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Home Is Not Here Kindle Edition
by Wang Gungwu (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (18)
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Get $5 off $100 with Visa. Enter code VISAFIVE at checkout. Discount by Amazon. TermsA fascinating reflection on family, identity, and belonging. As someone who has studied history for much of my life, I have found the past fascinating. But it has always been some grand and even intimidating universe that I wanted to unpick and explain to myself. Wang Gungwu is one of Asia’s most important public intellectuals. He is best known for his explorations of Chinese history in the long view and for his writings on the Chinese diaspora. With Home is Not Here, the historian of grand themes turns to a single life history: his own. Wang writes about his multicultural upbringing and life under British rule. He was born in Surabaya, Java, but his parents’ orientation was always to China. Wang grew up in the plural, multi-ethnic town of Ipoh, Malaya (now Malaysia). He learned English in colonial schools and was taught the Confucian classics at home. After the end of WWII and the Japanese occupation, he left for the National Central University in Nanjing to study alongside some of the finest of his generation of Chinese undergraduates. The victory of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party interrupted his education, and he ends this volume with his return to Malaya. Wise and moving, Home Is Not Here speaks to the ability of the individual to find a place amid the historical currents that have shaped Asia and the world.
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Print length
216 pages
Home Is Where We Are
Wang Gungwu
4.8 out of 5 stars 11
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Review
"Wang's continual balancing of his Chinese heritage with his growing up in a multicultural, British-ruled Malaysia encapsulates the challenge of dual or multiple identities that many overseas Chinese face."-- "Asian Review of Books"
"If home was not 'here, ' nor was it in China, it was also not nowhere. Faced with the unknowability of his own home, history and roots, he learned to take refuge in the world. There, through geography, literature and eventually history itself, he arrived at a capacious world-mindedness in which 'all places and people had become knowable.' For Wang, home became, in that sense, everywhere."-- "Mekong Review"
"meaningful historical record"-- "Shanghai Review of Books"
"A charming, intimate, and modest autobiography of the childhood and schooling of a great historian of China. . . . How a wise Chinese mother and a headmaster in Ipoh Malaysia taught their only son to love learning in and out of China in transition."--Ezra Vogel, Harvard University
"Generalities die by a thousand particular cuts. History, fortunately, is the domain of the particular. A new memoir by historian Wang Gungwu, Home Is Not Here, has given us one beautiful, incisive cut against any general idea of Chinese belonging."-- "China Channel"
"For such an outstandingly accomplished individual, publication of such an evocative and detailed memoir carries tremendous weight in the burgeoning field of Chinese overseas studies."-- "Cross-Currents"
"As the doyen of Chinese studies and the Chinese in Southeast Asia pens the memoirs of his early days in Malaya and China, history comes to life in a most intimate way. What could lead to a rootless confusion becomes a capacious cosmopolitanism."--Prasenjit Duara, Duke University
"His stories of growing up in colonial Malaya are illuminating: mingling with people of different races and Chinese people of different dialect groups enabled him even at a young age to develop empathy with strangers and nurtured a sense of inclusiveness, even of humanity. Like a sponge, he soaked up all that he could learn. His intellectual curiosity was boundless and his heart was open to diversity."-- "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society"
"Wang Gungwu, a global Chinese historian and former president of the University of Hong Kong, wrote the story of his "long and semi-nomadic career" at the age of nearly 90. His life began in Southeast Asia during the colonial era. He experienced colonization, war, turmoil, revolution, and migrated between three continents for most of his life, which constituting a rich and unique wandering history in the historical torrents of twentieth century."-- "Yazhou Zhoukan"
"[An] absorbing memoir of [an] outstanding scholar and exemplar of a humble cosmopolitanism that is becoming rare."-- "Inside Story"
"This book is an intimate reflection on the themes of family, education, language, Chinese identity, and the search for a sense of home during a tumultuous period in Southeast Asian and Chinese history."-- "New Books Network"
Review
"A charming, intimate, and modest autobiography of the childhood and schooling of a great historian of China." -Ezra Vogel, Harvard University
"The book is neither overly dramatic nor flowery, but straightforward and written with measured sentimentality and reflection." — Asian Review of Books
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Product details
ASIN : B0851CJR2G
Publisher : National University of Singapore Press
Accessibility : Learn more
Publication date : 11 June 2019
Language : English
File size : 10.4 MB
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 216 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-9813250567
Page Flip : Enabled
Best Sellers Rank: 1,192,847 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)384 in Historical India & South Asia Biographies
2,276 in History of China
11,977 in Humour & Entertainment (Books)
Customer Reviews:
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (18)
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4.4 out of 5 stars
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5.0 out of 5 stars A great read for any oversea ChineseReviewed in Canada on 23 June 2020
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The book does delivery what it promised: the personal experience during the historic turmoil before and during WW2 in China and the southeast Asia. And as an oversea Chinese, it provides more perspectives on my identity in my foreign homeland.
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Gaia
5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful bookReviewed in the United States on 17 May 2019
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It's almost a relief that Prof Wang Gungwu, the renowned historian of China-Southeast Asia, decided to write this memoir. It's really a beautiful piece of writing that takes you to the worlds between Jiangsu of southeastern China and Indonesia/Malaysia during volatile times of war and political change. In between Prof Wang's narration you get to read his mother's poignant recollections, which is precious. The period is mainly on 1920s-40s. But you also get to peek interesting anecdotes on China immediately after 1979 when Prof Wang started visiting the PRC again.
I loved how the events that seem distant now are brought intimately close, and deeply personal. It's also written in plain, honest language so not a heavy read or for any specialist audience. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to be taken into Asia/world of the first half of the twentieth century (and beyond) through stories of how people lived it, narrated by an erudite historian.
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