“How many people here are natives of Arizona?” asked Flinn Foundation President and CEO Jack Jewett. Only a few hands in the large audience at Tucson’s Hotel Congress, at an event co-present...
Many of us realize how much we take the Internet’s current qualities for granted only when some party proposes to change them. Perhaps you felt you were just getting a handle on the most common ...
Your bones as fine as
robin wings, I thought you’d fly.
Construction paper, wax,
duct tape, leather belts bound
to your arms, shoulder blades.
Belief a cresting wave. Before.
After. Your bones as fine
as summer, faith. Here, I said,
bell of morning light unfolding
in my hand. When you reach
the sun, I’ll ring it. Fly.
The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America
by Mae Ngai
Hyphenated cultures seem to be a natural part of California’s landscape today, but it wasn’t always so. The Lucky Ones by Mae Ngai offers a fresh look at California history by reconstructing the lives of immigrant and second generation pioneers who lived between cultures when it was not such a common phenomenon. Ngai’s narrative brings Chinese Americans into a richer tradition of historical storytelling by humanizing an ambivalent, middle-class immigrant family, situating their lives within the more well-known histories of Chinese laborers and those who suffered from the 1882 Exclusion Act.
