“This country really wants to kill us.” Uncle Zoda, a troubled husband, father and host of the author, makes this provocative comment after learning of a Chinese government plan to relocate villagers into state-built apartment buildings. Ting Hui Lau’s dissertation, “Colonial Development and the Politics of Affliction on the China-Myanmar Border” (Cornell University 2020a), provides a fascinating, unsettling exploration of …
This article is part of the following series: Book forum
The six review essays in this collection emerge from a joint launch of five books and one dissertation/ book-in-progress and a panel at the recent annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. In these meetings, each author provided a reading of another’s text, then revisited their own work in light of the resonances and dissonances that arose.
Addressing lab-based …
The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande
University of California Press, 2010. 264 pp., US$24.95 (paperback).
Angela Garcia’s magisterial, unsettling account of heroin addiction among a Hispanic community in Espanola Valley opens with a description of Nuevo Dias, a rural detoxification facility for drug users. Accepting the executive director’s challenge to “work” …
This article is part of the following series: From the Somatosphere archives
This article is part of: Transcriptions
Passage to Manhood: Youth Migration, Heroin and AIDS in Southwest China
Shao-hua Li
Stanford University Press, 2010. 248 pp., US$ 22.95 (paperback).
Reviewed by Nicholas Bartlett, University of California-San Francisco
Shao-hua Liu’s Passage to Manhood: Youth Migration, Heroin and AIDS in Southwest China chronicles the tragic consequences of the efforts of Nuosu youth to improve their lives during the …