I heard from my mom yesterday, both on e-mail and Facebook. She's been e-mailing here and there since she set off for the old Silk Road a couple weeks ago, but it was the first time she'd Facebooked from Central Asia.This is what she wrote from Bukhara, Uzbekistan:Spent … [Read more...]
Book of the week–The Orientalist
Twelve years ago I read an article in The New Yorker about 1930s writer Essad Bey, aka Kurban Said. What stayed with me all these years was that Tom Reiss, the author of the article, revealed that Bey/Said was in fact a Russian Jew named Lev Nussimbaum.Reiss expanded the … [Read more...]
Book of the week–My Father’s Paradise
I learn something new every day. And that's what keeps life fascinating.For instance, I recently learned that up until the early 1950s, Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Iraq lived among one another in friendship. I also knew little about Kurdish Iraq, especially its Jewish … [Read more...]
Book of the week–Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other
In all this Tiger Mother hype and hysteria, I remembered reading that National Public Radio's Scott Simon recently wrote a memoir about adopting his two daughters from China. So I fired up the Kindle (I'm loving it!) last week and downloaded Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other … [Read more...]
Christmas in Chinatown
So twenty years ago I celebrated Christmas in Yokohama. As I posted yesterday, my mom and I flew from Hong Kong to Tokyo days before Christmas.I remember driving around Yokohama on Christmas day with my mom's old friends, the Nakajimas (pictured here with my mom), Christmas … [Read more...]