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Award-winning author Kao Kalia Yang delivers an inspiring tale of resourceful children confronting adversaries in a refugee camp

After lunch the Yang warriors prepare for battle. They practice drills, balance rocks on their heads, wield magical swords from fallen branches. Led by ten-year-old Master Me (whose name means “little”), the ten cousins are ready to defend the family at all costs. After a week without fresh vegetables , the warriors embark on a dangerous mission to look for food, leaving the camp’s boundaries, knowing their punishment would be severe if they were caught by the guards. 

In this inspiring picture book, fierce and determined children confront the hardships of Ban Vinai refugee camp, where the author lived as a child. Yang’s older sister, seven-year-old Dawb, was one of the story’s warriors, and her brave adventure unfolds here with all the suspense and excitement that held her five-year-old sister spellbound many years later. Accompanied by the evocative and rich cultural imagery of debut illustrator Billy Thao, the warriors’ secret mission shows what feats of compassion and courage children can perform, bringing more than foraged greens back to the younger children and to their elders. In this unforgiving place, with little to call their own, these children are the heroes, offering gifts of hope and belonging in a truly unforgettable way. 

Over the last decade, a youth revolt has swept through Asia. Massive, regime-rocking protests have grabbed global attention as students and other young people have confronted security forces on the streets, taking great risks to condemn authoritarian rule, promote democracy, and to push forward new agendas of personal freedom and gender equality. Behind the scenes, young people have experimented with novel and diverse modes of political and social activism, often using new tools of online communication and cultural expression, forging new kinds of coalitions, and exploring nonconfrontational and subterranean networking.

Youth Activism in Asia focuses equally on the episodes of spectacular protest and on varieties of less visible engagement, examining the diversity, origins, and impact of contemporary youth activism in Asia. With fifteen case studies, the volume highlights shared patterns among demands, tactical repertoires, and activist networks, and examines what differentiates protest movements across countries and over time. Drawing on original fieldwork and, in many cases, their own experience, the authors address Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and transnational activism. Conceiving of “activism” broadly as any action intended to bring about social and political change, the volume makes theoretical contributions to our understanding of the relationship between protest and democratic backsliding, engagement with new communication technologies, and this generation’s distinctive intersectional politics. Youth Activism in Asia showcases the creativity, energy, boldness, and diversity of a new generation of Asian political activists.

Historian and novelist Song WooHye chronicles the life of Yun Dong-ju (1917-1945), one of the most beloved and important poets in the modern Korean literary canon, widely considered Korea's "National Poet". Beginning with the history of the North Gando region (now Yanbian, China), where Yun was born, and ending with facts behind the publication of his only and posthumous poetry collection, Sky, Wind, Star, and Poem, this critical biography elucidates who Yun Dong-ju really was, with factual descriptions of the bleak and turbulent period of Japan’s colonization of Korea.
 
While first working on the book in the 1980s, Song had interviewed the poet’s surviving relatives and friends, most of whom have since passed away. Without her interviews, these important first-hand accounts would have been lost. Song had an added advantage of an “insider,” as she is a niece of Song Mong-gyu, who was the poet’s first cousin and inseparable friend for life. Incorporating newly discovered materials and using interviews with the beloved poet's family and friends, this biography is the most comprehensive, definitive biography of Yun Dong-ju to date, now available in English for the first time.
 

This book is published with the support of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea).