An eye-opening read for anyone under the false impression that American Buddhism is primarily the province of Whites.
A Bay Area writer seeks to redress the seeming cultural invisibility of Asian American Buddhists.
Han’s debut book, which began as her master’s thesis, might have languished as a sociological study for academics if not for the advice of novelist Ruth Ozeki, who told her, “Make it an account of your curiosity. Put yourself in.” Han does exactly that, intertwining scholarly methodology with the story of why she was compelled to take on the subject. Han belongs to the 2% of Asian Americans who have become Buddhist after being raised outside the tradition—in the author’s case, as an atheist. By contrast, 10% of Asian Americans who were raised Buddhist leave the faith. This math exists in the context of American Buddhism’s public image already skewing heavily White. Han cites the popular distinction between “two Buddhisms.” One is viewed as rational, focused on meditation, nonreligious, and White; the other is cultural, traditional, based on ritual, and Asian. “It’s not hard,” writes the author, “to guess which group is more likely to be dismissed as ‘superstitious’ and which group is more likely to be celebrated as ‘scientific.’ ” Anyone who follows mainstream American Buddhism knows which group is at the cultural fore. Han demonstrates convincingly that this is a misrepresentation of the actual demographics within American Buddhism, which is more diverse in terms of both race and denominations than is usually recognized. However, the author isn’t content to settle for scholarship; she wants to advocate on behalf of better representation. Is this discrepancy due to anti-Asian racism or based on an American interest in those aspects of Buddhism that can be easily extracted from their cultural contexts and incorporated into a Western worldview? This is an ongoing debate, to which this book is an important contribution, but not the final answer.
An eye-opening read for anyone under the false impression that American Buddhism is primarily the province of Whites.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-62317-523-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: North Atlantic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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