#i think modern western society has a very bleak perspective about death when it can have other meanings

[alicentalicent]

This quote is so beautiful and informs us even more about the things we’ve discussed about the lake scene, but I’m really zooming in on the “this beautiful, dead thing” part. And this is why.

The lake scene is, in my opinion, one of the most important scenes in the show, and I was waiting with bated breath since we saw Alicent by a lake in the official teaser. I thought she would attempt to kill herself, and I theorized about what would lead her to that state. I even remember on Twitter we were worried about how that scene would unfold.

I think the beauty of the scene comes from how it was built around the hinge of life and death. This is the moment when Alicent confronts herself, really sees herself in a mirror, and sees the path before her. She comes to this lake after hitting rock bottom in all possible ways, lost and defeated. She’s seeking a reason to live. This is the climax of her liberation arc. 

She tries to free herself from a life of doctrine, from principles and a purpose that was thrust upon her, a life that wasn’t really what she wanted. Still, she had rationalized and normalized it in a way that it became what she wanted, or at least she believed so, because otherwise, life would be unbearable. But, clearly, she fails at that because she’s been miserable for a long time, in her cage.

So we have this moment of Alicent going to the lake, trying to physically escape her prison, The Red Keep, if only to breath air that is not absolutely foul, if only to feel the nature around her, if only to swim for a bit. 

And once she’s in that lake, she starts shedding all these parts of herself that made her what she is, she’s cleaning herself from the belief system that gave her purpose, from her father’s voice in the back of her head, from all these things that she doesn’t want, and we get to the hinge moment, the climax where it could go “without all of this I don’t have anything to live for” or it could become “I am a blank slate”, with all the empty space to fill with something, but what is this something.

Going back to Loni Peristere quote, this moment is a baptism. And baptism in Christianity symbolizes the death, the burial and the resurrection of Jesus. In some Christian religions, when you get baptized it means that you are rejecting everything that you were before that moment and you are cleaning yourself from all the sins you’ve committed because you are symbolically dying, and death is the only way to clean the sins from our soul. In the baptism, by dying and leaving all of that behind in the water, you resurface as a clean slate for God to fill with purpose, because now all of the things you previously believed, your priorities, are changing to center God in your life.

Alicent being baptized by clarity implies that she goes through this death, so it is actually a suicide, a suicide of the past self that she tried so hard to be her whole life. We have this beautiful moment where it looks like she could actually be dead, but she’s not. The scene is filmed with that intention, as Loni Peristere, the director of the episode, says in the Still Watching podcast: “And when we have that shot underwater of Olivia’s beautiful red hair kind of moving into the camera, I wanted everyone to say, she’s gone. And then she moves and opens her eyes. And then there’s this magical thing that happens when you see what she’s seeing and she sees the bird in the sky.” 

So in this pivotal moment, where she could’ve ended up in a place of “I have nothing to live for,” it actually becomes “I do have someone to live for, and it’s Rhaenyra.” And she’s been trying to avoid this truth her whole life but now she’s in a place where she can accept the things she actually wants. That’s the beauty of that scene primarily, but what I like about the “beautiful, dead thing” quote is that you cannot have a baptism without that person dying, so it goes hand in hand, the idea of her liberation tied to her death. 

We need to acknowledge that Alicent died, in a symbolic way. Alicent chose to die. And the Alicent that we get now, the “I am at last myself” Alicent exists because she allowed herself to kill that part of herself and become someone new, someone that could actually reflect on what she wanted and why she wanted it and do something about it.

But of course we know that it’s hard for her to actually express herself and deal with all of that because she's basically a newborn baby in an emotional sense. Her epiphany just happened. You don’t actually go to a lake and suddenly become a new person but the symbolism of it, and knowing that we actually have a symbolic suicide in the story, and that it was a good thing, it’s key to understanding Alicent and her choices moving forward.

"Olivia did this incredible thing where she floats, and we see her hair from underwater," Peristere says. "She looks like this beautiful, dead thing. Of course, she's alive and very happy. She's getting baptized by clarity."

– Director Loni Peristere on the scene with Alicent Hightower at the Lake in episode 2x07 "The Red Sowing" from the House of the Dragon Season 2 Companion Book

This beautiful, dead thing

Baptized by clarity

Her clarity is symbolized by the bird, which leads her to Rhaenyra on Dragonstone. And according to another quote by Olivia, Alicent is her rawest self in that meeting.

– I am at last myself.

[awed-frog]

“The big flaw with this is that it completely misunderstands who JK Rowling is and why she wrote the books. Simply put, this novel is a Christian tale. You miss that, you miss the entire point of everything it has to say.” Elaborate? Sounds interesting and I haven’t heard that before.

Well - I love this to bits and sort of wrote my thesis about it, so here we go.

Basically, you’ve got several kinds of heroes, but ‘left-wing hero’ is almost a contradiction in terms (more on this later). There’s your average Greek hero, whose status as a hero is more of a social class than it is a job and who generally doesn’t have any morally redeeming qualities (have you met Theseus?). Then there’s the medieval Christian hero - he comes in different flavours, but what’s relevant here is the Perceval model: basically the village idiot, whose only power is his good heart and who has no desire to challenge the status quo (because kings are divinely ordained and also poets tend to work for them, so ‘That vassal guy of yours has rescued yet another damsel’ story is going to be better received than ‘Your tax system is corrupt and this knight will now implement direct democracy’). Next you have the modern superhero, who was born in a very different historical context (the vigilantism of 19th century US) and as such has very different priorities. Namely: in his world, there is no higher authority and it’s up to him to use his superior skills to be judge and executioner so he can protect the most vulnerable. This understandable but toxic narrative will later get mixed up with WW2 and then the rampant capitalism of the last 30 years, resulting in the current blockbustery mess.

Anyway - if you’re a Western writer, it’s basically impossible to escape these three shaping forces we’ve all grown up with (classical Antiquity, Christianity, and US-led imperialism/capitalism), so most books and movies of the last forever decades can be analyzed through this lens. In the case of JK Rowling, what you have is a Christian author who openly used her YA series to chart out her own relationship with God. This is not a secret, or a meta writer’s delusion, or anything: she’s discussed it in several interviews. Her main problem, which is most believers’ main problem, is how to reconcile her faith in a benevolent God with the suffering in her daily life; and something she’s mentioned more than once is how her mom died when she was 25, and how this was very much on her mind especially when she was writing Deathly Hallows.

Now, I don’t want to write a novel here, so I won’t analyze the entire series, but what it is is basically a social critique of British society, mixed up with Greek and Roman elements in a cosmetic way only, and - crucially - led by an extremely Christian hero. 

In every way that matters, Harry Potter is a direct descendant of Perceval: he’s someone who’s grown up in isolation as the village idiot (remember how he was shunned by other children because he was ‘dangerous’ and ‘different’), randomly found a more exciting world of which he previously knew nothing (he’s basically the only kid who gets to Hogwarts without knowing anything about the magical world, just like Perceval joined Arthur’s court after living in the woods for 15 years), and proceeded to make his mark not because of his innate powers or special abilities (he’s average at magic, except for Defence against the Dark Arts), but because he’s kind and good and humble. And in the end, he willingly sacrifices himself so everyone else can be saved: a Christ-like figure who even gets his very own Deposition (in the arms of Hagrid, the closest thing to a parent his actually has). 

(This, by the way, was the only reason why Hagrid was kept alive. JK Rowling had planned to kill him, but she absolutely wanted this scene - one of the most recognizable and beloved image in Christian art - in the books.)

And even if he ultimately survives his ‘death’ (like Jesus did), Harry refuses the riches and rank he was surely offered and chooses to spend his days in middle-class obscurity as a husband and father (if I remember correctly, Harry and Ginny’s house isn’t even big enough for their three kids). And no, of course he doesn’t stand for anything or challenges the status quo: that’s not his job. His job, like Jesus’, was to defeat evil by offering himself up in sacrifice; and the entire story - especially the last book - is a profound, intimate, and very moving reflection on faith.

(“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's”, remember? It’s not your job to change anything in the temporal, material world; your job is to nurture your immortal soul and prepare it for the true life that comes after death.)

Like - I don’t know how it was for younger readers, but for me, reading Deathy Hallows as an adult, it wrecked me. Even as an agnostic, I read it over and over again, and I kep finding new meaning in it. The whole thing is basically a retelling of the Book of Job, one of the most puzzling and beautiful parts of the Old Testament. That’s when Harry’s faith in God Dumbledore is tested, when his mentor, the cornerstone of his world, disappears; when Harry has to decide whether he’ll continue to believe in this absent, flawed figure despite all the bad things he keeps uncovering or give up his faith - and thus his soul - completely. The clearest, most startling moment exemplifying this religious dilemma is when Harry decides not to go after the wand. Getting it is the logical thing to do, the only way he can win, but Harry - while mourning Dobby - decides not to do it. That’s when he recovers his faith, and starts trusting his own kindness and piety (whatever happens, he will not defile a tomb) over everything else.

Another key moment is King’s Cross - here, and once more, Harry forgives his enemy, thus obeying Jesus’ commands. He sees Voldemort, the being who took everything from him - and he pities the pathetic, unloved thing he’s become. This is what sets him apart from everyone else and what makes him special: not his birth, not his magic, not some extraordinary artefact - but simply, like Dumbledore puts it, that he can love. After everything that’s bene done to him, he can still love; not only his friends, but his enemies. He forgives Voldemort, he forgives Snape, he forgives Malfoy, he forgives Dudley; and I see so many people angry about this, ranting about abuse victims and how hate is a right, but I think they’re missing the point. This is a Christian story; from a Christian perspective, your enemies need love more than your friends do. 

(“It is not those who are healthy who need a physician” and all that.)

And in any case, a hero is inherently not left-wing. The whole trope relies on three rock-solid facts: the hero is special, and he can do something you can’t, and that gives him the right or the duty to save others who can’t save themselves. Whether it is declined in its Christian form (the hero as self-sacrificing nobody) or in its fascist form (the hero as judge and king of the inferior masses), that is is the exact opposite of any kind of left-wing narrative, where meaningful change is brought about not by individual martyrdom or a benevolent super-human, but by collective action.

So, yeah - Harry changes nothing and is not the leader of the revolution, but it’s unfair to link this to JK Rowling’s politics. It’s just how the trope works. And, in fairness to her, many kind and compassionate authors who write books concerned with social justice tend to lean towards this kind of hero because the only workable alternative - the fascist super-hero - is way worse. Had Harry been that, for instance, he would have ended up ruling the wizarding world. Would that have been better for its democracy? A 19-year-old PM who knows nothing about the law or justice or diplomacy? A venerated war hero drunk on power? Instead, JK Rowling chooses the milder way out: Harry and his friends do change the system - little by little, and within the limits of the genre. Hermione becomes the equivalent of a human rights lawyer, while Harry and Ron join the Aurors (and I know there’s a lot of justified suspicion towards law enforcement, but frankly having good people in their ranks is still the only way to move things forward. It’s been years and I still haven’t heard a practical suggestion as to how a police-less nation would work). As for the government, it is restored to a fairer status quo - again, not the revolution many readers wanted, but also not the totalitarian monarchies or oligarchies or the super-hero’s world.

And as to how one can write a story that’s actually revolutionary - I don’t exactly know. Some writers rely on multiple narrating voices to try and escape the heroic trope; others work on bleak stories which point out the flaws in the system and stop short of solving them. I guess that, in the end, is one of the problem with left-wing politics: they’re simply less eye-catching, less cinematic. On the whole, it’s dull, boring work, the victories achieved by committees and celebrated with a piece of paper. From a literary point of view, it just doesn’t work.

[goreprofonde]

Aaron Rodgers - Climax

“Life is a collective impossibility.”

There were so many languages. Aramaic, Phoenician, Etruscan, Tamil, Moabite, Umbrian. Too many languages. From where did they all come? It was a puzzlement, especially if you believed—and if you were authoring the Pentateuch you no doubt did—that all these speakers were branches of a single family tree. Why would Noah’s descendants, leaving the Ark to replenish the Earth, differ so greatly from one another? You needed an etiology, you did. If you were Greek, you might blame Hermes. If you were Bantu, you might blame a famine-induced madness. But if you were writing the Book of Genesis, you might blame, well, God.

The story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11 is short—very short. You’ve probably heard it, or at least something like its broadest outlines. In only nine verses no longer than your average nursery rhyme, the postdiluvian people (speaking but one language) decide in their arrogance to build a tower to reach the heavens; the Lord sees it and is displeased; and so the Lord confuses their language and scatters them about the globe. Short, sweet, and to the point: Pride goeth before the globe-scattering fall.

Or at least that is the traditional interpretation. And it’s not an unreasonable one—what few dots there are seem to connect in a pretty straight line, and old-timey Yahweh was quite prone to smiting, having just exited his “drown them all” Great Flood phase. Like so many ancient stories, it easily calcifies into something abstract and removed from the specifics of the story itself. But actually reading the nine relevant verses is quite a time—especially when read from the perspective of an acolyte of God fashioning an explanation for the world’s diversity of languages. For the Lord did not just punish the people for their hubris; he did so out of fear that their unity of language and of purpose would make them his rivals (“and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do”). And the Lord did not choose just any punishment; he chose exactly the thing that the people most feared (“and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” / “and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth”). Taken together, it paints an astonishingly bleak picture—humanity, its highest goals easily scuttled by outside forces, overseen by a vengeful, jealous God more interested in chaos and the psychological scars of a self-fulfilling prophecy than in peace or understanding. (And all this from Moses, one of God’s chief troubadours! Imagine the story a naysayer might have told.)

It’s hard not to think of the Tower of Babel in the wake of Climax, Gaspar Noé’s latest boundary-pushing entry in his own foreboding corner of the cinéma du corps/New French Extremity. Noé is not shy about citing his idols and reference points generally, from Godard to Kubrick to Lynch, nor has he been subtle about the influences on Climax—in addition to referencing the Tower of Babel, Shivers, and The Towering Inferno (among others) in interviews, Noé has helpfully laid out a wealth of data points surrounding the monitor on which he displays his dance troupe’s introductory interviews. Among the citations: Argento’s Suspiria; Fassbinder’s Querelle; Żuławski’s Possession; Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom; and Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, not to mention various books like Taxi Driver and How to Succeed at Suicide. The ways in which these influences play out are sometimes obvious (e.g., Selva’s (Sofia Boutella) agonized, writhing convulsion in the hallway explicitly recalls Isabelle Adjani’s subway paroxysm in Possession), sometimes less so (e.g., Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, which—according to Noé, the little stinker—appears because “I like the title and I like the book...because it’s so cruel”). There is no Holy Bible propped up against Noé’s mid-1990s tube TV, but the idea of a vengeful and jealous overseer disrupting an attempt at something greater is central to Climax. As he did in Irréversible, Noé realizes that hell, unbearable as it can be, is only made more hellish by the possibility of heaven.

Climax begins (like Irréversible) with the ending. Lou (Souheila Yacoub), covered in blood, is seen from overhead stumbling through the snow before collapsing. Something terrible has obviously happened to her (this is Noé, after all), but unlike Irréversible, which unfurls a fully backward chronology, this prologue is only a brief flash-forward. After the credits play, Climax introduces us to its large cast via the aforementioned interviews, quickly sketching its players’ backgrounds, interests, and fears as the dancers—applying to be part of some sort of international touring group—discuss sex and drugs and other points of interest to the bohemian twentysomething circa 1996. From there, Climax moves to an abandoned school on the outskirts of Paris where the group is rehearsing, and it is at this point that Noé provides his greatest shock of all: joy. As the dancers krump and vogue and contort in what can only be called harmonious dissonance, Noé’s unbroken take evokes the bygone MGM musical of Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, celebrating the amazing things a body in motion can do not by simulating that motion through quick-hitting edits but through the camera’s unblinking gaze.

Of course, Climax’s version of the cinematic dance number has a decidedly modern bent not incidental to its overarching themes. The participants in manager Emmanuelle’s (Claude Gajan Maull) group are not performing in the classical Astaire-and-Rogers style, nor do they look like the cast of Singin’ in the Rain. Instead, they are diverse in almost every way—nationally, ethnically, sexually, socioeconomically. What they have in common—in addition to youth—is an affinity for creative movement and a desire/belief (perhaps born of naïveté) that through their collective efforts they can make the world a better place. Climax early on declares that it is a French film and proud of it and a large sequined French flag hangs behind the dancers, framing their efforts. For a time, it seems as though these young performers, accepting of all comers and overflowing with joie de vivre, might represent a new, aspirational future for France, free of the petty jealousies and insecurities and bigotries that define (and mar) life as we know it.

But Noé is not one for uplift, and as the prophetic prologue cautions, this jubilant beginning must come to an end. After their astonishing first dance—several of the most infectious minutes one is likely to see onscreen—the performers become revelers, celebrating their upcoming tour with food and merriment and sangria. That sangria happens to be laced with LSD—something neither the dancers nor we yet know, though some pointed shots of the punch bowl and the too-frequent mentions of its contents suggest trouble—and will soon cause this utopian mini-society to erupt into death and madness. But the eruption is that of a festering boil. Cleverly, Noé follows the initial dance with a series of conversations among the participants, mostly broken off in pairs. While further fleshing out their characters and deepening certain audience connections (and introducing Tito (Vince Galliot Cumant), Emmanuelle’s young son who, being a child in a Noé film, cannot possibly meet a good end), these interactions also reveal the lie behind the seeming idyll we have just witnessed. Sexual gamesmanship, misogyny, mutual distrust, power dynamics, a general unease—even before the drugged wine has taken hold, no amount of common bond or feel-good sentiments can fully inoculate against the crassness and misanthropy of the human condition. Vive la France—unless that French flag plays less than wholesomely to some of the carousers whose skin color may have left them disadvantaged under its auspices. God is with us—unless God, wary of his waning primacy and unwilling to go down without a fight, has been against us all along.

From there, Noé gifts us one additional extended dance sequence—this time shot from above, like a devilish cousin to Busby Berkeley’s showstoppers—but the additional knowledge we have gained makes the number play very differently than its predecessor. It is still exuberant, still exciting, still full of technical and physical marvels, but there is a sense of disquiet coursing through it, of tenuous allegiances and bids for attention. The playful back-and-forth of the first dance feels slightly more strained; the seemingly effortless flow of before is supplemented with an element of jockeying and competition. All these workers building a tower, but unsure about one another’s methods or their mutual destination.

Being a Noé film, it is no surprise that from there Climax descends into recriminations and mutilation, child endangerment and incest, and ultimately into a crimson-lit nightmare resulting in death. Noé’s superb camerawork—always a hallmark—not only complements the dancing beautifully (one truly wishes that he, along with Edgar Wright, would make an out-and-out musical, though for Noé that would almost certainly have to be Sweeney Todd), it also brings to life the increasingly fragile (and ultimately disintegrated) mental states of his crew of revelers. While Selva is probably the closest thing Climax has to a protagonist as the camera follows her back and forth from the common space to the dorm rooms the group has been occupying, no one seems fully safe/sane—not Selva, as she comes undone in front of some nature-backdrop wallpaper; not Lou or Omar (Adrien Sissoko), who abstain from the sangria for personal reasons that end up visiting upon them violence (whether Western culture dislikes a Muslim or a sexually active woman more is a question Climax does not definitively resolve); not even Daddy (Kiddy Smile), as he good-naturedly DJs the proceedings. That Climax employs so much improvisation is nothing short of miraculous, given how intricately some of Noé’s long takes appear to be choreographed. But beyond mere showmanship (of his own or his performers), these extended sequences give Climax the disorienting effect of feeling both dreamlike (or, perhaps more accurately, nightmarish) and realistic. Real life does not employ the careful and selective cutting of a movie, unfolding as its own long take, yet the memories thereof are fragmented in a subconscious act of self-editing, making Noé’s aesthetic appropriately both distancing and suffocating.

This visual evocation of an unyielding descent into hell is complemented perfectly by Noé and Ken Yasumoto’s sound design. The music that previously served as an enthusiastic soundscape turns menacing and relentless, with the percussive beats and throbbing bass driving the drug-addled action perpetually forward, stymieing any possible reflective moment. Yet that merciless music is preferable to the screams and groans it sometimes drowns out—cries that are themselves preferable, in the case of Tito, to a sudden silence that is deafening in its horrific implications. Even the comparatively hospitable environs of the sleeping quarters see Dom (Mounia Nassangar) attacking Lou and Taylor (Taylor Kastle) taking advantage of his sister, Gazelle (Giselle Palmer). As the sangria brings out the group’s (somewhat) latent paranoia and aggression and worst impulses, a downward spiral is inevitable; once gravity takes hold, escape velocity becomes nearly impossible to achieve.

Unlike Irréversible, Noé does not end Climax on a tragic but perversely bittersweet note; instead, he ends it with a possible explanation for the madness that disquietingly suggests that the madness was unavoidable. The perpetrator’s outsider status implies the doomed nature of group activity. The lies told in the instigator’s interview speak to the inefficacy of preparatory efforts. Most upsettingly, the culprit’s name, drawn from Greek mythology and literally meaning “breath of life,” points back to God and the Tower of Babel. The people banded together in an attempt to do something great, something just within reach. But God wouldn’t have it. So he scrambled the synapses a bit—a different language here, a chemically disrupted neuro-receptor there—and voilà, his supremacy was re-established. But to what end? “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” said a king of kings, until nothing beside remained. Pride goeth before the fall; when the proud one is divine, the fall leads all the way to hell.

[ucflibrary]

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month!

 Asian Pacific American as a topic covers vast oceans of identity and information. By definition, an Asian Pacific American is an American (whether born, naturalized, or other) who was born on or has heritage from anywhere on the Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia (New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands), Micronesia (Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia) and Polynesia (New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Easter Island). These areas cover a wide array of languages, cultures, religions, and ethnicities that have brought countless skills, hopes and dreams to the United States.

 UCF Libraries faculty and staff have (very enthusiastically) suggested 24 books and movies within the library’s collection by or about Asian Pacific Americans. Click the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links. These, and additional titles, are also on the Featured Bookshelf display on the second (main) floor next to the bank of two elevators.

A Concise History of China by J. A. G. Roberts

In this overarching book, J. A. G. Roberts refers to recent archeological finds--the caches of bronze vessels found at Sanxingdui--and to new documentary reevaluations--the reassessment of Manchu documentation. The first half of the book provides an up-to-date interpretation of China's early and imperial history, while the second half concentrates on the modern period and provides an interpretive account of major developments--the impact of Western imperialism, the rise of Chinese Communism, and the record of the People's Republic of China since 1949.

Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

 A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese confinement in North America by Greg Robinson

Most remarkably, A Tragedy of Democracy is the first book to analyze official policy toward West Coast Japanese Americans within a North American context. Robinson studies confinement on the mainland alongside events in wartime Hawaii, where fears of Japanese Americans justified Army dictatorship, suspension of the Constitution, and the imposition of military tribunals. He similarly reads the treatment of Japanese Americans against Canada's confinement of 22,000 citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry from British Columbia. A Tragedy of Democracy recounts the expulsion of almost 5,000 Japanese from Mexico's Pacific Coast and the poignant story of the Japanese Latin Americans who were kidnapped from their homes and interned in the United States

Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

 An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II. Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the "floating world"—the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink—offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.

Suggested by Rachel Edford, Teaching & Engagement

 Born Confused by Tanuja Desair Hidier

Seventeen-year-old Dimple, whose family is from India, discovers that she is not Indian enough for the Indians and not American enough for the Americans, as she sees her hypnotically beautiful, manipulative best friend taking possession of both her heritage and the boy she likes.

Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

 Cora Cooks Pancit written by Dorina Lazo Gilmore and illustrated by Kristi Valiant

When all her older siblings are away, Cora's mother finally lets her help make pancit, a Filipino noodle dish. Includes recipe for pancit.

Suggested by Cindy Dancel, Research & Information Services

 Dance Dance Revolution by Cathy Park Hong

Named one of the Los Angeles Times's Best Science Fiction Books in 2007, Dance Dance Revolution is a genre-bending tour de force told from the perspective of the Guide, a former dissident and tour guide of an imagined desert city.

Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

 Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram

Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He’s a Fractional Persian—half, his mom’s side—and his first-ever trip to Iran is about to change his life. Darius has never really fit in at home, and he’s sure things are going to be the same in Iran. His clinical depression doesn’t exactly help matters, and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents only makes things harder. Then Darius meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and everything changes. Soon, they’re spending their days together, playing soccer, eating faludeh, and talking for hours on a secret rooftop overlooking the city’s skyline. Sohrab calls him Darioush—the original Persian version of his name—and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he’s Darioush to Sohrab.

Suggested by Peter Spyers-Duran, Cataloging

 Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

Suggested by Rachel Edford, Teaching & Engagement

 Fa Mulan: the story of a woman warrior by Robert D. San Souci

A retelling of the original Chinese poem in which a brave young girl masquerades as a boy and fights the Tartars in the Khan's army.

Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, Connect Libraries

Front Desk by Kelly Yang

Mia Tang has a lot of secrets. Number 1: She lives in a motel, not a big house. Every day, while her immigrant parents clean the rooms, ten-year-old Mia manages the front desk of the Calivista Motel and tends to its guests. Number 2: Her parents hide immigrants. And if the mean motel owner, Mr. Yao, finds out they've been letting them stay in the empty rooms for free, the Tangs will be doomed. Number 3: She wants to be a writer. But how can she when her mom thinks she should stick to math because English is not her first language? It will take all of Mia's courage, kindness, and hard work to get through this year. Will she be able to hold on to her job, help the immigrants and guests, escape Mr. Yao, and go for her dreams?

Suggested by Peter Spyers-Duran, Cataloging

 Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the censored images of Japanese American internment by Dorothea Lange

Censored by the U.S. Army, Dorothea Lange's unseen photographs are the extraordinary photographic record of the Japanese American internment saga. This indelible work of visual and social history confirms Dorothea Lange's stature as one of the twentieth century's greatest American photographers. Presenting 119 images originally censored by the U.S. Army―the majority of which have never been published―Impounded evokes the horror of a community uprooted in the early 1940s and the stark reality of the internment camps. With poignancy and sage insight, nationally known historians Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro illuminate the saga of Japanese American internment: from life before Executive Order 9066 to the abrupt roundups and the marginal existence in the bleak, sandswept camps.

Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 John Okada: the life & rediscovered work of the author of No-no boy edited by Frank Abe, Greg Robinson, and Floyd Cheung

No-No Boy, John Okada's only published novel, centers on a Japanese American who refuses to fight for the country that incarcerated him and his people in World War II and is cast out by his divided community. The novel faced a similar rejection until it was rediscovered and reissued in 1976, becoming a classic of American literature. As a result of Okada's untimely death at age forty-seven, the author's life and other works have remained obscure. This collection offers the first full-length examination of Okada's development as an artist, placing recently discovered writing by Okada alongside essays that reassess his legacy. Meticulously researched biographical details, insight from friends and relatives, and a trove of photographs illuminate Okada's life in Seattle, military service, and careers as a public librarian, technical writer, and ad man. This volume is an essential companion to No-No Boy.

Suggested by Missy Murphey, Research & Information Services

 Little Fires Everywhere: a novel by Celeste Ng

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned -- from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren -- an enigmatic artist and single mother -- who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town -- and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides.

Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction—at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful—and completely unforgettable.

Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, Connect Libraries

 Music for Alice by Allen Say

As a girl, Alice loved to dance, but the rhythms of her life offered little opportunity for a foxtrot, let alone a waltz. World War II erupted soon after she was married. Alice and her husband, along with many other Japanese Americans, were forced to leave their homes and report to assembly centers around the country. Undaunted, Alice and her husband learned to make the most of every circumstance, from their stall in the old stockyard in Portland to the decrepit farm in the Oregon desert, with its field of stones. Like a pair of skilled dancers, they sidestepped adversity to land gracefully amid golden opportunity. Together they turned a barren wasteland into a field of endless flowers. Such achievements did not come without effort and sacrifice, though, and Alice often thought her dancing days were long behind her.

Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, Connect Libraries

 No-no Boy by John Okada

No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life "no-no boys." Yamada answered "no" twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle. As Ozeki writes, Ichiro’s "obsessive, tormented" voice subverts Japanese postwar "model-minority" stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one man’s "threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world."

Suggested by Missy Murphey, Research & Information Services

 Severance by Ling Ma

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she's had her fill of uncertainty. She's content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. Candace won't be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They're traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

 The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X. R. Pan

Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird. Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.

Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 The Chinese Exclusion Act by directed by Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu

Examine the origin, history and impact of the 1882 law that made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America and for Chinese nationals already here ever to become U.S. citizens. The first in a long line of acts targeting the Chinese for exclusion, it remained in force for more than 60 years.

Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

 The Making of Asian America: a history by Erika Lee

The definitive history of Asian Americans by one of the nation's preeminent scholars on the subject. In the past fifty years, Asian Americans have helped change the face of America and are now the fastest growing group in the United States. But as award-winning historian Erika Lee reminds us, Asian Americans also have deep roots in the country. The Making of Asian America tells the little-known history of Asian Americans and their role in American life, from the arrival of the first Asians in the Americas to the present-day. An epic history of global journeys and new beginnings, this book shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life in the United States: sailors who came on the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500s; indentured "coolies" who worked alongside African slaves in the Caribbean; and Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and South Asian immigrants who were recruited to work in the United States only to face massive racial discrimination, Asian exclusion laws, and for Japanese Americans, incarceration during World War II. No longer a "despised minority," Asian Americans are now held up as America's "model minorities" in ways that reveal the complicated role that race still plays in the United States.

Suggested by Missy Murphey, Research & Information Services

 The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dance-hall girl to help pay off her mother's mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin plunges into a dark adventure: a mirror world of secrets and superstitions. Eleven-year-old Chinese houseboy Ren also has a secret, a promise he must fulfill to his dead master; to find his master's severed finger and bury it with his body. Ren has forty-nine days to do so, or his master's soul will wander the earth forever. Dazzling and propulsive, The Night Tiger is the coming-of-age of a child and a young woman, each searching for their place in a society that would rather they stay invisible.

Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 The Way You Make Me Feel by Maurene Goo

Clara Shin lives for pranks and disruption. When she takes one joke too far, her dad sentences her to a summer working on his food truck, the KoBra, alongside her uptight classmate Rose Carver. Not the carefree summer Clara had imagined. But maybe Rose isn't so bad. Maybe the boy named Hamlet (yes, Hamlet) crushing on her is pretty cute. Maybe Clara actually feels invested in her dad’s business. What if taking this summer seriously means that Clara has to leave her old self behind?

Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 Thich Nhat Hanh: essential writings by Thicht Than

Zen master, poet, monk and peace advocate, Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who has lived in exile in France for 30 years. Through his writings and retreats he has helped countless people of all religious backgrounds to live mindfully in the present moment, to uproot sources of anger and distrust, and to achieve relationships of love and understanding.

Suggested by Cindy Dancel, Research & Information Services

To the Stars: the autobiography of George Takei, Star Trek's Mr. Sulu by George Takei

This is the autobiography of one of Star Trek's most popular stars, George Takei. It tells of his triumph over adversity and of his huge success, despite an inauspicious start in a wartime US Asian relocation camp. In his lifetime, he has become an actor, a successful businessman, a writer, and a man deeply involved in politics and the democratic process. His story also includes his early days as an actor when he had brushes with greats like Alec Guinness, Burt Lancaster and Bruce Lee, as well as his first meeting with a writer/producer named Gene Roddenberry.

Suggested by Tim Walker, Information Technology & Digital Initiatives