MY SPLENDID CONCUBINE. Here's a bit about the book:Driven by a passion for his adopted country, Robert Hart became the “godfather of China’s modernism,” inspector general of China’s Customs Service, and the builder of China’s railroads, postal and telegraph systems, and schools, but his first real love is Ayaou, a young concubine.
Sounds pretty good, right? I'm excited to read this book for several reasons.
First, I recently listened to The Man Who Loved China, the biography of a more modern British man whose Chinese mistress fostered in him a love of her country that changed for all time the way the West views the East. I'd like to compare the themes between these two similar but different books.
And second, the main character is an Irishman from near Belfast, just like my Gram. You gotta love that!
On Monday Lloyd will be guest posting here but today I'm going to tell you a little bit about him. Here's his bio:
As a field radio operator, Lloyd Lofthouse was a walking target in Vietnam in 1966. He has skied in blizzards at forty below zero and climbed mountains in hip deep snow. [Heather's note: My dad was in the special forces in Vietnam, so I have much respect for Lloyd's service.]
Lloyd earned a BA in journalism after fighting in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine. Later, while working days as an English teacher at a high school in California, he earned an MFA in writing. He enjoyed a job as a maitre d’ in a multimillion-dollar nightclub and tried his hand successfully at counting cards in Las Vegas for a few years. He now lives near San Francisco with his wife, with a second home in Shanghai, China. Lloyd says that snapshots of his life appear like multicolored ribbons flowing through many of his poems.
This link takes you to Lloyd's 'Vietnam Experience' page filled with photos. He took many of them. Since Lloyd still has to edit the photos so they load faster, this page
may load slow for older computers.
This link will take you to a media piece from a Southern California newspaper that Lloyd copied and posted on his Website that will give you an idea about his teaching years.
If you are interesting in learning more about Lloyd's teaching experience, you are welcome to read about it at AuthorsDen. 'Word Dancer' is a memoir of the 1994-1995 school year. He kept a daily journal that year. He is using that journal to write 'Word Dancer'. Everyday, when he arrived home, Lloyd wrote an entry in that journal. It sat on a shelf in his garage for fourteen years gathering dust. Spiders moved into the binder and built a nest. After all those years, Lloyd forgot he'd written it. When he was cleaning the garage, he found it again. Lloyd started reading, remembering and writing. Everything he writes in 'Word Dancer' happened. He's using a primary source as his guide. Memory may be faulty, but a daily journal written the day an event took place is as accurate as it can get from the author's point-of-view.
Accomplishments: Lloyd's short story "A Night at the Well of Purity" was named a finalist for the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. As a teacher, Lloyd found satisfaction in the number of students that published nationally and internationally while attending his English and journalism classes. You can visit his website at http://www.mysplendidconcubine.com/.
Please stop by on Monday to read Lloyd's post about how he came to write MY SPLENDID CONCUBINE.
1 comment:
I'm excited to read his post Monday. What an interesting story!
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