Christopher John Stephens

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 0

‘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 […]

Food November 22, 2024 0

Review:‘The Vegetarian’ Is a Brilliant Parable of Existence and Purpose in Troubled Times

Sometimes the most memorable fictional characters make silence their weapon of choice. In 2024 Nobel Laureate Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, which first appeared in Korean in 2007 and was translated into English eight years later by Deborah Smith, silence is the weapon of choice. Kang’s novel won the Man Booker Prize in 2016 and the writer herself was awarded the Nobel Prize this fall for what the selection committee called “… her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and […]

Boston October 25, 2024 0

Sampan Readers Give Their Take on Key Election Issues

It’s been over 30 years since famed Democratic strategist James Carville tried to provide a pithy summary to all that concerned the American voting public: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Carville’s way with a slogan helped his candidate Bill Clinton start the first of two terms as president of the United States. Carville remained a feisty political strategist in the decades that followed, and Clinton weathered a notorious sex scandal in his second term that led to his impeachment. By the […]

Have Your Voice Heard in the 2024 Presidential Election Via Sampan Survey

The 2024 Presidential Election race is turning out to be like no other. Readers old enough to remember, or those of us who appreciate historical perspective, need to go back to March 31, 1968. Then, Democratic Presidential incumbent Lyndon Johnson withdrew his name from consideration for his party’s nomination. The bombing of North Vietnam was in full force, divisiveness ruled the nation, and Johnson’s brief speech contextualizing the state of that war and his nation culminated with a statement that […]

Features September 13, 2024 0

India Day in Needham Celebrates Inclusion, Nation’s Rich Diversity

This year’s annual India Day celebration in Needham on Aug. 17 was all about inclusion.“To showcase our inclusivity, we featured a fashion show highlighting traditional garments from various Indian states,” said Karan Bhagat, a youth ambassador of the event’s organizer, the Indian Community of Needham, or ICON. India is a highly diverse nation in which around 100 different languages are spoken and hundreds of tribal groups reside. More so, while Hinduism, Islamism, Sikhism and Buddhism are frequently associated with the […]

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