Search Results: Returned 2 Results, Displaying Titles 1 - 2
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2019., Hamish Hamilton Canada Call No: Bio T367m Edition: First Edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "A devastatingly honest memoir that reckons with the past in order to ask whether the things that happen to us--and the choices we make--dictate the people that we become. Mistakes to Run With chronicles the turbulent early years of Yasuko Thanh's life, from a rough childhood to her teen years as a sex worker to her emergence as a writer. Growing up in a housing project in Victoria, BC, Thanh rebels against her extremely religious parents. She's an honours student, but also a nascent delinquent, cutting herself and getting arrested for shoplifting. By fifteen her parents have kicked her out. She runs away repeatedly from foster homes, acquiring a taste for drugs and alcohol and learning unlikely lessons about sex, power, and friendship. By the time she enters the world of sex work she feels completely abandoned--by her family, her friends, her school, and society. After a stint in jail at sixteen, she meets her pimp, Jesse, and falls in love. The next chapter of her life takes us from the motel rooms of Victoria to the streets of Vancouver, as Thanh endures further hardship: beatings, arrests, Jesse's crack cocaine addiction, and an unwanted pregnancy. It's the act of writing that ultimately becomes a solace from her suffering--but even as publication and awards bolster her, she remains haunted by her past."--.
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2016., Adult, Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Canada Books Inc., a Penguin Random House Company Call No: Fic Tha Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Vietnam is a haunted country, and Dr. Nguyen Georges-Minh is a haunted man. In 1908, the French rule Saigon, but uneasily; dissent whispers through the corridors of the city. Each day, more Vietnamese rebels are paraded through the streets towards the gleaming blade of the guillotine, now a permanent fixture in the main square and a gruesome warning to those who would attempt to challenge colonial rule. It is a warning that Georges-Minh will not heed. A Vietnamese national and Paris-educated physician, he is obsessed by guilt over his material wealth and nurses a secret loathing for the French connections that have made him rich, even as they have torn his beloved country apart. With a close-knit group of his friends calling themselves the Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains, Georges-Minh plots revenge on the French for the savagery they have shown to the Vietnamese. And it falls to Georges-Minh to create a poison to mix into the Christmas dinner of a garrison of French soldiers. It is an act that will send an unmistakable message to the French: Get out of Vietnam. But the assassination attempt goes horribly wrong. Forced to flee into the deep jungles of the outer provinces, Georges-Minh must care for his infant son, manage the growing madness of his wife, and elude capture by the hill tribes and the small--but lethal--pockets of French sympathizers. Journey Prize winner Yasuko Thanh transports us into a vivid, historical Vietnam, one that is filled with chaotic streets, teeming marketplaces, squalid opium dens, and angry ghosts that exist side by side with the living."--From publisher.
