Dream of Ding Village

Grandfather Ding is the patriarch of the family that founded Ding Village. He dreams of a world that sometimes comes true and sometimes should but doesn't. Both of his sons are ne’er-do-wells, one a crooked, arrogant man who becomes a high level Communist cadre with boatloads of money, the other a layabout who makes nothing of his life. The older son makes his money from being a “blood head," a man who buys and sells blood in the rural communities and ultimately infects an entire Chinese province with AIDS through contaminated blood.

The Lacuna

A Barbara Kingsolver novel can often be defined in just one word: captivating. In her first work of fiction in nearly a decade, The Lacuna delivers (in true Kingsolver style) with intricate characters, potent settings, and a sturdy construction built on extensive research.

Kanchivaram: A Communist Confession

There are two times in a Hindu's life when one is supposed to wear silk: at one’s wedding and at one’s own funeral. In the village of Kanchivaram (Kanchipuram), the silk weavers are only ever able to have enough silk to tie the toes of the dead together, and no daughter of a weaver has ever worn a silk sari on her wedding day. Kanchivaram tells the story of a man of change. Weaving silk for a pittance, as his father did before him, Vengadam wants nothing more than to weave his daughter a silk sari for her wedding day.

Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones

Still unknown to many, the life story of Claudia Jones is equally inspiring and heartbreaking. Guilty of being everything she was labeled, Jones maintained many overlapping identities—feminist, Black Nationalist, Communist, and journalist—working in the early to mid-twentieth century on a wide array of equal rights causes. Her activism a precursor to much of the 1960s American counterculture resistance, for which we often remember recent history’s leaders of color.