Archives de catégorie : Politics

DAUGHTERS OF THE BAMBOO GROVE de Barbara Demick

The heartrending story of twin sisters torn apart by China’s one-child policy and the rise of international adoption—from the author of the National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy.

DAUGHTERS OF THE BAMBOO GROVE:
From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins
by Barbara Demick
Penguin Random House, May 2025
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

On a warm day in September 2000, a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Zanhua gave birth to twin girls in a small hut nestled in bamboo behind her brother’s rural home in China’s Hunan province. The twins, Fangfang and Shuangjie, were welcome additions to her young family but also not her first children. Hidden in the hut, they were born under the shadow of China’s notorious one-child policy. Fearing the ire of family planning officials, Zanhua and her husband decided to leave one twin in the care of relatives, hoping each toddler on their own might stay under the radar. But, in late 2002, Fangfang was violently snatched away from her aunt’s care. The family worried they would never see her again, but they didn’t imagine she could be sent to the United States. She might as well have been sent to another world.

Following her stories written as the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, Barbara Demick, author of National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy, embarks on a journey that encompasses the origins, shocking cruelty, and long term impact of China’s one-child rule; the rise of international adoption and the religious currents that buoyed it; and the exceedingly rare phenomenon of twin separation. Today, Esther—formerly Fangfang—is a photographer in Texas, and Demick brings to vivid life the Christian family that felt called to adopt her, having no idea that she was kidnapped. Through Demick’s indefatigable reporting and the activist work to find these lost children, will these two long-lost sisters finally find each other, and if they do, will they feel whole again?

A remarkable window into the volatile, constantly changing China of the last half century and the long-reaching legacy of the country’s most infamous law, DAUGHTERS OF THE BAMBOO GROVE is also the moving story of two sisters torn apart by the forces of history and brought together again by their families’ determination and one reporter’s dogged work.

Barbara Demick is author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea; Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood, and Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town, published by Random House in July 2020. She was bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times in Beijing and Seoul, and previously reported from the Middle East and Balkans for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

WHAT’S LEFT de Malcolm Harris

A vital guide for collective political action against the climate apocalypse, from bestselling leftist Malcolm Harris— “a brilliant thinker and writer capable of making the intricacies of economic conditions supremely readable” (Vulture)

WHAT’S LEFT:
Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis
by Malcolm Harris
Little, Brown, April 15, 2025
(via The Gernert Company)

Climate change is the unifying crisis of our time. But the scale of the problem can be paralyzing, especially when corporations are actively staving off changes that could save the planet but which might threaten their bottom lines. To quote Greta Thunberg, despite very clear science and very real devastation, the adults at the table are still saying “blah blah blah.” Something has to change—but what, and how?

In What’s Left, acclaimed writer and public intellectual Malcolm Harris cuts through the noise and gets real about our remaining options for saving the world. Just as humans have caused climate change, we hold the power to avert a climate apocalypse, but that will only happen through collective political action. Harris outlines the three strategies—progressive, socialist, and revolutionary—that have any chance of succeeding, while also revealing that none of them can succeed on their own. What’s Left shows how we must combine them into a single pathway: a meta-strategy, one that will ensure we can move forward together rather than squabbling over potential solutions while the world burns.

Vital and transformative, What’s Left is the guidebook we need at the moment we need it most. It confirms Malcolm Harris as next-generation David Graeber or Mike Davis—a historian-activist who shows us where we stand and how we got here, while also blazing a path toward a brighter future.

Malcolm Harris is the author of the national bestseller Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials; and Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit: History Since the End of History. He was born in Santa Cruz, CA and graduated from the University of Maryland.

Elena Kostioutchenko remporte le Pushkin House Book Prize 2024

Photo credit: Rocio Chacon

Elena Kostioutchenko s’est vu décerner le Pushkin House Book Prize 2024, qui lui a été remis à Londres le 14 juin dernier en présence de l’une de ses traductrices et de son éditeur britannique.

La Pushkin House est un espace artistique, culturel et social situé à Londres qui explore, remet en question et débat de la culture et de l’identité russes aujourd’hui. Le Pushkin House Book Prize a été créé en 2013 afin de récompenser et d’attirer l’attention sur les ouvrages de non-fiction provenant de Russie ou portant sur ce pays, écrits ou traduits en anglais. Les sujets des livres sélectionnés ne concernent pas seulement la vie et la culture à l’intérieur des frontières de l’actuelle Fédération de Russie, mais aussi l’expérience de ceux dont les terres natales ont été affectées par l’Empire russe et l’Union soviétique.

Les éditions Noir sur blanc ont publié l’édition française, intitulée RUSSIE, MON PAYS BIEN-AIME, en février 2024 dans une traduction d’Emma Lavigne et Anne-Marie Tatsis-Botton.

« Être journaliste, c’est dire la vérité. Avec Mon pays bien-aimé, Elena Kostioutchenko documente son pays, tel qu’il est vécu par celles et ceux qu’il efface systématiquement, par exemple les filles de la campagne recrutées comme travailleuses du sexe, les personnes queer des provinces éloignées, les patientes et les médecins d’une maternité ukrainienne – et les journalistes, dont elle fait partie.
Cet ouvrage est le portrait singulier d’une nation, et celui d’une jeune femme qui refuse de garder le silence. En mars 2022, alors qu’elle est reporter pour Novaïa Gazeta, l’un des derniers journaux russes indépendants, Kostioutchenko se rend en Ukraine pour couvrir la guerre. Elle se donne pour mission d’informer les Russes sur les horreurs que Poutine commet en leur nom. Elle sait dès le début que si elle retourne dans son pays, elle risque d’être condamnée à quinze ans de prison, sinon pire. Portée par la conviction que la plus grande forme d’amour et de patriotisme est la critique, elle continue à écrire, nullement découragée, les yeux grand ouverts. »

LAST TO EAT, LAST TO LEARN de Pashtana Durrani

From young Afghani activist and Amnesty International Global Youth Ambassador Pashtana Durrani, a deeply inspiring memoir about the power of learning and the value of educators in their many forms – from teachers, mentors, and role models, to fathers, mothers, and any one of us with the drive to stand against ignorance.

LAST TO EAT, LAST TO LEARN
My Life in Afghanistan Fighting to Educate Women
by Pashtana Durrani, with Tamara Bralo
Kensington, March 2024
(via The Martell Agency)

LAST TO EAT, LAST TO LEARN is the remarkable memoir of Pashtana Durrani, a 23-year-old Afghan woman, who has pursued her passion for educating the “disappearing girls” of the remote, contested rural tribal regions, amidst all the turmoil, violence and oppression that has enveloped her country – and her family — over a generation.

Pashtana Durrani was the first recipient of a grant from Malala’s Fund, and the founder of Learn NGO, an organization that was ruthlessly targeted by the Taliban. She conceived and developed a brilliant program for getting educational materials directly into the hands of girls and young women in the form of solar-powered tablets preloaded with lessons for grades K-12.

Pashtana escaped from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover and will soon be in the U.S., with a two-year residency at Wellesley College to continue her critical work for girls’ education. Malala wrote one of two letters to the U.S. government to petition for Pashatana’s safe evacuation to the U.S. Pashtana is a highly sought-after expert in the on-going international advocacy struggles, a figure of hope and promise for all those determined not to cede ground in the battle for women’s education and autonomy in Afghanistan and beyond.

Tamara Bralo is an award-winning journalist who worked for BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera English, and spent years covering war zones around the world, including Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

THE EXTREMIST MIND by Nafees Hamid

THE EXTREMIST MIND weaves together personal memoir with evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, political economics, and anthropological fieldwork with jihadists, white nationalists, QAnon devotees to explain how people develop and act on extremist beliefs.

THE EXTREMIST MIND:
What It Says About Human Nature and the Modern World
by Dr Nafees Hamid
Bloomsbury UK, 2026
(via Northbank Talent Management)

We’ve all been exposed to extremist, populist, and conspiratorial narratives and yet most of us roll our eyes at it or laugh it off. What causes some small minority of people to take these narratives seriously? What causes an even smaller percentage of that population to actually act on those narratives? Why do some even give their lives based on those ideas? And, most importantly, what can we do to stop people from committing political violence?

Cognitive scientist Nafees Hamid has travelled the world meeting members of ISIS, Hezbollah, NeoNazis, QAnon, and a variety of other violent and divisive movements. He has interviewed, surveyed, conducted psychology experiments with them and is one of the few people to have scanned their brains. The book details Nafees’s experiences going out into the field to find the subjects: from escaping an ISIS recruiter; to realising his research assistant had gradually been radicalised right under his nose; to a former flatmate who turned to QAnon during the pandemic, challenging Nafees to put into practice everything he had learned in order to de-program his friend.

Dr Nafees Hamid is a Cognitive Scientist of extremism, conspiracy theories, and political violence. In his current role at King’s College London, he co-leads a multi-nation research project which explores the role of trauma and mental health on pathways to peace versus violence in fragile and conflict affected states.