Autobiography / Geography / Gay Studies
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Who
Am I? Who Am I? reveals the bittersweet success story of a Chinese-American who came to this country as a twenty-year-old graduate student and stayed to become one of America's best-known writers on cultural geography, landscape, nature, and environment. His autobiography is unique. No other tells a comparable story of a Chinese immigrant whose life in the American academic world mixes recognition, accolades, and even affection—all signs of success—with a deep sense of personal failure. At one level this is a chronicle of brilliant achievement, at another the story of descent from the "world stage" to privacy. Tuan's story progresses from a childhood in which his father hobnobbed with such Chinese leaders as Chou En-lai to an adulthood spent in a number of U.S. universities. His success in writing on themes of great interest to the general public curiously isolated him from his scholarly base in geography. At a more serious level, Tuan's bitterness lies in his belief in his own moral failings, his lack of courage—including the courage to be open about his homosexuality—resulting, as he writes, "in a life that is seamed in ambivalence—achingly empty at the core, despairingly alone, yet often content, occasionally even happy," as when he catches glimpses of heaven in his exploration of the beautiful and the good. Yi-Fu Tuan, J. K. Wright and Vilas Professor emeritus of geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is the recipient of numerous honors and the author of fifteen books including Topophilia; Space and Place; Cosmos and Hearth; Passing Strange and Wonderful; Dominance and Affection; and Escapism. His books have appeared in at least 16 translated editions. The UW Press publishes several other books by Tuan, including Morality and Imagination, and The Good Life.
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October
1999 SHOPPING
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