The author of A Village with My Name comes to DC on Thurs., April 19th, at 6:30PM!
From a veteran Marketplace correspondent comes a work that is as much a family history as it is a story of a superpower's globalization. Written in the engaging, self-effacing voice, A Village with My Name introduces readers to the regular people beyond the trophy skyscrapers and name-brand cities. It is told from the unique perspective of a Chinese-American economic journalist who challenges family and government orthodoxy, and confronts the most powerful force in Chinese society: shame. It takes the reader from a shuttered gulag at the headwaters of the Yangtze to the river's terminus in Shanghai, where an old family property is now said to be controlled by People's Liberation Army profiteers. It explores the eastern bank of the Grand Canal, where life in the ancestral Tong village is not what it first seems. It discovers troves of his grandmother's letters buried in American university libraries, and a precious family genealogy that turns out full of inaccuracies. Along the way, Scott Tong encounters a convicted baby seller in the world of international adoption, an uncle who survives on tree bark during the great famine, a cousin with a Buick but no wife, and two girl-versus-boy fights on public transportation.
Scott Tong has reported from more than a dozen countries as correspondent for Marketplace, from refugee camps in east Africa to shoe factories in eastern China. He toured the oil sands of Canada and snuck into Burma. A Village with My Name is his first book.
At Kramerbooks, 1517 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC. Click here for info.
