the asian authors bookpost.

Oh my god, this whole book-buying thing. I went to a super rad booksale yesterday and ended up grabbing a whole bunch of local lit (including Singapore sci-fi written by a feminist author - ughhh I am so hyped for that one), which I'm going to be working my way through for a while yet. Meanwhile!

Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee.

( Casey Han, elder daughter of working-class Korean immigrants - degree in economics and no job... )

Miss Seetoh in the World, by Catherine Lim.

( The most different of C. Lim's novels. Sadly that still doesn't say very much. )

Renaissance Singapore? Economy, Culture, and Politics, edited by Kenneth Paul Tan.

( Immense academic crush on Kenneth Paul Tan: still immense. )

Jointly & Severably, by Eleanor Wong | Wills & Secession, by Eleanor Wong | Mergers & Accusations, by Eleanor Wong | GASPP: A Gay Anthology of Singaporean Poetry & Prose, edited by Ng Yi-Sheng | Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier | Gone Case, by Dave Chua | Sex and the City, by Candace Bushnell | The Waters & the Wild, by Francesca Lia Block | Growing Up: Getting Along in the Sixties, by Tisa Ng | Oreo, by Fran Ross | Caucasia, by Danzy Senna | Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class, by Owen Jones | Racism: A Very Short Introduction | Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, by Rana Mitter | Feminism: A Very Short Introduction, by Margaret Waters | A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin | Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean | Sons of the Yellow Emperor, by Lynn Pan | Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People, by Katharine Quarmby | Tipping The Velvet, by Sarah Waters | Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro | The Lantern Bearers, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Silver Branch, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli | Brick Lane, by Monica Ali | The Savage Detectives, by Robert Bolano | Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell | Cat On A Hot-Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams | Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern, by Joshua Zeitz | Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson | The Moon By Night, by Madeleine L'Engle | To Live, by Yu Hua | Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer | The Next Competitor, by K.P. Kincaid | Raffles Place Ragtime, by Phillip Jeyaretnam | Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy, by Frances Mayes | Mao's Last Dancer, by Li Cunxin | Marie, Dancing, by Carolyn Meyer | Man Walks Into A Room, by Nicole Krauss | How To Be Good, by Nick Hornby

"Ballet for Drina"

Did anyone read the Drina books growing up?

I did. The series was really my sister's. It's a series about a girl who trains to be a ballet dancer and through her schooling years ends up dancing in lots of different locales all over the world because she's "extraordinarily talented" and also her parents are well-off. The first book in the series (set when Drina was 11) was published in 1957; the last book (when she's 18) in 1991.

Mostly, though, I'm talking about them here because I was rereading the latter half of the series and they struck me as being so much more thoughtful than I remembered (although let's be honest; it's still pretty id-fulfillment in terms of "Drina's pretty and has really nice clothes and amazing talent and she's destined to be a great dancer obvs obvs").

( This is going to be another entry where I talk about ~social justice issue~ again. /o\ )

Tl;dr - this series is more awesome than I gave it credit for being! When I was growing up my sister collected all eleven books in the series and kept insisting there was a twelfth she "couldn't get hold of", which I think is largely non-existent. Given the years between the publication of each book, I would actually buy a Book 12 published right now with the general fudging of timelines/non-reference to contemporary events so as to make it less obvious that Drina was aging really really slowly. And a lot of it would be about gender and class (especially given that some of the Drina books were being written during the Thatcher years!) and shit.