Red Pockets: A Tale of Inheritance, Ghosts and the Future - Couverture rigide

Mah, Alice

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0385702450 ISBN 13 : 9780385702454

Editeur : Doubleday Canada, 2025

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION WRITING

A poignant personal narrative about family, cultural history, and ecology, and a quest to understand what we owe our ancestors and our descendants from an unforgettable new voice.

Every spring during the Qingming Festival, people return to their home villages in China to sweep the tombs of their ancestors. They make offerings of food and incense to prevent their ancestors from becoming hungry ghosts that could cause misfortune, illnesses and crop failures. Yet for the past century, the tombs of many have been left unattended because of the ruptures of war and revolution. Ninety years after her grandfather's last visit and fifty years after her last relative died in the village, Alice Mah returns to her ancestral home in South
China. While she finds clan members who still remember her family, there are no tombs left to sweep. Instead, there are incalculable clan debts to be paid.

In this haunting blend of memoir, cultural history and environmental exploration, Mah chronicles her search for an offering to the hungry ghosts of our neglected ancestors, which takes her from the rice villages of South China to post-industrial England, to the Chinatowns of British Columbia where she grew up and the isles and industry of Scotland where she now lives. As years pass and fires rage on, she becomes increasingly troubled by her ancestors' neglected graves, which culminates in a crisis of spiritual belief: What do we owe to past and future generations? What do we owe to the places that we inhabit?

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

ALICE MAH is a Chinese Canadian-British writer and Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies at the University of Glasgow. Originally from Smithers, British Columbia, she has a long-standing interest in ecology and place. Her award-winning research focuses on toxic pollution and environmental justice.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Doubleday Canada
• Date d'édition: 2025
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0385702450
• ISBN 13: 9780385702454
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 240
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible