false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg 222438 5 <b>The Fifth Book of Peace</b> opens as Maxine Hong Kingston, driving home from her father&#8217;s funeral in the early 1990s, discovers that her neighborhood in the Oakland-Berkeley hills is engulfed in flames. Her home burns to the ground, and with it, all her earthly possessions, including her novel-in-progress. Kingston, who at the time was deeply disturbed by the Persian Gulf War, decides that she must understand her own loss of all she possessed as a kind of shadow-experience of war: a lesson about what it would be like to experience up close its utter devastation. Thus she embarks on a mission to re-create her novel from scratch, to rebuild her life, and to reach out to veterans of war and share with them her views as a lover of peace.<br><br>In the middle section of this remarkable book, Kingston reconstructs for us her lost novel, the lush and compelling story of the Chinese-American Wittman Ah Sing and his wife, Taña&#8211;California artists who flee to Hawaii to evade the draft during the Vietnam War. Wittman and Taña help to create an official Sanctuary for deserters and GIs who&#8217;ve returned devastated by their experiences in Vietnam&#8211;not unlike, as it turns out, the metaphorical sanctuary Maxine creates, back in her real world, by inviting war veterans to participate in writing workshops. As the vets share their stories, she teaches them both the value of writing&#8211;the accurate transcription of what is in the heart&#8211;and the value of community. <br><br>Paradoxically, the stories of war and its terrors become for her and the vets a literature of peace&#8211;words that enable them to achieve peace, at least within themselves. Moving among the vets with her Buddhist-inflected wisdom and at times humorous self-doubts, weaving their stories together with her own struggle to reorient herself after the fire, Maxine Hong Kingston is at times a kind of sprite, an almost weightless spirit, who guides others toward a better place, and at times a challenging teacher, who will not let us turn from the spectacle of a world so often at war. 337589 2003 The Fifth Book of Peace total:123|5:33|4:35|3:41|2:12|1:2| 123 454 212 21 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 4 0 false Tue Dec 04 13:12:24 -0800 2007 Thu Sep 10 00:28:50 -0700 2009
She was working on the "4th Book of Peace" for years, and then...more...]]> 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 3 0 false Tue Oct 30 08:53:19 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 25 07:27:05 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 30 08:52:24 -0700 2007
This is a journey. It's more than the book Kingston lost in a fire. The reader gets the rewritten version of her lost...more...]]> 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 4 0 false Sat Apr 28 12:03:24 -0700 2007 Sat Apr 28 12:07:22 -0700 2007 more...]]> 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 5 0 false Sun Oct 26 07:47:11 -0700 2008 Sun Oct 26 07:47:11 -0700 2008
The book is about loss ...more...]]> 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 5 0 false Fri Jul 31 23:22:59 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 31 23:23:35 -0700 2009 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 3 0 false Wed Jul 02 17:40:26 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 02 17:43:06 -0700 2008 the book of how she lost her book in the Oakland Fire
the book re-written (our heros from Tripmaster Monkey)
and the book of her work with veterans.

She is very wise and her brain works in some of the strange ways mine does, and my friends and colleag...more...]]> 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 3 0 false Thu Feb 05 10:31:57 -0800 2009 Mon Sep 01 13:56:53 -0700 2008 Thu Feb 05 10:31:57 -0800 2009 The Woman Warrior, and in this newest book she still straddles that terrifyingly blurry line between fiction and nonfiction. Her narrator tends to wander to and from matters of her family, literature, opposition the 1991 Gulf War...but the wri...more...]]> 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 4 0 false Wed Oct 29 08:36:02 -0700 2008 Thu Jan 08 19:00:27 -0800 2009 more...]]> 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 4 0 false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Mar 08 04:21:53 -0800 2008 Sat Mar 08 04:29:08 -0800 2008 more...]]> 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 5 0 false Sat Jul 21 16:58:58 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 10 08:57:48 -0700 2008 more...]]> 535820 0679760636 9780679760634 12 1 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175616721m/535820.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/535820.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 4 0 false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Sep 02 22:33:39 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 12 22:27:00 -0700 2007
But anyway, this is really good. Mrs. Kingston has a very strange and yet unique style of writing. Her sentences are sometimes short, brief, yet meant to provoke a pause for thought. You'll pause quite often to think with this book.

...more...]]> 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 3 0 false Wed May 28 17:29:32 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 18 13:02:44 -0700 2008 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 5 0 false Thu May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed May 28 20:52:47 -0700 2008 Wed May 28 20:55:46 -0700 2008 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 5 0 false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sat Jul 21 11:04:17 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 21 11:05:49 -0700 2007 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 5 0 false Sun Jun 01 21:20:18 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 01 21:22:20 -0700 2008 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 1 0 false Fri May 09 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 27 00:39:05 -0700 2008 Fri May 09 07:39:41 -0700 2008 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 2 0 false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Nov 06 18:38:57 -0800 2007 Wed Dec 05 17:18:50 -0800 2007 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 2 0 false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 30 22:01:08 -0700 2008 Sun Mar 30 22:01:57 -0700 2008 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 3 0 false Mon Mar 31 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Feb 04 13:16:38 -0800 2008 Mon Mar 31 13:45:24 -0700 2008 222438 0099466635 9780099466635 98 20 3.69 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172848173m/222438.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222438.The_Fifth_Book_of_Peace 5 0 false Thu Dec 11 11:27:20 -0800 2008 Wed Oct 08 19:41:34 -0700 2008 Thu Dec 11 11:27:20 -0800 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=222438