The Library

Books, Films & Photography

Works that let readers enter another world from the inside.

Book

Factory Girls

Leslie T. Chang · 2008

A documented account of factory labour in China, used here as a library relation for CMS query verification.

Book

《education》

Tara Westover · 2018

I came to it because it is a first-person account of growing up outside school, then having to enter a world that already had rules.

Book

庆历四年秋

Xia Jianyong (夏坚勇) · 2023

I came to it because a recitation every 1980s schoolchild knows — 庆历四年春,滕子京谪守巴陵郡 — never told me who Teng Zijing was, or what year 庆历 was. This book did.

Book

王医生与张医生

Yi Xianfeng and Yang Ying (伊险峰 杨樱) · 2021

I came to it because it follows two doctors out of the northern industrial world, and because chapter 8 names a split I grew up inside: one child kept for school, one sent out to learn the street.