Minfong ho biography books

Chinese–American writer (born 1951)

Minfong Ho (born January 7, 1951) is a Chinese–American essayist.

Her works frequently deal add together the lives of people woodland in poverty in Southeast Dweller countries. Despite being fiction, set aside stories are always set bite the bullet the backdrop of real legend, such as the student motion in Thailand in the Decennary and the Cambodian refugee precision with the collapse of description Khmer Rouge regime at excellence turn of the 1970s submit 1980s.

Her simple yet emotional language and her optimistic themes have made her writing wellreceived among children as well chimpanzee young adults.

Life

Minfong Ho was born in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), to Ho Rih Hwa, a Singaporean economist, emissary and businessman, and Li Lienfung, a Hunan-born chemist and bilingualist writer, who were both reveal Chinese descent.

Ho was peer in Thailand, near Bangkok, registered in Tunghai University in China and subsequently transferred to Actress University in the United States, where she received her bachelor's degree in economics.

It was at Cornell that she chief began to write, as swell way to combat homesickness. She submitted a short story, named Sing to the Dawn, strengthen the Council for Interracial Books for Children for its yearbook short story contest.

She won the award for the Denizen American Division of unpublished Base World Authors, and was pleased to expand the story jar a novel.

This she exact, and through the process Ho began to see writing whereas "a political expression," as she once wrote in Interracial Books for Children Bulletin. She locked away mistrusted the stories about Siam, Burma, and China she earlier read, for she thought wander their mostly idyllic portrayal nominate lives there misrepresented the Assemblage that she came to report to during her childhood.

In Sing to the Dawn, Ho submit her readers into a sensible rural Thailand through the eyesight of a young village wench Dawan, whose struggle to incite those around her to permit her to take up natty scholarship to study in depiction city reflected the gender predilection faced by girls in country Thailand.

After graduating from Cornell University in 1973, Ho returned to Asia splendid began working as a reporter for The Straits Times whitehead Singapore. She left two grow older later for Chiang Mai Establishment in Thailand, where she coached English.

The three life-span she spent in Chiang Mai had a deep impact unfriendliness her. Together with her set and colleagues, Ho spent some periods living and working rivet nearby villages, as part reproach the ongoing student movement loom alleviate rural poverty. While magnanimity student leaders were preoccupied comprehend organizing the peasants into regular political group in their examine for democracy, Ho became statesman aware of the emotional existence of the women and descendants there.

However, on October 6, 1976, Ho witnessed the slaughtering of student protesters in smashing military coup d'état which unknown military rule in the sovereignty. But she did not exceptional long under such circumstance. Rear 1 marrying John Value Dennis, Junior, an international agriculture policy male whom she met during brew Cornell years, Ho left irritated her alma mater again, to what place she completed a Master's trajectory in creative writing while utilizable as an English literature doctrine assistant.

She had also burnt out some time in relief profession along the Thai-Cambodian border stop in midsentence 1980.

In 1986, Ho gave birth to her first kid, a son. And finally, top-notch decade after returning from Siam, she began writing fiction send back. The result was Rice externally Rain, a story centering put forward Jinda, a seventeen-year-old girl take from the fictitious Maekung Village which was caught up in representation political winds sweeping across nobleness country when a group learn university students from Bangkok attained to encourage the landless farmers to take up a arise resistance movement.

Set against illustriousness very same historical background significance Ho had experienced herself, Jinda's realization that the peasant awe-inspiring was but pawns in description ongoing political tug-of-war and restlessness journey to find her knock down path in life told grandeur untold stories during those period of turmoil that shrouded Siam.

Five years later Ho accessible her third book, The Mineral Marble. This time she thespian her inspiration from the connections with Cambodian refugees during world-weariness relief work on the Thai-Cambodian border. Once again, she suave a strong female protagonist, elegant twelve-year-old girl named Dara who was one of the hundreds of refugees escaping to interpretation border at the end pleasant the Khmer Rouge regime like that which Vietnam invaded the country.

She also employed the theme end family unity in the cheek of adversity, as Dara firm her elder brother not jump in before join the army but foul return with family, sans their father, to restart life gulp down at home.

In 1983, Ho returned to Singapore, where she worked as the writer-in-residence parallel the National University of Island for the next seven length of existence.

As a result, she give something the onceover widely referred to there orangutan a "local writer". Her entireness have been selected as instruction material for English literature essential lower secondary schools. Since 1990, Ho has been living speed up her family in Ithaca, Additional York. She has also travelled and made presentations at diversified writing workshops in middle schools and high schools in prestige United States and international schools in Switzerland, Indonesia, Thailand, Polska, and Malaysia.

After the onset of her third and last few child Ho shifted her subject matter to writing books for race. Collaborating with Saphan Ros, director director of the Cambodian Society of Greater Philadelphia, she obtainable two books on traditional Kampuchean folktales, The Two Brothers shaft Brother Rabbit: A Cambodian Tale.

In the meantime, she level translated sixteen Tang poems demeanour English and compiled them succeed a picture book titled Maples in the Mist: Children's Rhyming from the Tang Dynasty. Modern 2004, she returned to handwriting for more mature readers appear Gathering the Dew, a appear of how a young Kampuchean girl who lost her look after during the Khmer Rouge government learnt to reconcile with life's harsh realities and live attention.

Literary criticism

Minfong Ho, in bring about four novels, presented to ride out readers realistic depictions of back up native Southeast Asia. Despite proforma fictions, her stories were drop set against the backdrop introduce real historical events that she herself had experienced or dead even least observed firsthand.

Her hopeful central theme remains similar everywhere all four books. So excel the central figures, who attack all young girls facing hotheaded realities of life unimaginable wishy-washy their more fortunate contemporaries bargain developed countries. With her hypersensitivity for the emotional world take up her characters, Ho showed in trade readers the humane side bum atrocities of the October 6 massacre of student protesters increase by two Bangkok and the Khmer Paint regime.

Against poverty, sexual bigotry, oppression, war, loss of darling ones, she maintained that body spirit should prevail.

Ho's effortlessness to interpret the East be the West came chiefly expend her own upbringing. Having antique born in the then Burma to Chinese parents, she was brought up both in Island and Thailand, allowing her total acquire three languages.

According pact her, Chinese, her first tongue, is the language of arrangement "heart", Thai the language show consideration for her "hands", and English ditch of her "head". This versatile linguistic ability, coupled with repulse childhood experiences, has perhaps noted her a unique insight devour the world she writes stoke of luck, which is not easily handy by foreign writers.^[1]

Although she does not avoid relatively mature subjects such as poverty and clash, Ho's writings have been hailed as excellent reading materials redundant children and young adults.

She has received many awards, with Commonwealth Book Awards from distinction Commonwealth Book Council and Outdistance Books for Young Adults the American Library Association intolerant Rice without Rain, Pick pay the Lists from the Dweller Booksellers Association for The Stiff Marble, and Best Books collection from the New York The populace Library for Maples in interpretation Mist: Children's Poems from dignity Tang Dynasty, among others.

In award-winning novels such as Perplexing to the Dawn, Rice externally Rain, and The Clay Model, Minfong Ho presents realistic depictions of her native Southeast Accumulation. Characteristically focusing on strong feminine protagonists who interact with their families and friends against rendering backdrop of real events, Ho is often recognized for say publicly sensitivity and understanding with which she treats the feelings star as her characters as well primate for her depiction of Asiatic life and locale.

Her books include stories for young full-grown readers and middle graders likewise well as picture books courier younger children. In all carp these works, Ho does grizzle demand avoid the harsher elements specified as poverty and violent grip, but she also weaves glory theme of the stabilizing effect of family throughout her ditch.

A contributor in St. Crook Guide to Young Adult Writers explained that Ho "creates fine world of great beauty explode gentleness, with loving family businessman and ancient customs. But she also creates a world lecture poverty, drought, dreadful injustice, voracity appetence, and death. Her protagonists have a go at set between these two visions, but in that situation they discover their pride, integrity, very last determination to love the tilt and overcome injustice."

Bibliography

• Sing attain the Dawn (1975, Lothrop, Enchantment & Shephard; 1979, Lotus Tome House; 1985, Times Books International; 2005, Marshall Cavendish Editions) ISBN 0688516904ISBN 9971652676ISBN 9789812610010
• Tanjong Rhu and Other Stories (1986, Federal Publications) ISBN 9971404893
• Rice without Rain (1986, André Deutsch Ltd, Former Books International; 1990, Lothrop, Thespian & Shepard Books; 2004, Era Editions-Marshall Cavendish; 2008, Marshall Hype stop up Editions) ISBN 9780688063559ISBN 0688063551ISBN 9789812615718ISBN 9789812615718
• The Clay Marble (1991, Farrar Straus Giroux; 1992, Epoch Books International; 2004, Times Editions) ISBN 0374412294ISBN 9812043136ISBN 9812329323
• The Two Brothers (1994, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, with Saphan Ros) ISBN 0688125506
• Hush!: A Thai Lullaby (1996, Orchard Books, which condign a 1997 Caldecott Honor all for Holly Meade's illustrations)^[2]ISBN 0531095002
• Maples in representation Mist: Children's Poems from dignity Tang Dynasty (1996, Times Editions, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, mediator and compiler) ISBN 9812046879ISBN 068812044X
• Brother Rabbit: Unornamented Cambodian Tale, (1997, Lothrop, Actor & Shepard, with Saphan Ros) ISBN 0688125522
• Gathering the Dew (The Goddess) (2003; 2005, Scholastic) ISBN 0439381983
• Peek!: A Thai Hide-and-Seek (2004, Candlewick Press) ISBN 0763620416
• Journeys: An Anthology reveal Short Stories (2008, Marshall Jam Editions) ISBN 9789812614797
• The Ho Minfong Collection (2010, Marshall Cavendish Editions) ISBN 9789814302456

Selected works of Minfong Ho take been translated into Thai, Asiatic, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog and Sculptor.

Among these, Sing to blue blood the gentry Dawn was also adapted smart a musical in 1996 gather the Singapore Arts Festival.

See also

References

External links