Showing results by narrator "James Chen" in All Categories

Is it too much to ask for an ordinary, boring life? Bai Jian is a typical Chinese boy growing up in a big city. But his life is far from typical: his mother abandoned him when he was a baby, and his father, Hei Jian, is always out of work, always fighting with his long parade of girlfriends, always getting the two of them involved in some harebrained scheme.

In a world gone wrong, heroes and villains are not always easy to distinguish and every individual has the ability to contribute something powerful. In this stunning collection of original and rediscovered stories of tragedy and hope, the stars are a diverse group of students, street kids, good girls, kidnappers, and child laborers pitted against their environments, their governments, differing cultures, and sometimes one another as they seek answers in their dystopian worlds.

Inhabiting four lives - a railroad baron's valet who unwittingly ignites an explosion in Chinese labor, Hollywood's first Chinese movie star, a hate-crime victim whose death mobilizes Asian Americans, and a biracial writer visiting China for an adoption - this novel captures and capsizes over a century of our history, showing that even as family bonds are denied and broken, a community can survive - as much through love as blood.

From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male is the chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classics The Handmaid's Tale and When She Woke. Under the One Child Policy, everyone...

Inspired by three figures who lived at pivotal moments in Chinese American history, and drawing on his own mixed-race experience, Peter Ho Davies plunges us into what it is like to feel and be treated like a foreigner in the country you call home. Ranging from the mouth of the Pearl River to the land of golden opportunity, this remarkable audiobook spans 150 years to tell a tale of familial bonds denied, of tenacity and pride, of prejudice and the universal need to belong.

A harrowing journey into a milestone event of Canadian history: the use of Chinese coolies to help build the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia in hazardous conditions. After the CPR is built in 1885, Yang Hok, a former coolie, treks along the railway to return his half-Chinese/half-Native son to the boy's mother, where he confronts the conflicts arising from road-building among the Chinese and Native peoples.

Chinese Yankee by Ruthanne Lum McCunn tells the true story of Hong Kong born Thomas Sylvanus (Ah Yee Way), an orphan brought to America for schooling in the mid-1850s, but enslaved in Baltimore. Only sixteen at the outbreak of war, Thomas ran north, joined the Freedom Army, and was blinded in the first major campaign. He failed to fully recover his sight and, deemed incapable of performing the duties of a soldier, was discharged.

What happens when a thirty-something, newly divorced man discovers courage and adventure, thanks to a karaoke contest? In Adventures of the Karaoke King, Harold Taw introduces us to Guy Watanabe, a man marginally aware of his Asian background and decidedly unaware of how poorly he has planned for his future. In this riotous, often thoughtful, and always entertaining novel, readers are taken on a memorable journey that crosses America, Asia, and back, with the last leg spent in a shipping container.

When Danny discovers a taped-up box in his father's closet filled with old letters and a file on a powerful Silicon Valley family, he realizes there's much more to his family's past than he ever imagined. Danny has been an artist for as long as he can remember, and it seems his path is set, with a scholarship to RISD and his family's blessing to pursue the career he's always dreamed of. Still, contemplating a future without his best friend, Harry Wong, by his side makes Danny feel a panic he can barely put into words.

Anna Tang doesn't date Asian guys. Her own Chinese family is bad enough, and she's not looking to double the trouble. Besides, she's busy chasing her dream of becoming a music journalist, and she's going to march towards it single-mindedly—and single, if need be.

Logan Solomon is a Southern gentleman who has lived in Beijing far too long. Aside from the shady business deals, surveillance jobs, and the often decadent lifestyle of the jaded foreigner, he has also managed to alienate his wife Li Na while associating himself with very rough characters - some who might not even be human. Following a seemingly chance encounter aboard a train, a chain of events is set in motion that will change Logan's destiny forever, and leave a trail of dead in the wake.