New Books in Biography

'I broke a law simply by being born.' In the late 1980s, Shen Yang was born during the fiercest years of China's One-Child Policy. As the second daughter of the family, she was a massive liability - an excess child, a product of illegal birth. From being raised by her grandparents in a remote village as soon as she was born, to being whisked away to her aunt's home in a distant faraway city, Shen Yang's existence was doomed to be shrouded in the utmost secrecy and silence. Armed with a false identity and ID card, she experienced years of neglect and humiliation from her aunt's volatile family who saw her as yet another burden to bear. On top of it all, it seemed her own biological parents had come to forget about her. In More Than One Child: Memoirs of an Illegal Daughter (Balestier Press, 2021), by turns witty and inspiring, Shen Yang bravely provides a vivid account of the family planning era in China, as she jots down her journey towards overcoming the limits of her upbringing and forging her own identity amidst the sorrows of her childhood. More than One Child is not only Shen Yang's story; it is the untold story of the enormous, yet invisible community of excess-birth children. And this book is Shen Yang's way of saying goodbye to her childhood, and goodbye to an era. 'This is the voice of China's Invisible Generation - vividly written, well balanced, brilliant, humorous and very sharp - it elicits a rollercoaster of emotions that breaks through the silence shrouding the lives of excess children born during the One-Child Policy.' --Xinran (Author of The Good Women of China, and The Promise: Love and Loss in Modern China) "The One-Child-per-Family policy was a tragedy forced upon China's mothers, children and their families. Finally, in this book, Shen Yang has dared to tell the truth, speaking out bravely about the experiences she lived through." --Ma Jian (Author of The Dark Road) "Now that the one-child policy has been relaxed, the stories of these illegal children will soon be a part of China's national collective memory. But to those who grew up tainted with this humiliation, the scars are permanent. One is Chinese writer Shen Yang, who wrote her story in part to extinguish the nightmares that still haunt her."  John W. Traphagan, Ph.D. is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor in the Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Mary Gauthier was twelve years old when she was given her Aunt Jenny’s old guitar and taught herself to play with a Mel Bay basic guitar workbook. Music offered her a window to a world where others felt the way she did. Songs became lifelines to her, and she longed to write her own, one day.Then, for a decade, while struggling with addiction, Gauthier put her dream away and her call to songwriting faded. It wasn’t until she got sober and went to an open mic with a friend did she realize that she not only still wanted to write songs, she needed to. Today, Gauthier is a decorated musical artist, with numerous awards and recognition for her songwriting, including a Grammy nomination.In Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting (St. Martin's Essentials, 2021), Mary Gauthier pulls the curtain back on the artistry of songwriting. Part memoir, part philosophy of art, part nuts and bolts of songwriting, her book celebrates the redemptive power of song to inspire and bring seemingly different kinds of people together.The Associated Press named Mary Gauthier one of the best songwriters of her generation. Her album Rifles & Rosary Beads was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Folk Album and Record of the Year by the Americana Music Association. Her songs have been recorded by dozens of artists, including Boy George, Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw, Bettye Lavette, Kathy Mattea, Amy Helm and Candi Staton. Saved by a Song is her first book. She lives in Nashville.Morris Ardoin is author of STONE MOTEL – MEMOIRS OF A CAJUN BOY (2020, University Press of Mississippi), which was optioned for TV/Film development in 2021. A communications practitioner, his work has appeared in regional, national, and international media. He divides his time between New York City and Cornwallville, New York, where he does most of his writing. His blog, Parenthetically Speaking, can be found at www.morrisardoin.com. Twitter: @morrisardoin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In The Life and Times of Louis Lomax: The Art of Deliberate Disunity (Duke University Press, 2021), Thomas Aiello traces the complicated and fascinating life of a pioneering Black journalist and media personality. A witness to some of the most iconic moments of the 1960s, Lomax remains an important yet overlooked civil rights figure, who emerged as one of the most influential voices of the movement despite his past as an ex-con, serial liar, and publicity-seeking provocateur.Thomas Aiello is a professor of history, and Africana studies at Valdosta State University. He is the author of more than twenty books and dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles. His work helped amend the Louisiana constitution to make nonunanimous juries illegal and was cited in the United States Supreme Court as part of its decision ruling them unconstitutional. His work was also part of the effort that led Major League Baseball to include Negro Leagues statistics in its historical record. He holds PhDs in history and anthrozoology and lives in Valdosta, Georgia. Learn more at www.thomasaiellobooks.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

The story of Alexander the Great has inspired conquerors and would-be conquerors throughout history. Alexander’s sweep through the Middle East and Central Asia left behind evidence of his mark on history--namely, in the several cities that he founded, and that sprung up to govern the kingdoms he left behind.One man looking for evidence of Alexander was Charles Masson: a deserter from the East India Company who reinvented himself as an archaeologist and scholar in Afghanistan. Academic, traveller, writer and unwilling spy, Masson’s story is told in Professor Edmund Richardson’s book Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City (Bloomsbury, 2021)We’re joined in this interview by David Chaffetz, who’s a regular contributor to the Asian Review of Books, and the author of Three Asian Divas: Women, Art and Culture In Shiraz, Delhi and Yangzhou.In this interview, the three of us talk about Charles Masson and his experiences in Afghanistan. We talk about what drove this man to embark on his archaeological calling, and how his story meshes with the story of the East India Company and Afghanistan. And we end on what Massey’s story and observations teach us about how to understand Afghanistan today.Edmund Richardson is Professor of Classics at Durham University. He has published Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels and Generals in Pursuit of Antiquity, and was named one of the BBC’s New Generation Thinkers in 2016.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Alexandria: The Quest For the Lost City. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Nicholas, today's guest, explains Australia has no war hero more impressive than Tongerlongeter. Leader of the Oyster Bay nation of south-east Tasmania in the 1820s and ’30s, he and his allies led the most effective frontier resistance ever mounted on Australian soil. They killed or wounded some 354 – or 4 per cent – of the invaders of their country. Tongerlongeter’s brilliant campaign inspired terror throughout the colony, forcing Governor George Arthur to launch a massive military operation in 1830 – the infamous Black Line. Tongerlongeter escaped but the cumulative losses had taken their toll. On New Year’s Eve 1831, having lost his arm, his country, and all but 25 of his people, the chief agreed to an armistice. In exile on Flinders Island, this revered warrior united most of the remnant tribes and became the settlement’s ‘King’ – a beacon of hope in a hopeless situation.Nicholas Clements completed his PhD at the University of Tasmania in 2013. His research explores traditional Tasmanian Aboriginal culture, and the conflict between Aborigines and settlers on the Tasmanian frontier between 1803-1842. He has written two books on this subject: The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania (UQP, 2014) and, with Henry Reynolds, Tongerlongeter: First Nations Leader and Tasmanian War Hero (NewSouth, 2021).Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). bede.haines@holdingredlich.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Baylor University musicologist and the author of Hearing Beethoven Robin Wallace chats with Howard about the magic of Beethoven, weaving personal sentiments with professional insights to explore his unparalleled musical legacy.Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In 1984, in an unprecedented act of brotherhood, Israel airlifted thousands of persecuted and starving Ethiopian Jews from Africa to Israel. They had been waiting in Ethiopia for millennia, sustained by the hope to return home to the Holy Land.Among the refugees was an 8-year-old boy, Danny Adeno Abebe. Now an Israeli journalist, Abebe tells the story of his family and his village, and the journey they traveled from Ethiopia through Sudan to Israel, and the even longer distance from a rural village life without indoor plumbing, electricity, or books, to a modern society. Many who left the villages did not survive the hardships of the journey, and many of those who did reach the Promised Land were emotionally wounded in the process.Immigrants in all times and places struggle with loss. They struggle to understand and adapt to their new country, to find a way to fit in, and to expand their identity to incorporate the old and the new. But few must leap a cultural gap as wide as that which this group faced.In his new country, Adeno Abebe encountered rejection as well as embrace. He experienced both astonishing support and appalling prejudice. As he matured, he recognized that both attitudes exist among his former countrymen in Africa, as well.From Africa To Zion (Miskal, 2021) is an extraordinary life story, but above all—it is a story about people, about love, and about the importance of family, regardless of skin color or ethnicity. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

In Trauma, Primitivism and the First World War: The Making of Frank Prewett (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), Joy Porter examines the extraordinary life of Frank “Toronto” Prewett and the history of trauma, literary expression, and the power of self-representation after WWI. She sheds new light on how the First World War affected the Canadian poet, and how war-induced trauma or “shell-shock” caused him to pretend to be an indigenous North American. Porter investigates his influence of, and acceptance by, some of the most significant literary figures of the time, including Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves.In doing so, Porter skillfully connects a number of historiographies that usually exist in isolation from one another and rarely meet. By bringing together a history of the WWI era, early twentieth century history, Native American history, the history of literature, and the history of class Porter expertly crafts a valuable contribution to the field. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

The narrative surrounding Charles Lindbergh's life has been as varying and complex as the man himself. Once best known as an aviator--the first to complete a solo nonstop transatlantic flight--he has since become increasingly identified with his problematic sympathies for isolationism, eugenics, and the Nazi regime in Germany. Underexplored amid all this is Lindbergh's spiritual life; what beliefs drove the contradictory impulses of this twentieth-century icon? An apostle of technological progress who encountered God in the wildernesses he sought to protect, an anti-Semitic opponent of US intervention in World War II who had a Jewish scripture inscribed on his gravestone, and a critic of Christianity who admired Christ, Lindbergh defies conventional categories. In Charles Lindbergh: A Religious Biography of America's Most Infamous Pilot (William B. Eerdmans, 2021), Christopher Gehrz represents Lindbergh as he was, neither an adherent nor a skeptic, a historical case study of an increasingly familiar contemporary phenomenon: the "spiritual but not religious." For all his earnest curiosity, Lindbergh remained unwilling throughout his life to submit to any spiritual authority beyond himself and ultimately rejected the ordering influence of church, tradition, scripture, or creed. In the end, the man who flew solo across the Atlantic insisted on charting his own spiritual path, drawing on multiple sources in such a way that satisfied his spiritual hunger but left some of his most troubling convictions unchallenged. Zach McCulley (@zamccull) is a historian of religion and literary cultures in early modern England and PhD candidate in History at Queen's University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

The rich and complex prose of the celebrated Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky provides a detailed look at the fabric of European literary and social discourse and continues to attract scholarly attention, even 200 years after his birth.2021 marks the bicentenary of Dostoevsky’s birth. To commemorate this occasion, join us in conversation with Prof. Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Languages, Literature, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University, as she takes us through the brief-yet-colourful life, most notable works, and myths surrounding the celebrated Russian author.The discussion is an extension of “The Dostoevsky Journal: A Comparative Literature Review”, published by Brill and edited by Prof. Vladiv-Glover. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography