It’s not that the concept of Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers & Saints is complex: two volumes tell the story of the Boxer Rebellion from two perspectives. But within this simple structure, Yang’s graphic novels build a compelling story around a war of identity, set 100 years ago in China. It combines mysticism with the very […]
Posts with the Los Angeles Review of Books tag
Digital Storytelling: A Symposium
I’m excited an honored to be speaking next week at UC Irvine at day-long event that is mouth-watering for anyone who loves to write. The Digital Storytelling Symposium features some of the most innovative people in long form writing today including, well, Longform folks themselves. The Atavist, Byliner, Equire, Noir Magazine, Matter and the Los Angeles […]
China Stories
If Chinese Characters is about telling the stories of everyday life in China, China Stories is explicitly a way to think about how we tell and hear those stories. Historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom and I teamed up again to curate and edit this e-book volume of reviews and analyses for the Los Angeles Review of Books. The cover […]
Part 2 of my interview with Rob Schmitz
In the Los Angeles Review of Books: In part 2 of this interview, Rob Schmitz talks more about factory workers in China, the vast system of netting installed at factory dormitories to cut back on worker suicides, the problems with and opportunities for doing responsible journalism in China, and his book recommendations. Listen here.
Part 1 of my interview with Rob Schmitz
In the Los Angeles Review of Books: “Rob Schmitz is the Shanghai bureau chief for American Public Media’s Marketplace. He broke the story about Mike Daisey, showing that Daisey’s reporting on Chinese factory workers for This American Life was full of fabrication. He talks here with Angilee Shah about that story, about reporting in China, […]