Christopher John Stephens

Education May 23, 2025 0

Review: Omar El Akkad’s ‘One Day’ Puts West’s Hypocrisy on Full Display

It would be trivial to start any discussion of the genocide in Gaza, now 19-months old and counting, looking at how the consequences of campus protests and journalistic free speech have decimated both the fourth estate — the media —and academia. Look toward statistics of over 53,000 killed and 100,000 wounded by Israeli forces, and nearly 2,000 killed since the breaching of a ceasefire. Palestinian forces reportedly killed 1,195 people, including 815 civilians in their initial invasion of Israel. Look […]

Arts May 23, 2025 0

Emily Feng on Political Crackdowns, the ‘Chained’ Woman and Dissidents

In the previous issue of Sampan, we presented the first half of a two part interview with NPR reporter and author Emily Feng, who recently published her book, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China. The book explores who we are as reflected by our political surroundings and as defined by our cultural baggage in its collection of stories about people in China. In the first half, we discussed “Document Nine,” an initiative set forth […]

Arts May 9, 2025 0

Emily Feng on ‘Eerie Parallels’ Between the State of U.S., China Politics

Identity is a slippery, deceitful condition to define, even amongst ourselves. Look at your reflection on a Monday and you’re decisively one thing. Come Tuesday, that same image will provide different results. In reporter Emily Feng’s powerhouse new book Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China, the question of who we are as reflected by our political surroundings and defined by our cultural baggage is clearly delineated through the narratives of approximately two dozen people […]

Front Page April 11, 2025 0

REVIEW: ‘White Poverty’ Exposes Myths of Race, Class and Democracy

The triple threat Venn Diagram bubbles of race, class, and social identity have conspired to define us as a nation since our founding. As we sit on the eve of our Bisesquicentennial in 2026, Americans are more divided and disturbed than ever before. Who are we? What have we become? Is this the legacy we really want to leave behind for our children? The much discussed (but never fully owned) “Project 2025” has planted seeds and borne fruit in the […]

Arts March 21, 2025 0

Facing the Scars That Never Heal in Lu Xinhua’s Novel, ‘Wu Lou’

Writer Lu Xinhua was just 24-years old in 1978 when he published his breakthrough short story, “The Scar.” Written while a freshman at Fudan University, “The Scar” examined the traumatic legacy of the Cultural Revolution and the decisive, imperious rule of the Gang of Four. In the wake of Mao’s death, China found itself at a crossroads. There was the Beijing Spring, the New Enlightenment, and “Scar Literature” was at the vanguard of what came to be known as a […]

Arts March 7, 2025 1

‘The World Doesn’t Have to Be This Way,’ Says Novelist Celeste Ng, in Sampan Chat

The works of bestselling novelist and Cambridge resident Celeste Ng are perhaps more relevant now than ever. Her 2014 work, Everything I Never Told You, looked at the secrets and desires swirling in a Chinese-American family in Ohio during the 1970s. Her Little Fires Everywhere, which she penned in 2017, raised the stakes with the story of a mother and daughter when they intruded on the lives of a “perfect” family in late 1990s Ohio. Given the current political climate […]

In Sayaka Murata’s World, Love Is Stranger Than Fiction

Sometimes the thrill of a strange novel comes in fits and starts. It’s less thrilling in its explosive consistency than it is in its ability to sustain a mood, to build and maintain a premise. Sayaka Murata’s new novel Vanishing World succeeds in more ways than it probably knows. It’s a novel of suppositions. It’s a speculative dystopian story in which society reproduces solely by artificial insemination. Traditional reproduction between a husband and wife is considered incest. As we come […]

Arts January 3, 2025 0

Kiyoko Murata’s ‘A Woman of Pleasure’Finds Agency in an Untenable Situation

There’s a reason why some stories should not be told by people outside their world. In the case of Arthur Golden’s 1997 novel “Memoirs of a Geisha,” adapted into a hit 2005 eponymously titled film, the Orientalism whitewashing was in full flower. Golden’s novel, set in the late 1920’s, roughly 25 years later than the events of Kiyoko Murata’s “A Woman of Pleasure,” told basically the same story. A daughter is sold into prostitution to cover her family’s debts. Both […]

Arts December 20, 2024 0

Opinion/Review: Coates Summons Wisdom of Orwell and Experience in ‘The Message’

The epigraph that Ta-Nehishi Coates chose to introduce The Message, his latest collection of linked essays, is a perfectly apt reflection of the writer as provocateur and didactic secular missionary. It’s a passage from George Orwell’s “Why I Write,” a 1948 reflection whose title identifies its contents. Orwell (real name Eric Blair) is best known as the author of Animal Farm and 1984, both benchmarks of political allegories and speculative fiction. In “Why I Write,” Orwell’s reflections perfectly mirror where […]

Arts December 6, 2024 0

Review: Haruki Murakami’s ‘The City and Its Uncertain Wall’ Lacks Magic Touch

Sometimes it’s difficult to witness the precipitous quality drop of a great writer. In the case of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, the drop in quality is less disastrous than it is tedious. Murakami’s new novel “The City and its Uncertain Walls” comes six years after “Killing Commendatore,” itself an excessive mixture of perversity and magic realism. Murakami’s new novel has its origins in a short story published in 1980 and his 1985 novel “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the […]

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