Shelfology Book Pairing

Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

by Maxine Hong Kingston

'A brilliant memoir . . . it is about being Chinese in the way A Portrait of the Artist is about being Irish; it is an investigation of soul, not landscape, its sources are dream and memory, myth and desire; its crises are the crises of a heart in exile from roots that bind and terrorize it . . . Maxine Hong Kingston writes with bitter and relentless love. Her voice, now, is as clear as the voice of Ts'ai Yen, who sang her sad, angry songs of China to the barbarians. It is as fierce as a warrior's voice, and as eloquent as any artist's' Jane Kramer, New York Times Book Review 'This is a delightful book . . . tells more than I ever imagined about the strangeness of being Chinese and a woman; it also gives a superb account of what it's like simply to be alive' Victoria Radin, New Society 'A strange, enchanting book . . . As a manual of self-discovery through the channels and terrors of one's own rejected communal memory, it is unbeatable' Clancy Sigal, Guardian 'As a dream - of the "female avenger" - it is dizzying, elemental, a poem turned into a sword . . . reimagining the past with such dark beauty, such precision and anger that you feel you have saddled the Tao dragon and see all through the fiery eye of God' John Leonard, New York Times 'A book of fierce clarity and originality' Newsweek

A Poem in Twelve Books

by John Milton

Concerns the Christian story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is to "justify the ways of God to men" and elucidate the conflict between God's eternal foresight and fre e will.