Linda Rui Feng's Books

Swimming Back to Trout River

A Novel

By: Linda Rui Feng

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A “beautifully written, poignant exploration of family, art, culture, immigration…and love” (Jean Kwok, author of Searching for Sylvie Lee and Girl in Translation) set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution that follows a father’s quest to reunite his family before his precocious daughter’s momentous birthday, which Garth Greenwell calls “one of the most beautiful debuts I’ve read in years.” How many times in life can we start over without losing ourselves? In the summer of 1986, in a small Chinese village, ten-year-old Junie receives a momentous letter from her parents, who had left for America years ago: her father promises to return home and collect her by her twelfth birthday. But Junie’s growing determination to stay put in the idyllic countryside with her beloved grandparents threatens to derail her family’s shared future. Junie doesn’t know that her parents, Momo and Cassia, are newly estranged from one another in their adopted country, each holding close private tragedies and histories from the tumultuous years of their youth during China’s Cultural Revolution. While Momo grapples anew with his deferred musical ambitions and dreams for Junie’s future in America, Cassia finally begins to wrestle with a shocking act of brutality from years ago. For Momo to fulfill his promise, he must make one last desperate attempt to reunite all three family members before Junie’s birthday—even if it means bringing painful family secrets to light. Swimming Back to Trout River is a “symphony of a novel” (BookPage) that weaves together the stories of Junie, Momo, Cassia, and Dawn—a talented violinist from Momo’s past—while depicting their heartbreak and resilience, tenderly revealing the hope, compromises, and abiding ingenuity that make up the lives of immigrants. Feng’s debut is “filled with tragedy yet touched with life-affirming passion” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), and “Feng weaves a plot both surprising and inevitable, with not a word to spare” (Booklist, starred review).

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Page Count

272

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1982129417

ISBN 13

9781982129415

Swimming Back to Trout River

A Novel

By: Linda Rui Feng

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Swimming Back to Trout River

A Novel

By: Linda Rui Feng

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

272

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1982129425

ISBN 13

9781982129422

City of Marvel and Transformation

Changan and Narratives of Experience in Tang Dynasty China

By: Linda Rui Feng

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City of Marvel and Transformation

Changan and Narratives of Experience in Tang Dynasty China

By: Linda Rui Feng

During the Tang dynasty, the imperial capital of Chang’an (present-day Xi’an) was unrivaled in its monumental scale, with about one million inhabitants dwelling within its walls. It was there that one of the most enduring cultural and political institutions of the empire—the civil service examinations—took shape, bringing an unprecedented influx of literati men to the city seeking recognition and official status by demonstrating their literary talent. To these examination candidates, Chang’an was a megalopolis, career launch pad, and most importantly, cultural paradigm. As a multifaceted lived space, it captured the imaginations of Tang writers, shaped their future aspirations, and left discernible traces in the writings of this period. City of Marvel and Transformation brings this cityscape to life together with the mindscape of its sojourner-writers. By analyzing narratives of experience with a distinctive metropolitan consciousness, it retrieves lost connections between senses of the self and a sense of place. Each chapter takes up one of the powerful shaping forces of Chang’an: its siren call as a destination; the unforeseen nooks and crannies of its urban space; its potential as a “media machine” to broadcast images and reputations; its demimonde—a city within a city where both literary culture and commerce took center stage. Without being limited to any single genre, specific movement, or individual author, the texts examined in this book highlight aspects of Chang’an as a shared and contested space in the collective imagination. They bring to our attention a newly emerged interval of social, existential, and geographical mobility in the lives of educated men, who as aspirants and routine capital-bound travelers learned to negotiate urban space. Both literary study and cultural history, City of Marvel and Transformation goes beyond close readings of text; it also draws productively from research in urban history, anthropology, and studies of space and place, building upon the theoretical frameworks of scholars such as Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre, and Victor Turner. It is a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship in Chinese studies on the importance of cities and city life. Students and scholars of premodern China will find new ways to understand the collective concerns of the lettered class, as well as new ways to understand literary phenomena that would eventually influence vernacular tales and the Chinese novel. By asking larger questions about how urban sojourns shape subjectivity and perceptions, this book will also attract a wide range of readers interested in studies of personhood, spatial practice, and cities as living cultural systems in flux, both ancient and modern.

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Page Count

209

Publisher

University of Hawaii Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0824856872

ISBN 13

9780824856878

City of Marvel and Transformation

Changan and Narratives of Experience in Tang Dynasty China

By: Linda Rui Feng

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City of Marvel and Transformation

Changan and Narratives of Experience in Tang Dynasty China

By: Linda Rui Feng

Average ratings

N/A

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

209

Publisher

University of Hawaii Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0824841069

ISBN 13

9780824841065

Book's by Linda Rui Feng

Swimming Back to Trout River

Swimming Back to Trout River

Swimming Back to Trout River

Swimming Back to Trout River

City of Marvel and Transformation

City of Marvel and Transformation

City of Marvel and Transformation

City of Marvel and Transformation

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