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A poignant coming-of-age novel inspired by martial arts films and family lore about powerful ghost brides

Fatty Wong is a streetwise eleven-year-old in 1960s colonial Hong Kong who dreams of ruling the world. She fights daily for a better life, but in an era of great political turmoil, Fatty faces struggles in the streets of her working-class village—and inside her own home. As the city’s youth begins protesting British rule and local communists mimic the Cultural Revolution that has ignited chaos across mainland China, Fatty grapples with her own desire for freedom and spars with the neighborhood kids to discover her strength through kung fu. She takes a job at a convenience store to carve a space of her own, only to be sexually abused by the owner. Increasingly attuned to the spirit world, Fatty is visited by a neighbor boy who was shot and killed during a riot; his ghost offers to help her escape her anguish if she cares for his grieving mother. Now Fatty must embark on an adventure that will demand she discover her true identity—and raise a fist to anyone attempting to stifle her spirit.

A survey of the innovative scholarship emerging at the intersections of rhetoric, and fieldwork

A variety of research areas within rhetorical studies—including everyday and public rhetorics, space and place-based work, material and ecological approaches, environmental communication, technical communication, and critical and participatory action research, among others—have increasingly called for ethnographic fieldwork that grounds the study of rhetoric within the contexts of its use and circulation. Employing field methods more commonly used by ethnographers allows researchers to capture rhetoric in action and to observe the dynamic circumstances that shape persuasion in ordinary life.

Field Rhetoric: Ethnography, Ecology, and Engagement in the Places of Persuasion gathers new essays that describe and theorize this burgeoning transdisciplinary mode of field-based scholarship. Contributors document and support this ethnographic turn in rhetorical studies through sustained examination of the diverse trends, methods, tools, theories, practices, and possibilities for engaging in rhetorical field research.

This fascinating volume offers an introduction to these inquiries and serves as both a practical resource and theoretical foundation for scholars, teachers, and students interested in the intersection of rhetoric and field studies. Editors Candice Rai and Caroline Gottschalk Druschke have assembled scholars working in diverse field sites to map and initiate key debates on the practices, limitations, and value of rhetorical field methods and research. Working synthetically at the junction of rhetorical theory and field practices, the contributors to this collection build from myriad field-based cases to examine diverse theoretical and methodological considerations. The volume also serves as a useful reference for interdisciplinary qualitative researchers interested in doing research from a rhetorical or discursive perspective in various disciplines and fields, such as English, composition, communication, natural resources, geography, sociology, urban planning, anthropology, and more.

A powerful debut and a lyric coming-of-age narrative that interrogates the myths we carry

In Find Me When You’re Ready, Perry Janes traces a sweeping journey from Detroit to Los Angeles. As he leaves home and forges toward California, the speaker in these poems considers how we learn and mislearn ideas about manhood, confronts the aftershocks of childhood sexual abuse, and questions the human need for belonging. By embracing the touchstones of youth—movies, lore, graphic novels—these poems assert the speaker’s defiant right to childhood even amid damage.

As the collection arcs toward adulthood, the speaker embodies a vision of healing that refuses easy binaries and embraces the joys of intimacy. Across each of its five acts, Perry Janes’s debut collection is driven by an interest troubling our creation myths, asking who built them, why we carry them, and how we might set them aside.