Denise Chong

On June 8, 1972, nine-year-old Kim Phuc, severely burned by napalm, ran from her blazing village in South Vietnam and into the eye of history. Her photograph - one of the most unforgettable images of the twentieth century - was seen around the world and helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War.This book is the story of how that photograph came to be - and the story of what happened to that girl after the camera shutter closed. Award-winning biographer Denise Chong's portrait of Kim Phuc - who eventually defected to Canada and is now a UNESCO spokesperson - is a rare look at the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese point-of-view and one of the only books to describe everyday life in the wake of this war and to probe its lingering effects on all its participants.

The Concubine’s Children is the story of a family cleaved in two for the sake of a father’s dream. There’s Chan Sam, who left an "at home" wife in China to earn a living in "Gold Mountain"—North America. There’s May-ying, the wilful, seventeen-year-old concubine he bought, sight unseen, who labored in tea houses of west coast Chinatowns to support the family he would have in Canada, and the one he had in China. It was the concubine’s third daughter, the author’s mother, who unlocked the past for her daughter, whose curiosity about some old photographs ultimately reunited a family divided for most of the last century.

The hail of 30 paint-filled eggs, cracking and leaking across the towering portrait of Chairman Mao, caught the Tiananmen Square protestors off guard. There was condemnation and confusion. A clash of cheers and jeers accosted the three young men whose collective act defied the dictator who molded their country and their lives.Egg on Mao pivots around that defining moment during the 1989 student protests, focusing on the life of a bus mechanic named Lu Decheng and how his frustrations growing up in a backwater Chinese town under a repressive regime led him to board a train to Beijing with his two friends to join the protests. Ultimately labeled a political instigator, Lu and his friends disappeared into the Chinese prison system and were not seen by the public again for almost 15 years. Lu’s release from prison and subsequent political asylum in Canada made it possible for Denise Chong to share his story of unyielding bravery and defiance.Part biography of a gesture, part testament to the power of the individual, Egg on Mao honors the courage of protest and the remarkable momentum of change.

From the bestselling author of The Concubine’s Children and The Girl in the Picture , a political, social and cultural portrait of domestic abuse in times of cultural turmoil, and the Bangladeshi woman whose irrepressible spirit found light in sudden darkness.From the outside, Rumana seemed an unlikely victim of domestic well educated, married to a man of her own choosing, and progressing in her career as a professor of international relations at Dhaka University. But in 2011, on return from graduate studies at the University of British Columbia, her husband attacked and blinded her in front of their young daughter. As Rumana's horrifying story garnered international headlines, and connections brought her to Vancouver in an attempt—ultimately futile—to restore her sight, her plight underscored the fact that there are no typical victims of intimate-partner violence.Denise Chong goes behind the headlines to reveal the devolution of a love story into a tale of tyranny behind closed doors, and the pursuit of justice that proved all the more elusive during the rise of social media. Out of Darkness tells a globe-spanning narrative of loyalty, perseverance and a woman’s determination to face the future and rebuild a life with meaning.

International bestselling author of The Concubine's Children , Denise Chong returns to the subject of her most beloved book, the lives and times of Canada's early Chinese families. In 2011, Denise Chong set out to collect the history of the earliest Chinese settlers in and around Ottawa, who made their homes far from any major Chinatown. Many would open cafes, establishments that once dotted the landscape across the country and were a monument to small-town Canada. This generation of Chinese immigrants lived at the intersection of the Exclusion Act in Canada, which divided families between here and China, and 2 momentous upheavals in the Japanese invasion and war-time occupation; and the victory of the Communists, which ultimately led these settlers to sever ties with China. This book of overlapping stories explores the trajectory of a universal immigrant experience, one of looking in the rear view mirror while at the same time, travelling toward an uncertain future. Intimate, haunting and powerful, Lives of the Family reveals the immigrant's tenacity in adapting to a new world.

Under et ophold i Beijing besøger canadiske Denise Chong sine bedsteforældres fødeby, landsbyen Chang Gar Bin, og det bliver en rejse, der tager hende både tilbage og frem i tiden. "Konkubinens børn" er en personlig beretning om forfatterens egen familiehistorie. Det er en fortælling om migration og om familiens erfaringer med de kulturelle, politiske og sociale spændinger de oplevede med flytningen fra Kina til Canada i 1848, da bedstefar Chan Sam først kom til "Gold Mountain".