PAPER SHADOWS: A CHINATOWN CHILDHOOD

Book ID/图书代码： 12760006B01044

English Summary/英文概要： From the author of the popular and widely acclaimed novel, The Jade Peony, comes this new autobiographical exploration of past and present, culture and selfhood, history and memory, immigration and family life--in other words, the modern-day collision of Eastern and Western experiences and worldviews.

Three weeks before his 57th birthday, Choy discovered that he had been adopted. This astonishing revelation inspires the beautifully-wrought, sensitively told Paper Shadows, the story of a Chinatown past both lost and found. From his early life amid the ghosts of old Chinatown, to his discovery, years later, of deeply held family secrets that crossed the ocean from mainland China to Gold Mountain, this engrossing, multi-layered self-portrait is "a childhood memoir of crystalline clarity" (The Boston Globe) that will speak directly and arrestingly to all students of Chinese immigrant history.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 本书是由一位著名并且作品广受欢迎的作家Wayson Choy写的，是一本关于过去和现在，文化和个性，历史和记忆，移民家庭生活的传记，换而言之，也就是现代生活中西方和东方之间的差异和冲突。
在Choy57岁生日前的3个星期，他突然接到了一个令他震惊的电话，一个神秘的女人告诉他他是被别人收养的。这个惊奇的发现促成了这部美丽的论文集——展示了融缩在他著名的获奖作品The Jade Peony中的隐秘和他自己生活中发现的一系列的秘密。

Awards/获奖情况：Eighteen years after he sat by his mother’s hospital bed watching her die, novelist Choy (The Jade Peony) received a disturbing phone call from a woman who claimed to have recently seen his "real mother" on a streetcar. In this memoir, after briefly contemplating the shattering possibility that he had lived his 57 years without any suspicion that he might be adopted, Choy quickly moves on to relate the story of his boyhoodAat times, it appears, to reassure himself that it actually took place as he’d believed ("These are the documented facts that I have known all my life: I was born Choy Way Sun, on April 20, 1939...."). A well-rendered picture of a closely knit enclave at a dramatic timeAin Vancouver’s Chinatown during the WWII eraAChoy’s narrative has been shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. Depicting memories of his childhood from as early as age three, he tells of his first run-ins with kwei, the ghosts that drift through homes; of his mother’s habit of playing mah-jongg until morning and his attraction to the flash and clamor of the Cantonese opera. He also dwells on more familiar coming-of-age terrain, describing his aspirations to become a cowboy and the ups and downs of caring for a puppy. Though drawn in finely wrought prose, the memoir’s 26 chapters and four parts are fragmented further into vignettes, some as short as a page, which works against cohesion. And, disappointingly, Choy does not return to the mysterious call that began these reminiscences until near the book’s end, at which point he quickly explains how he finally uncovered the secret surrounding his birth. (Oct.) ---From Publishers Weekly

This introspective autobiography by the Canadian author of The Jade Peony, an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year, came into being as a result of Choy’s learning, just weeks shy of his 57th birthday, that he had been adopted. This startling revelation takes Choy and his readers deep into the memories of growing up in Vancouver’s Chinatown during the 1940s as the only son of his Chinese immigrant adoptive parents, Toy and Lily. Delving into his past, Choy never actually discovers the true identity of his birth parents, but he finds a rich past behind the little-discussed genealogy of his adoptive family and comes to understand certain aspects of his childhood. For example, when he learns that his birth father may have been a member of the Cantonese opera company whose performances he often attended with his mother and her friends, he is better able to rationalize his boyhood affinity for that colorful world. As a whole, Choy’s story is both reflective and cathartic. Readers who liked similar memoirs by Adeline Yen Mah (Falling Leaves, LJ 2/1/98), M. Elaine Mar (Paper Daughter, Harperflamingo, 1999), and Ben Fong-Torres (The Rice Room, LJ 4/1/94) will enjoy this one. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries and Asian literature collections. [For more on The Jade Peony, see The Reader’s Shelf, p. 144.DEd.]DShirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L.. Santa Ana, C.---DShirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L.. Santa Ana, CA, From Library Journal

About the Author/作者介绍： Wayson Choy was raised in Vancouver. His novel The Jade Peony was selected as one of the American Library Association Notable Books of 1998 and shared the Trillium Book Award for best book of 1996 with Margaret Atwood. His memoir Paper Shadows was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award. He is a full-time professor at Humber College in Toronto.

Format:照片

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：RIGHTS SOLD US: Picador Canada: Penguin Australia: Penguin

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