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New Books for You to Read

Living for Change: An Autobiography

(University of Minnesota Press, 272 pages)

Grace Lee Boggs’ life is not for everyone. Existence is confusing enough without pushing the envelope. So what makes a person dedicate more than 55 years of her life to the African American civil rights movement? And how did a first-generation Chinese American woman find herself in that community? Here is your chance to slip into the shoes of one cool, smart individual; your chance to imagine the possibilities when you call it like you see it. Lee Boggs let’s us know that we can be vivacious, practical, petty and very human in the often traumatic path toward consciousness through activism. This is the insider’s look, one that might actually make you get off your butt, and get living for a change.

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Wishbone

(Roundhouse Press, 78 pages)

In her debut book of poetry, Priscilla Lee offers hybrid snippets of personal hope and universal debauchery. She shines most vividly in a patchwork outfit of “Priscilla American” folklore, the kind that willfully spills tequila on numerological faith, and amicably divorces the “Asian voice” from the cross-cultural experience that belongs to everyone. She serves up wanting and tarnished love in a crystal decanter without ice. Sip it, or down it? That’s up to you.

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Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China

(University of Minnesota Press, 233 pages)

Wang Ping’s research into footbinding in China cracks the thin shell of immorality and obsolescence we coat over the subject to avoid understanding Chinese history. She reveals a system of fetishism so sophisticated and culturally rooted that it has spawned foot contests, foot philosophy, art, poetry, bankruptcy, and ripples of internalized misogyny that cause a modern-day author to engage in her own version of self-mutilation at age nine. On the ideal woman in 17th-century China, she relays, “Only when she had fully comprehended the books would she be able to turn her feet into something divine, spiritual, something beyond language. And she would be a foot champion.” Put your best thinking foot forward with this one.