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Start giftingThe Souls of Yellow Folk
Essays
Narrator
David Shih
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Length
6 hours 35 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
““For the title of his debut collection of essays on race, gender, and American society, Wesley Yang invokes W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1903 classic study of race in America. These 13 essays explore the ways in which the American dream shapes and distorts an assortment of people: chefs, strivers, pickup artists, and school shooters. Included here is ‘Paper Tigers,’ Yang’s personal, National Magazine Award–winning look at Asian-American overachievers. As Yang’s avid followers already know, his laser scrutiny spares no one—not even Yang himself.””
— The Millions • Bookshop Santa Cruz
One of the most acclaimed essayists of his generation, Wesley Yang writes about race and sex without the jargon, formulas, and polite lies that bore us all. His powerful debut, The Souls of Yellow Folk, does more than collect a decade's worth of cult-reputation essays—it corrals new American herds of pickup artists, school shooters, mandarin zombies, and immigrant strivers, and exposes them to scrutiny, empathy, and polemical force.
In his celebrated and prescient essay "The Face of Seung-Hui Cho," Yang explores the deranged logic of the Virginia Tech shooter. In his National Magazine Award–winning "Paper Tigers," he explores the intersection of Asian values and the American dream, and the inner torment of the child exposed to "tiger mother" parenting. And in his close reading of New York Magazine's popular Sex Diaries, he was among the first critics to take seriously today's Internet-mediated dating lives.
Yang catches these ugly trends early because he has felt at various times implicated in them, and he does not exempt himself from his radical honesty. His essays retain the thrill of discovery, the wary eye of the first explorer, and the rueful admission of the first exposed.
Wesley Yang has published criticism, essays, and nonfiction features in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, the New York Times Book Review, New York Magazine, Esquire, Tablet, and n+1. His work has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Magazine Writing, Best Creative Nonfiction, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. He lives in Montreal.
An AudioFile Earphones Award winner for 47 Ronin by John Allyn, David Shih narrated the History Channel documentary China's First Emperor and the Discovery Networks series Royal Inquest. He is the voice of Eddie Toh in the hit video game Grand Theft Auto V. In addition to his role as Isiah on the Hulu original series The Path, he has appeared in the TV shows The Blacklist, Mozart in the Jungle, Unforgettable, Golden Boy, Blue Bloods, Are We There Yet?, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, All My Children, and As the World Turns, as well as the feature films The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Respect the Jux, Old 37, Fan Girl, and Saving Face. His theater credits include the National Asian American Theater Company's acclaimed production of Awake and Sing! at the Public Theater, The World of Extreme Happiness (Manhattan Theatre Club), Bike America (Ma-Yi Theater Company), and Crane Story (The Playwrights Realm). Dave also works with Only Make Believe performing interactive theater for children in hospitals and care facilities.