Beautiful Country : Stories From Another India PDF Download

Author: Sayeda Hamid
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9789350291306
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
With a foreward by Montek Singh Ahluwalia Beautiful Country is a journey towards understanding India. From the rarefied world of the Jalpaiguri tea estates to the crowded bylanes of Varanasi, from the pristine forests of Andamans to the seething valley of Manipur, from the scattered habitations of Ladakh to the flooded villages of Barmer - these are the roads less travelled. A woman and a girl set out to see India, lugging along the baggage of their pasts. On the way, they meet: Maimunisa, the ancillary weaver from Banaras who has only been able to feed her three-year-old son 'sabudane ka paani' (tapioca water); young doctors from AIIMS who have left behind hefty pay packages and the comfort of city life to provide health care to tribals in the hinterlands of Chhattisgarh; village women who have been able to significantly reduce the number of infant deaths in the tribal peripheries of Maharashtra. The duo chance upon the story of Bon Bibi and Shah Jangolee in the swamps of the Sundarbans, as also the natural, historical and cultural wonders that dot the Indian landscape. This book compels you to experience the hope and despair, misery and triumph, failures and innovations of 'real India' - an India that remains invisible to most Indians and does not make it to the front pages of newspapers, and has not been captured by the roving cameras of the 24x7 media channels.

Author: Jane Kuo
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063119005
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
For fans of Jasmine Warga and Thanhhà Lại, this is a stunning novel in verse about a young Taiwanese immigrant to America who is confronted by the stark difference between dreams and reality. Anna can’t wait to move to the beautiful country—the Chinese name for America. Although she’s only ever known life in Taiwan, she can’t help but brag about the move to her family and friends. But the beautiful country isn’t anything like Anna pictured. Her family can only afford a cramped apartment, she’s bullied at school, and she struggles to understand a new language. On top of that, the restaurant that her parents poured their savings into is barely staying afloat. The version of America that Anna is experiencing is nothing like she imagined. How will she be able to make the beautiful country her home? This lyrical and heartfelt story, inspired by the author’s own experiences, is about resilience, courage, and the struggle to make a place for yourself in the world.

Author: Qian Julie Wang
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593313003
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world—an incandescent debut from an astonishing new talent • A TODAY SHOW #READWITHJENNA PICK In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal” and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive. In Chinatown, Qian’s parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly “shopping days,” when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn’s streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center—confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all. But then Qian’s headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor’s visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here. Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.

Author: Aman Sethi
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039308972X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
"A deeply moving, funny, and brilliantly written account from one of India’s most original new voices." —Katherine Boo Like Dave Eggers’s Zeitoun and Alexander Masters’s Stuart, this is a tour de force of narrative reportage. Mohammed Ashraf studied biology, became a butcher, a tailor, and an electrician’s apprentice; now he is a homeless day laborer in the heart of old Delhi. How did he end up this way? In an astonishing debut, Aman Sethi brings him and his indelible group of friends to life through their adventures and misfortunes in the Old Delhi Railway Station, the harrowing wards of a tuberculosis hospital, an illegal bar made of cardboard and plywood, and into Beggars Court and back onto the streets. In a time of global economic strain, this is an unforgettable evocation of persistence in the face of poverty in one of the world’s largest cities. Sethi recounts Ashraf’s surprising life story with wit, candor, and verve, and A Free Man becomes a moving story of the many ways a man can be free.

Author: Sherman Alexie
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0316219304
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
A New York Times bestseller—over one million copies sold! A National Book Award winner A Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live. With a forward by Markus Zusak, interviews with Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney, and black-and-white interior art throughout, this edition is perfect for fans and collectors alike.

Author: John Pomfret
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1429944129
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 705

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Book Description
A remarkable history of the two-centuries-old relationship between the United States and China, from the Revolutionary War to the present day From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap Chinese tea, to the US warships facing off against China's growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined. For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America's ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier. Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world.

Author: Anand Giridharadas
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458763099
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Reversing his parents immigrant path, a young writer returns to India and discovers an old country making itself new. Anand Giridharadas sensed something was afoot as his plane prepared to land in Bombay. An elderly passenger looked at him and said, Were all trying to go that way, pointing to the rear. You, youre going this way. Giridharadas was...

Author: Vaibbhavi Pruthviraj Ranavaade
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100093005X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
The sari has remained an essential part of culture, tradition and fashion in South Asia and India through many centuries. This book examines the variety of meanings which it carries as a symbol of Indian femininity and tradition as well as a means of creative fashion expression for modern India. It discusses the semiotic interpretations of the sari today by understanding its significance for traditional weavers, designers and people who wear saris at home, work or for religious or cultural occasions. Through surveys, interactions and interviews, the author explores the shared experience of wearing saris in different social and cultural settings across economic groups in farms and boardrooms as well as a means of creative expression for young Indians. It also looks at the processes involved in making traditional saris today, draping and weaving styles, buying behaviour, saris in pop-culture, pride parades and Bollywood and interpretations of what the sari signifies in different socio-economic circles in India. This book will be of interest to students of fashion, design, fashion business, history and cultural studies. It will also be useful for professionals working in the fashion industry and designers.

Author: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619028778
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of 1986, this volume of stories, selected by the author from her own early work, represents the essence of her Indian experience. Bearing Jhabvala's hallmark of balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty, these stories present characters that prove to be as vulnerable to the contradictions and oppressions of the human heart as to those of India itself.

Author: Osho
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312288242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
India is not just a geography or history. It is not only a nation, a country, a mere piece of land. It is something more: it is a metaphor, poetry, something invisible but very tangible. It is vibrating with certain energy fields that no other country can claim. For almost ten thousand years, thousands of people have reached to the ultimate explosion of consciousness. Their vibration is still alive, their impact is in the very air; you just need a certain perceptivity, a certain capacity to receive the invisible that surrounds this strange land. It is strange because it has renounced everything for a single search, the search for the truth. In these pages, we are treated to a spellbinding vision of what Osho calls "the real India," the India that has given birth to enlightened mystics and master musicians, to the inspired poetry of the Upanishads and the breathtaking architecture of the Taj Mahal. We travel through the landscape of India's golden past with Alexander the Great and meet the strange people he met along the way. We are given a front-row seat in the proceedings of the legendary court of the Moghul Emperor Akbar, and an insider's view of the assemblies of Gautama the Buddha and his disciples. In the process, we discover just what it is about India that has made it a magnet for seekers for centuries, and the importance of India's unique contribution to our human search for truth.