{"product_id":"this-jade-world-9781496226013","title":"This Jade World","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2022 Book of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association\u003cbr\u003e 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Awards Finalist in Memoir\u003cbr\u003e 2021 Foreword Indies Finalist\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis Jade World\u003c\/i\u003e centers on a Thai American who has gone through a series of life changes. Ira Sukrungruang married young to an older poet. On their twelfth anniversary, he received a letter asking for a divorce, sending him into a despairing spiral. How would he define himself when he was suddenly without the person who shaped and helped mold him into the person he is?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After all these years, he asked himself what he wanted and found no answer. He did not even know what wanting meant. And so, in the year between his annual visits to Thailand to see his family, he gave in to urges, both physical and emotional; found comfort in the body, many bodies; fought off the impulse to disappear, to vanish; until he arrived at some modicum of understanding. During this time, he sought to obliterate the stereotype of \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It was like watching an artist paint a picture. First come the random brushstrokes, then bits of color, then shape. Eventually the complete image emerges and what a thrill to have been there to see it evolve.  While these essays circle around the topics of love and divorce, they're also about renewal, finding love again, and, of course, the joy of fatherhood.\"—Debbie Hagan, \u003ci\u003eBrevity\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In \u003ci\u003eThis Jade World\u003c\/i\u003e Sukrungruang offers us a prayer and a meditation on the beginnings and endings of love. The love of parents and their children. The love among men and women. The love between the skin we live in and the memories we house. In this rare and beautiful offering, we experience a man undone by love and his journey to salvage hope in the face of incredible loneliness and doubt, a search for salvation found first in a dream.”—Kao Kalia Yang, author of \u003ci\u003eSomewhere in the Unknown World\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir\u003cbr\u003e  \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that when seemingly happy couples break up we all wonder what the hell happened. In Ira Sukrungruang’s affecting and vulnerable memoir, \u003ci\u003eThis Jade World\u003c\/i\u003e, he narrates the dissolution of one marriage and the burgeoning of another as a double love story, laced with wonder, grief, downward spirals, and mature reinventions. Set in both Thailand and the U.S., examined against an epic web of family domestic strife and rearrangement, this gorgeously written book illuminates the necessity and complexity of intimate joy.”—Barrie Jean Borich, author of \u003ci\u003eBody Geographic\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eApocalypse, Darling\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThis Jade World\u003c\/i\u003e is compulsively readable—its short chapters are polished stones, each delightful by itself while leading us on to another, another, until we’ve walked the road through the author’s divorce and into his new life and love. Mostly set during his yearly visits to his family, Sukrungruang offers a keenly observed Thailand—the monks slipping their cellphones into their robes, the tattoo artist praying before pushing his needle into the author’s back. And throughout we have the deepest pleasure—that of language charged with imagery, leavened with humor, and pierced with insight.”—Beth Ann Fennelly, author of \u003ci\u003eHeating and Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003e The First    \u003cbr\u003e I\u003cbr\u003e I Am Sad\u003cbr\u003e In 1997\u003cbr\u003e Touch\u003cbr\u003e A Brief History of Sex\u003cbr\u003e Stupid Men\u003cbr\u003e This Bed That Was Not My Bed\u003cbr\u003e Mount Crested Butte\u003cbr\u003e July 10\u003cbr\u003e II\u003cbr\u003e After the Hysterectomy\u003cbr\u003e The Gastropub    \u003cbr\u003e Sex Education    \u003cbr\u003e The Abyss\u003cbr\u003e The Impossible Dream\u003cbr\u003e The Red Balloon\u003cbr\u003e Giggles\u003cbr\u003e July 10    \u003cbr\u003e III\u003cbr\u003e What I Want\u003cbr\u003e Bed, Bath, and Beyond\u003cbr\u003e The Sleep of the Restless\u003cbr\u003e It’s Raining\u003cbr\u003e July 10\u003cbr\u003e IV\u003cbr\u003e Ruins\u003cbr\u003e Fortune\u003cbr\u003e July 10\u003cbr\u003e V\u003cbr\u003e Inked\u003cbr\u003e Flesh of the Land\u003cbr\u003e Man Baby\u003cbr\u003e The Talk of the Body\u003cbr\u003e July 10\u003cbr\u003e VI\u003cbr\u003e Monarchs and Memory\u003cbr\u003e The Broken Hearts Club\u003cbr\u003e To Have, to Hold\u003cbr\u003e Flowers    \u003cbr\u003e Michael Chang\u003cbr\u003e Signs\u003cbr\u003e July 10\u003cbr\u003e VII\u003cbr\u003e At the Border\u003cbr\u003e Balance\u003cbr\u003e Lesbians\u003cbr\u003e Invisible Partners\u003cbr\u003e July 10\u003cbr\u003e VIII\u003cbr\u003e Okay\u003cbr\u003e That Long Couch\u003cbr\u003e Goodbye\u003cbr\u003e XI\u003cbr\u003e The Next Life    ","brand":"University of Nebraska Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409235779927,"sku":"9781496226013","price":15.19,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781496226013.jpg?v=1730506080","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/this-jade-world-9781496226013","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}