Berthoud Community Library District

With national pride and occasional fear, a brother and sister face the increasingly oppressive occupation of Korea by Japan during World War II, which threatens to suppress Korean culture entirely.

In early-twentieth-century Korea, Najin Han, the privileged daughter of a calligrapher, longs to choose her own destiny. Smart and headstrong, she is encouraged by her mother--but her stern father is determined to maintain tradition, especially as the Japanese steadily gain control of his beloved country.

Armed with a guitar and a video camera, musician Michael Franti journeyed through war and occupation in Iraq, Israel, and Palestine to talk with the everyday people about their lives and the overlooked human costs of war.

Based on diaries and e-mail correspondence that Amiry kept to maintain her sanity from 1981 to 2004, the book evokes, through a series of irreverent, darkly funny vignettes, the frustrations, cabin fever, and downright misery of daily life in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

In West Bank cities and small villages alike, men and women, young and old--a group of unforgettable characters--share their lives with Ehrenreich and make their own case for resistance and resilience in the face of life under occupation. Ruled by the Israeli military, set upon and harassed constantly by Israeli settlers who admit unapologetically to wanting to drive them from the land, forced to negotiate an ever more elaborate and more suffocating...