cover of book
 
by Wendy Law-Yone
Northwestern University Press, 2003
Paper: 978-0-8101-5141-3
Library of Congress Classification PS3562.A862C6 2003
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.54

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Wendy Law-Yone opens her first novel with the phrase of a survivor, "Living things prefer to go on living." A young woman and her older half-brother are expelled from their home in Burma by a savage political coup. Sent to elusive safety in America, the motherless siblings find themselves engulfed by the indifference, hypocrisy, and cruelty of an American society unable to deal with difference. Her brother's death drives the unnamed narrator into the seclusion of a mental hospital, where memories of her childhood and the strength it ingrained in her are enough to heal her heart and return her to the outside world.