A01=Julian Herbert
academic
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
american crime
american history
Author_Julian Herbert
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HB
Category=NH
chinese genocide
collective memory
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
essays
exorcism
genocide
global crime
history
house of pain
immigrants
Language_English
latin american history
memory
mexico
PA=Not available (reason unspecified)
painful
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
reporting
scene of the crime
softlaunch
twentieth century
violence
xenophobe
xenophobia
Product details
- ISBN 9781555978372
- Weight: 392g
- Dimensions: 140 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 01 May 2019
- Publisher: Graywolf Press,U.S.
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Early in the twentieth century, amid the myths of progress and modernity that underpinned Mexico’s ruling party, some three hundred Chinese immigrants - close to half of the Cantonese residents of the newly founded city of Torreón - were massacred over the course of three days. It is considered the largest slaughter of Chinese people in the history of the Americas, an attempted extermination that was followed by denial or empty statements of regret. The massacre reverberated briefly before fading from collective memory. More than a century later, the facts continue to be elusive, mistaken, and repressed.
“And what do you know about the Chinese people who were killed here?” Julián Herbert asks anyone who will listen. An exorcism of persistent and discomfiting ghosts, The House of the Pain of Others attempts a reckoning with the 1911 massacre. Blending reportage, personal reflection, essay, and academic treatise, Herbert talks to taxi drivers and historians, travels to the scene of the crime, and digs deep into archives that contain conflicting testimony. Looping, digressive, and cinematic, this crónica vividly portrays the historical context as well as the lives of the perpetrators and victims of the “small genocide.” It is a distinctly twenty-first-century sort of Western, a tremendous literary performance that extends and enlarges the accomplishments of a significant international writer.
Julián Herbert was born in Acapulco in 1971. He is a writer, musician, and teacher, and is the author of Tomb Song as well as several volumes of poetry and two story collections. He lives in Saltillo, Mexico.
Christina MacSweeney was awarded the 2016 Valle Inclán Translation Prize for her translations of Valeria Luiselli's The Story of My Teeth. Her translation of Daniel Saldaña París's novel Among Strange Victims was shortlisted for the 2017 Best Translated Book Award.
