A hardy, useful work of journalism.
In 16 punchy, occasionally underdeveloped essays, a young American journalist who has lived and studied in China spotlights some of the marginal types whose stories reveal a lot about this drastically changing country.
For better or worse, these are the faces of the new China: slackers running tourist bars in the idyllic hippie capital of Dali; ubiquitous prostitutes, estimated at one in ten women of the total population; students at the best universities resigned to cheating and noncritical thinking; ostracized homosexuals; addicts of ketamine and role-playing games; mafia kingpins; journalists and artists who bravely expose a still-fascist government. Mexico moves fluidly through the country’s highly stratified society. In the first essay, “The Peasant Who Likes to Take Pictures,” the author profiles the elusive photojournalist Maohair, whose pictures showing victims of mine explosions, migrant workers demanding back wages and environmental disasters chronicle the human toll of China’s devastating growth. In “The Black Society,” Mexico pursues a Chinese businessman whose tentacles extend into the crooked rackets of construction, karaoke parlors and seafood markets. In “The Killers,” Mexico infiltrates a complicated role-playing game called the Killing People Club, in which players obsessively enact rituals of masochism. The author, reflecting on the silence surrounding the Cultural Revolution, wonders if this is a way “for educated Chinese citizens to subvert their history as victims and to become, briefly and metaphorically, the oppressor?” Mexico doesn’t tip-toe around troubling issues of racism, in the form of the Chinese treatment of the Uighur minority and the immigrant Nigerians, and censorship, such as the government’s silence around the spread of AIDS and rampant environmental pollution. His work forms an invaluable auxiliary to more rosy official guides in navigating a perplexing culture.
A hardy, useful work of journalism.Pub Date: March 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59376-223-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2009
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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