Intern Nation). I have given talks to students, scholars, employers, career counselors, union members, activists, and politicians at venues as different as the Googleplex, the UK Parliament, and the Economic Policy Institute, as well as universities and colleges across America. TV and radio appearances have been on MSNBC, CBS, Fox, BBC, and NPR, among others. 

As a translator, I work primarily from Chinese into English. I translated Liao Yiwu's Bullets and Opium (2019) and Chen Guangcheng's The Barefoot Lawyer (2015). I have recorded two Yiddish-language video series for The Forward and translated essays, stories, and poems as a National Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow.

I have a BA from Stanford, an M.Phil. from Cambridge, and an MA from the University of London (SOAS), the last two thanks to the British people as a Marshall Scholar. My PhD in Linguistics is from the University of Bern in Switzerland. I was a 2023 New Arizona Fellow at New America.

Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York by Ross Perlin talks about the anti-immigration attitude of many Americans, exposing the hateful history and deep racism from which this is  derived.