Most Popular Books by Jean Lee

A life-affirming, humorous show of songs and monologues drawing on real-life experiences, about the one thing we all have in common: we''re gonna die. You may be miserable, but you won''t be alone. Witty, wise and honest, We''re Gonna Die narrates Lee''s experiences of loneliness and the comfort she found in simple and unexpected things following the death of her father. This book includes a CD of all six songs (performed by Young Jean Lee with her band Future Wife) and eight monologues (performed by Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Kathleen Hanna, Adam Horovitz, Matmos''s Drew Daniel, and Martin Schmidt, Sarah Neufeld, and Colin Stetson).

When Ed and his three adult sons come together to celebrate Christmas, they enjoy cheerful trash-talking, pranks, and takeout Chinese. Then they confront a problem that even being a happy family can’t solve: When identity matters, and privilege is problematic, what is the value of being a straight white man?

Two compassionately subversive plays about identity, by Young Jean Lee, a Korean American playwright whose work is groundbreaking, humorous and often thrillingly transgressive. In Straight White Men, it''s Christmas Eve, and Ed has gathered his three adult sons to celebrate with matching pyjamas, trash-talking, and Chinese takeaway. But when a question they can''t answer interrupts their seasonal cheer, they are forced to confront their own identities. Raucous, surprising and fearless, Straight White Men takes an outside look at the traditional father/son narrative, shedding new light on a story we think we know all too well. It had its UK premiere at Southwark Playhouse, London, in 2021, following US productions including a Broadway run that made Lee the first Asian-American woman to have a play produced on Broadway. In Untitled Feminist Show, six charismatic stars of the theatre, dance, cabaret and burlesque worlds come together in an exhilaratingly irreverent, nearly wordless celebration of a fluid and limitless sense of identity. Untitled Feminist Show isn''t a show about feminism - it is a feminist show. It premiered at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 2012 before transferring to the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City. ''Young Jean Lee is, hands down, the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation'' New York Times

A fictionalized biography of the mathematician and astronomer who realized his childhood desire to become a ship''s captain and authored The American Practical Navigator.

With a bit of reluctance, Jeffrey listens to his little sister, Jasmine, trying predicament as she gives an account of what happened to her. Jasmine describes her heart rendering incident: losing her grandmother''s pearl necklace which is her secret that she is hiding from her parents. Jeffrey identifies with the feeling of "messing up" gets caught up in his sister''s anguish and despair. He blurts out "ouch" as an emotional release to his sister situation. At first the predicament seems as easy as 1-2-3. Jeffrey probes to find answers to resolve Jasmine''s questions that could have been overlooked. Using deductive reasoning proves to be helpful, but it does not reveal enough clues for solving the problem. Can a cover up be an alternative to his sister''s predicament? Who will take the blame if the cover up is exposed? Will Jeffrey take the blame for Jasmine? Based on his past history of squandering his allowance, can Jeffrey get his parent''s approval of starting his own business? Will his business aid him in making enough profit to purchase his desired treasure: that special watch? Jeffrey and Jasmine have dilemmas. They form an alliance to solve their problems to avert getting into hot water with their parents. Discover how Jeffrey and Jasmine maneuver to handle the turning point that is unavoidable. Will the turning point lead to an unexpected surprise?

2021 Honorable Mention Recipient of the Charles Hatfield Book Prize from the Comics Studies Society Taking up the role of laughter in society, How the Other Half Laughs: The Comic Sensibility in American Culture, 1895–1920 examines an era in which the US population was becoming increasingly multiethnic and multiracial. Comic artists and writers, hoping to create works that would appeal to a diverse audience, had to formulate a method for making the “other half” laugh. In magazine fiction, vaudeville, and the comic strip, the oppressive conditions of the poor and the marginalized were portrayed unflinchingly, yet with a distinctly comic sensibility that grew out of caricature and ethnic humor. Author Jean Lee Cole analyzes Progressive Era popular culture, providing a critical angle to approach visual and literary humor about ethnicity—how avenues of comedy serve as expressions of solidarity, commiseration, and empowerment. Cole’s argument centers on the comic sensibility, which she defines as a performative act that fosters feelings of solidarity and community among the marginalized. Cole stresses the connections between the worlds of art, journalism, and literature and the people who produced them—including George Herriman, R. F. Outcault, Rudolph Dirks, Jimmy Swinnerton, George Luks, and William Glackens—and traces the form’s emergence in the pages of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s Journal-American and how it influenced popular fiction, illustration, and art. How the Other Half Laughs restores the newspaper comic strip to its rightful place as a transformative element of American culture at the turn into the twentieth century.

Acclaimed playwright and director Young Jean Lee transforms her life-long struggle with Christianity into an exuberant church service. Both celebratory and confrontational, CHURCH will test the expectations of religious and non-religious alike—looking deep into why we believe what we believe.

With 175 family businesses on the Fortune 500 list, from DuPont and Motorola to IBM, there is no doubt that family-run enterprises play an important role in global economic development. Their role is no less significant in China where, in keeping with the country''s rapid economic growth, family businesses are emerging in increasing numbers.Unique characteristics, such as succession, management, staffing, family affairs, strategy planning and governance structure, set family businesses apart from other business types. As a result, they face particular challenges in survival and sustainability.In this book, three modern Chinese family businesses, including food and beverage company Yeo Hiap Seng, are studied to analyze the problems that family enterprises face. Other case studies include long-standing family businesses in Europe, America and Asia, such as Ford, Kikkoman and Samsung. This book also discusses the changing characteristics of Chinese family businesses, the pitfalls that such enterprises are likely to face, and how they can overcome these pitfalls and achieve sustainable development.

Pearl Harbor and the tentacles of Word War II turn San Francisco into a raucous, electrifying city. Twenty-year-old Carmel St. John moves into this maelstrom with dreams of winning the heart of Dr. Phillip Barron and becoming a big band singer. There, Carmel meets Caesar Almalto, a black-market kingpin, and Jerry Cassidy, a musician who helps her and hopes to win her love. Nightclub life, lust, and murder swirl around her, as does her tenuous relationship with Phillip, who leaves as a commissioned officer aboard the first hospital ship in the Pacific theater. A family crisis threatens to destroy Carmel''s dreams when she is called home to San Jose to manage the family''s 1,100-acre ranch during the war. The Stone Must Break tells the saga of two families, the St. Johns and the Barrons, as they grapple with tragedy, love, and responsibility in a world at war.

Describes the origins, history, politics, and culture of the Illinois Indians, from prehistory to the present.

The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays is an anthology of six outstanding plays from some of the most exciting playwrights currently receiving critical acclaim in the States. It showcases work produced at a number of the leading theatres during the last decade and charts something of the extraordinary range of current playwriting in America. It will be invaluable not only to readers and theatergoers in the U.S., but to those around the world seeking out new American plays and an insight into how U.S. playwrights are engaging with their current social and political environment. There is a rich collection of distinctive, diverse voices at work in the contemporary American theatre and this brings together six of the best, with work by David Adjmi, Marcus Gardley, Young Jean Lee, Katori Hall, Christopher Shinn and Dan LeFranc. The featured plays range from the intimate to the epic, the personal to the national and taken together explore a variety of cultural perspectives on life in America. The first play, David Adjmi''s Stunning, is an excavation of ruptured identity set in modern day Midwood, Brooklyn, in the heart of the insular Syrian-Jewish community; Marcus Gardley''s lyrical epic The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry deals with the migration of Black Seminoles, is set in mid-1800s Oklahoma and speaks directly to modern spirituality, relocation and cultural history; Young Jean Lee''s Pullman, WA deals with self-hatred and the self-help culture in her formally inventive three-character play; Katori Hall''s Hurt Village uses the real housing project of "Hurt Village" as a potent allegory for urban neglect set against the backdrop of the Iraq war; Christopher Shinn''s Dying City melds the personal and political in a theatrical crucible that cracks open our response to 9/11 and Abu Graib, and finally Dan LeFranc''s The Big Meal, an inter-generational play spanning eighty years, is set in the mid-west in a generic restaurant and considers family legacy and how some of the smallest events in life turn out to be the most significant.

''Post-black'' refers to an emerging trend within black arts to find new and multiple expressions of blackness, unburdened by the social and cultural expectations of blackness of the past and moving beyond the conventional binary of black and white. Reflecting this multiplicity of perspectives, the plays in this collection explode the traditional ways of representing black families on the American stage, and create new means to consider the interplay of race, with questions of class, gender, and sexuality. They engage and critique current definitions of black and African-American identity, as well as previous limitations placed on what constitutes blackness and black theatre. Written by the emerging stars of American theatre such as Eisa Davis and Marcus Gardley, the plays explore themes as varied as family and individuality, alienation and gentrification, and reconciliation and belonging. They demonstrate a wide-range of formal and structural innovations for the American theatre, and reflect the important ways in which contemporary playwrights are expanding the American dramatic canon with new and diverse means of representation. Edited by two leading US scholars in black drama, Harry J. Elam Jr (Stanford) and Douglas A. Jones Jr (Princeton), this cutting edge anthology gathers together some of the most exciting new American plays, selected by a rigorous academic backbone and explored in depth by supporting critical material.

Dana Allison Tessier is a thirty-something woman depressed over the loss of an opportunity to open an extension office for Walk the Life Headhunters Agency and the recent death of her Aunt Meg, her only living family. Her best friend, Amy Bickerton, reminds her of the promise to “let go and let God.” God calls her to quit her job, sell her home, and find where He’s leading her. Amy reminds her to keep her eyes and ears open to His calling. Dana is summoned for jury duty. The book opens at a truck stop, Bobbie-Jo’s Truck Stop. A waitress asks her to share her table because Dana has the only other place to sit. A tall, good-looking man, Jerrod, sits down. He makes small talk. She talks for a while before leaving. Dana travels through each village and town, looking for the place God is wanting her to be. She gets tired of not finding that special place. She settles down in a town, rents a room, finds a job in a card shop, and makes friends that stay in her life for the rest of her life. Certain events occur that she feels are from God telling her this isn’t where she belongs. She turns around and heads home. The adventure doesn’t end there. Read the rest of Dana’s story and find out how her life turns for the better.

A brief biography of the inventor of a gin to seed upland cotton and of a way to mass produce musket locks.

177 Lee/BETA''S YEAR OF FIRSTS Beta sits beside her mother after she has just died. Beta is thirteen. Her mother stares off into space as wondering what to say. She goes to live at a foster home. When her mother first dies, Beta hears words of wisdom from her mother. After all the firsts, Beta no longer hears words of wisdom from her mother. 111

Bold, unguarded work . . . that resists pat definition. [Young Jean] Lee has penned profane lampoons of motivational bromides (Pullman, WA) and the Romantic poets (The Appeal). Now she piles her deconstructive scorn upon ethnic stereotypes in Song...

A biography of the marine biologist and nature writer well-known for her campaign against the careless use of chemicals.

The acting profession is increasingly drawing more and more actors of Asian descent. Yet, even with the success of television programs (Martial Law), films (Mulan), and even Broadway plays (Miss Saigon) that include Asian characters, there are still limited roles for these actors. In the past, Asian characters like Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu were played by non-Asian actors in makeup. Many of the roles available for Asians today tend to be stereotypical: kung-fu sidekicks, emasculated or gang-member males, sexually accessible females, comic characters with a poor command of English. Seldom are Asian actors cast in race-neutral roles. Despite these obstacles, many excellent Asian actors continue to seek their places on screen and stage. This analysis of Asian American opportunities and experiences in the acting profession features the narratives of both aspiring and established Asian-American actors, providing a detailed examination of the opportunities, prejudices, and fears they face and the goals they set for themselves. The book covers the insights of both New York and Hollywood based actors, both the well known and the up-and-coming, and includes photographs, bibliography and index.

A brief biography of the inventor of the telegraph and Morse Code, who planned from early childhood to be a painter of great historical pictures but first won recognition as a portrait painter.

“A subversive, seriously funny new theater piece by the adventurous playwright Young Jean Lee. . . . Ms. Lee does not shy away from prodding the audience’s racial sensitivities—or insensitivities—in a style that is sometimes sly and subtle, sometimes as blunt as a poke in the eye.”—Charles Isherwood, The New York Times “Lee is a facetious provocateur; she does whatever she can to get under our skins—with laughs and with raw, brutal talk . . . [and with] so ingenious a twist, such a radical bit of theatrical smoke and mirrors, that we are forced to confront our own preconceived notions of race.”—Hilton Als, The New Yorker With The Shipment, her latest work taking on identity politics, Young Jean Lee “confirms herself as one of the best experimental playwrights in America” (Time Out New York). The Korean American theater artist has taken on cultural images of black America, in a play that begins with sketches of African American clichés—an angry, foul-mouthed comedian; an aspiring young rapper who ends up in prison—and ends with a seemingly naturalistic parlor comedy, which slyly reveals the larger game Lee is playing, leaving us to consider the many ways that we see the world through a racial lens. Young Jean Lee is a playwright, director, and artistic director of her own OBIE Award-winning theater company, which as been producing her plays since 2003. Her other works include Songs of Dragons Flying to Heaven, Church, The Appeal, and Pullman, WA, and they have been produced across the country and internationally.

Whales are the largest animals on Earth, and some communicate by singing to each other.

The Land Speaks explores the intersections of two vibrant fields, oral history and environmental studies. The fourteen oral histories collected here range North America, examining wilderness and cities, farms and forests, rivers and arid lands. The contributors argue that oral history can capture communication from nature and provide tools for environmental problem solving.

A biography of the West Point graduate who learned civil engineering "from the ground up" and supervised the completion of the Panama Canal.

Activities to foster self-education of children, produced for the Chautauqua society.

Chinese Women Business Leaders - Seven Principles of Leadership includes seven women who represent the characteristics of ShEOs in the wave of Chinese economic reform. Their unique life stories are also reflections of changes in Chinese society. These women have each played a distinctive role In China''s rapid emergence. Reform and opening up has brought more opportunities than ever before to Chinese women, though along with these opportunities come some questions and challenges. The fetters and shackles of tradition have been shattered. A path for self-actualization has opened up. Women in mainland China have experienced great changes, and struggled with conflicts between traditional heritage and modern values. Ever since reform and opening up in 1978, the rapid emergence of women in leadership roles in business has paralleled significant upheavals in the Chinese business landscape. - Offers a new perspective on leadership using examples from successful woman leaders in Chinese business - Includes seven unique case interviews with successful women leaders in China - Provides an overview of China''s business environment over the past 30 years and the challenges unique to entrepreneurs working in China

In 1607, a fifteen-year-old boy joins the expeditionary force that hopes to establish a permanent English colony in Virginia.

A brief biography of the first admiral of the United States Navy.

The fairy Grandmarina gives Princess Alicia a magic fishbone. To her father''s confusion she declines to use it. her reward is marriage, which does seem a fantasy as she and the groom appear to be very young.

A fictionalized biography of the mathematician and astronomer who realized his childhood desire to become a ship''s captain and authored The American Practical Navigator.