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Em / by Thúy, Kim,author.; Fischman, Sheila,translator.; translation of:Thúy, Kim.Em.English.;
"Emma-Jade and Louis are born into the havoc of the Vietnam War. Orphaned, saved and cared for by adults coping with the chaos of Saigon in free-fall, they become children of the Vietnamese diaspora. Em is not a romance in any usual sense of the word, but it is a word whose homonym--aimer, to love--resonates on every page, a book powered by love in the larger sense. A portrait of Vietnamese identity emerges that is wholly remarkable, honed in wartime violence that borders on genocide, and then by the ingenuity, sheer grit and intelligence of Vietnamese-Americans, Vietnamese-Canadians and other Vietnamese former refugees who go on to build some of the most powerful small business empires in the world. Em is a poetic story steeped in history, about those most impacted by the violence and their later accomplishments. In many ways, Em is perhaps Kim Thúy's most personal book, the one in which she trusts her readers enough to share with them not only the pervasive love she feels but also the rage and the horror at what she and so many other children of the Vietnam War had to live through. Written in Kim Thúy's trademark style, near to prose poetry, Em reveals her fascination with connection. Through the linked destinies of characters connected by birth and destiny, the novel zigzags between the rubber plantations of Indochina; daily life in Saigon during the war as people find ways to survive and help each other; Operation Babylift, which evacuated thousands of biracial orphans from Saigon in April 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War; and today's global nail polish and nail salon industry, largely driven by former Vietnamese refugees--and everything in between. Here are human lives shaped both by unspeakable trauma and also the beautiful sacrifices of those who made sure at least some of these children survived"--
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Experimental fiction.; Immigrants; Vietnam War, 1961-1975;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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Bread of angels / by Smith, Patti,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A radiant new memoir from beloved artist and writer Patti Smith. A post-World War II childhood unfolds in a condemned housing complex described in Dickensian detail: consumptive children, vanishing neighbors, an infested rat house, and beguiling book of Irish fairytales. We enter the child's world of the imagination where Smith, the captain of her loyal and beloved sibling army, vanquishes bullies, communes with tortoises and turns pennies into gold. The most intimate of Smith's suite of memoirs, Bread of Angels takes us from her teenage years where the first glimmers of art and romance take hold. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as creative heroes and role models as Patti starts to write poetry, then lyrics, merging both into the iconic songs and records such as Horses and Easter, Dancing Barefoot and Because the Night. Then she leaves it all behind to marry her one true love, Fred Sonic Smith, with whom she creates a mystical life of devotion and adventure on a canal in St. Clair shores, Michigan with ancient willows and fulsome pear trees. She creates a room of her own, furnished with a pillow of Moroccan silk, a Persian cup, inkwell and fountain pen. The couple spend nights in their landlocked Chris-Craft studying nautical maps and charting new adventures as they start their family. As Smith loses those around her, grief, loss, and gratitude are braided through years of caring for her children, rebuilding her life and, finally, writing again. The one constant in a life driven by artistic fire and the power of the imagination to transform the mundane into the beautiful, the commonplace into the magical, and pain into hope. In the final pages, we meet Patti on the road, the vagabond who travels to commune with herself, who lives to write and writes to live"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Smith, Patti.; Poets, American; Rock musicians; Women rock musicians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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