Yunte Huang on Charlie Chan

Whenever I have a spare moment lately, I've been reading "Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History" by Yunte Huang.  I'm about half way through the book.

I owe my knowledge of the book to a commenter on a FaceBook page that I follow.  After I became aware of the whitewashing scandal of The Last Airbender film, I discovered Racebending, a discrimination awareness group focusing on the entertainment industry. 

Racebending's latest project is highlighting and critiquing the upcoming Akira film that follows The Last Airbender pattern of filling all the main good-people roles with Caucasians (although for Akira, and this makes the situation particularly ludicrous, they retain their Japanese names), and, on occasion, making the staggeringly generous decision of allowing the main bad character to be played by a person of color [sarcasm cleanup on aisle four].  On a post about it - I believe it was the one announcing Kristen Stewart's gracing of the cast with her presence - someone posted a link to an NPR article about Yunte Huang's book.

Huang's writing is wonderful, and the book is interesting and quite engaging.  According to Huang, his book details four versions of the Charlie Chan legend,

" The first story, of course, is the man himself, beginning with Chang Apana, the bullwhip-toting Cantonese detective in Honolulu. Then there is Earl Biggers's story, unwinding from the cornfields of small-town Ohio to the old-boy parlors of Harvard Yard, followed by Chan's reinvention on the silver screen, a legend annealed in Hollywood and America's racial tensions. And, finally, there is Chan's haunting presence during the era of postmodern politics and ethnic pride in contemporary America."

But in addition to being in bulk a biography of Chang Apana, the real-life person who inspired Bigger's character and providing a look at Hawaiian history that's in-depth enough to serve as a framework with which to view the rest of the book, Huang also relates and reflects on  some of his personal experiences, both from his childhood and days as a student in China and his studentship and eventual professorhood here in America. 

The book is a must read for history buffs, classic movie fans, and those who simply enjoy being treated to an alternative point of view from the mainstream Caucasian culture. 

Three Bags Full

Miss Maple is the smartest sheep in her flock – in all of Glenkill, really. Mopple the Whale is the best memory sheep his flock has ever had. Zora and Othello are the bravest sheep in the flock. But when the flock’s shepherd is murdered, all the sheep will have to pull together in order to solve this crime and escape the butcher’s block!
This book is extremely clever and well written. The author, Leonie Swann, does a really good job in creating a believable culture for the sheep; according to her, sheep equate the size of a creature’s soul with the ability to smell (needless to say they consider humans as soulless). We see human behavior through the (often quite hilarious) misinterpretations of the sheep. Add in a good mystery and you have a quite entertaining read.

Thursday 'View: The Complete Fairy Stories of Oscar Wilde

Good morning imaginaries: A book of Oscar Wilde's short stories was recomended to me by Craftypeople via a comment on the excerpt I posted as my first Sketches & Notes blog entry. And, although I don't think s/he is a regular reader (what kind of spot would that be on my imaginary record?) I would sincerely like to thank her/him. The stories are wonderful. Useually with an element of sadness, but *wonderful* sadness. Maybe it's because I haven't been reading as many classics as I was, say, before I started college (hey, you need to be sharp to read Dickens or Austen, and my pathetic attention span just gets eaten up by the class readings), but something about these stories really made me stop and think - of course, it might also be that Wilde has some very deep, thought-provoking messages in his stories. A lot of them, like so many others of that time, revolve around the ivory-towered rich and the in-plain-sight-but-still-out-of-mind poor. In others, a stronger element is a half-laughing, half-crying attitude toward the intelligentsia of the day. I still don't think I've caught on to all the nuances yet; this is definitely not a casual read. It requires as much mulling-over time as reading time. In other news, I plan to rectify my de-classified reading diet with [grits teeth] MacBeth (I'm glad you're all imaginaries, because otherwise I'd have to hide under the table to say that, no, all in all, I don't like Shakespeare. Bite me.) and The Great Gatsby. In still *other* news, an issue of world safety has come up, in that I, at nineteen years of age and being of slightly disturbed mind and pudgy body, am about to take my life (and probably the life of every other driver in North Carolina) into my hands and [try to] get my driver's license today. EDITED to say: @#%&!!! No license until the 16th.

Thursday 'View: Spindle's End

It's official. I've just decided to make Thursday book review day. Does it matter that I haven't finished the book I've decided to review? Well, not to me. Robin McKinley has a BREATHTAKING style. It's beautiful. Lush. Fantabulous. There just aren't words for it. Well. Now that I've relieved my admiration to a world-wide web that isn't listening, I'll go finish my book and find out what happens.