Title: SHADOWS OF THE CRIMSON SUN
Subtitle: One Man’s Life in Manchuria, Taiwan, and North America
Author: JULIA LIN
Genre: NON-FICTION, BIOGRAPHY, HISTORY, TAIWAN
Length: 169 PAGES
Publisher: MAWENZI HOUSE
Type of Book: SOFTCOVER
Received From: THE PUBLISHER
Release Date: AUGUST 2017
ISBN: 978-1-988449-17-3
Price: $24.95 CDN
Rating: 5 OUT OF 5 STARS ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
– Map and photograph obtained from ‘Lonely Planet‘
DESCRIPTION:
After the Russian invasion of the Japanese puppet state of Manchuria (Manchukuo) in 1945, fourteen-year-old Akihisa Takayama escapes with his family to their ancestral Taiwan. Here they find themselves under the brutal Chinese dictatorship of the Kuomintang. In the 1960s, now a physician calling himself Charles Yang, he escapes with his young family to the United States, from where they finally go on to Canada to become among the first Taiwanese Canadians in Vancouver. Charles Yang’s experiences illuminate the “White Terror” of Taiwan, and the geopolitical dispute between Communist China and Taiwan over the meaning of “One China.” This is a rare, humane, and personal account of the little known histories of Manchukuo and Taiwanese immigration to North America.
– The author, Julia Lin with the book’s subject: Dr. Charles Yang (2017)
– Photographs obtained from www.julialinbooks.com
BOOK TRAILER:
MY REVIEW:
I find history fascinating, but without personalization, there is no context. It is for this reason that I enjoy memoirs and biographies as much as I do. In my heart I believe that author Julia Lin must feel the same way.
Part history lesson, part life-story, SHADOWS OF THE CRIMSON SUN is an eye-opening book that I believe is a must read.
Retired Doctor, Charles Yang’s life has been incredible, and not always in a good way. He experienced upheaval and massive disorientation during his formative years. The lessons he learned along the way and the hardships he endured shaped him into an intelligent and thoughtful man, a brilliant doctor and a Taiwanese-Canadian with a deep love for both his original and adoptive homelands.
Growing up during the Second World War and the horror that was life in Manchuria and later Taiwan “… helped to cultivate {his} life-long belief in the futility of war.”
This book has once again proven to me that no matter how much one may think they know about a given topic, or period in history, there is always more to be discovered. For example, the bulk of the literature and the narrative surrounding the end of WWII focuses on the defeat of Germany’s Adolph Hitler and the deliverance of the European populace from Nazi control. What we rarely hear about is defeat of Japan (other than the delivery of the atomic bombs) and what happened to the innocent civilians after the official end of the war. For example, I was aware of the fact that Japan did an incredibly thorough job of indoctrinating its citizens with propaganda extolling the virtue of the Japanese cause. What I did not know was that the beliefs were so engrained into it’s citizens that there were many occurrences of mass suicides when the Japanese populace learned of their country’s defeat.
I believe it is absolutely imperative that people read books such as SHADOWS OF THE CRIMSON SUN if we are to truly revel in the fact that we, as Canadians, are truly blessed to live in a society that celebrates and embraces multiculturalism. Yes, I am aware that no society, including that of Canada, is perfect. But it is the publication of books such as this one that will go a long way to understanding other cultures and their histories and through understanding, we create hope for the future.
I rate SHADOWS OF THE CRIMSON SUN as 5 out of 5 Stars. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
** Thank you to Mawenzi House Books for providing me with a free copy of “Shadows of the Crimson Sun.” **
FAVORITE QUOTE:
“As in any war, it was the common people who suffered most.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Julia Lin was born in Taiwan and lived there and in Vietnam before her family immigrated to Canada when she was nine.
Since then, Julia has lived in Vancouver and its environs, Toronto, and northern British Columbia.
She holds a graduate degree in Immunology (M.Sc., University of Toronto) and a post-graduate degree in computing education (University of British Columbia) and has taught high school math, science, and computing science in British Columbia for a number of years.
Julia lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
To learn more about this author, visit the following links:
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER:
Mawenzi House is dedicated to bringing to the reading public fresh new writing from Canada and across the world that reflects the diversity of our rapidly globalizing world, particularly in Canada and the United States.
Our focus is on works that can loosely be termed “multicultural” and particularly those that pertain to Asia and Africa. We publish 6-8 titles of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction (literary criticism, history) per year.
Among our achievements: we have played a role in the formulation of the Indo-Caribbean identity through the publication of several ground-breaking titles; we have kept in print books by major Caribbean writers Sam Selvon, Ismith Khan, and John Stewart; we have published provocative and perceptive social and literary critical works by Arnold Itwaru, Arun Prabha Mukherjee, Chelva Kanaganayakam, and others; the introduction of the important Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera; the first historical and critical study of Chinese Canadian writing in English; the first anthologies of South Asian Canadian literature, South Asian Canadian women’s poetry, Chinese Canadian stories, and South Asian Canadian and American women’s fiction.
HISTORY
In 1981, a group of young people, who had been in North America for just over a decade, decided to take the plunge and start the magazine they had always dreamed about as students, at a time in which Naipaul had to be ordered from bookstores, let alone Narayan or Ngugi or Soyinka. The result was The Toronto South Asian Review, which later became the much broader-based The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad and helped entrench a generation of new writers. As an offshoot of this literary magazine, in 1985 TSAR Publications published its first title, a book of essays on South Asian Canadian literature, followed by a book of poetry by Sri Lankan Canadian Rienzi Crusz.
Mawenzi House finally emerged, a uniquely diverse and knowledgeable publishing house based in Canada. (“Mawenzi” is the name of the second peak of Kilimanjaro.)
To learn more about Mawenzi House, visit the following links:
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