Chiang Yee

Price: $49.95

Subtitle: The Silent Traveller from the East -- A Cultural Biography
Author: Da Zheng
Subject: Asian American, Biography, Literary Studies
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-4693-3
Pages: 368 pages
Publication Date: February 2010

Praise for Chiang Yee

"Da Zheng's meticulous recording of Chiang Yee's cultural biography promises to bring about an intensified awareness of the diverse intellectual and cultural itineraries organizing various aspects of Chinese - American culture. Chiang Yee: The Silent Traveller from the East will be of interest to scholars in American Studies, Asian-America Studies, Chinese Modern History, Travel Writing, the Memoir, Chinese Diaspora, and the intellectual history of the twentieth century American culture."—Donald Pease, Dartmouth College

A young man arrives in England in the 1930s, knowing few words of the English language.Yet, two years later he writes a successful English book on Chinese art, and within the following decade publishes more than a dozen others. This is the true story of Chiang Yee, a renowned writer, artist, and worldwide traveler, best known for the Silent Traveller series—stories of England, the United States, Ireland, France, Japan, and Australia—all written in his humorous, delightfully refreshing, and enlightening literary style.

This biography is more than a recounting of extraordinary accomplishments. It also embraces the transatlantic life experience of Yee who traveled from China to England and then on to the United States, where he taught at Columbia University, to his return to China in 1975, after a forty-two year absence. Interwoven is the history of the communist revolution in China; the battle to save England during World War II; the United States during the McCarthy red scare era; and, eventually, thawing Sino-American relations in the 1970s. Da Zheng uncovers Yee’s encounters with racial exclusion and immigration laws, displacement, exile, and the pain and losses he endured hidden behind a popular public image.