Fixer Chao
''Fixer Chao'' is a 2002 novel by Filipino American author Han Ong. Plot summary William Paulinha is a gay, Filipino hustler living in New York City. One night, he meets Shem C, a failed Jewish writer, in a bar. They become fast friends and Shem tells William his life story. Once upon a time, Shem had been married to the daughter of an acclaimed Jewish novelist. However, Shem's wife Marianna realized he was cheating on her and left him. Furious with his present situation, Shem wants to take revenge on the New York elite that cast him out. He convinces William to help him carry out his revenge plot by posing as William Chao, a master of the ancient Chinese art of feng shui. Their first victim is Lindsay S, an aspiring poet. Bolstered by the ease with which they con her, William and Shem work their way up to bigger and better targets while word of mouth enhances their social status. William meets Cardie Kerchpoff, the Jewish daughter of a cardiologist. He finds her so irritating t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Han Ong
Han Ong (born 1968) is an American playwright and novelist. He is both a high-school dropout and one of the youngest recipients of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. Born in the Philippines, he moved to the United States at 16. His works, which include the novels ''Fixer Chao'' and ''The Disinherited,'' address such themes as outsiderness, cultural conflict, and class conflict. "I've written enough now to figure out I have a recurring tendency, which is that a lot of my characters are outsiders," Ong told a reporter after the debut of his second book, "It comes from being an outsider twice over—my queerness and my ethnicity. I think it's a gift, though. In life it may not be a gift, but in art it is." Background Han Ong was born on February 5, 1968, to Han Chinese, ethnic Chinese parents in Manila, the Philippines. His family immigrated to the United States in 1984, and they settled in Koreatown in Los Angeles. He attended Grant High School, a predominantly white schoo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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House & Garden (magazine)
''House & Garden'' is an American shelter magazine published by Condé Nast Publications that focusses on interior design, entertaining, and gardening. Its US edition ceased in 1993, and after an unsuccessful relaunch was closed again in 2007. International editions of the magazine are still published in the United Kingdom (first published in 1947) and South Africa. A Greek edition was launched in November 2007. History The magazine was launched in 1901 as a journal devoted to architecture. Its founding editors were Herbert C. Wise, Wilson Eyre, and Frank Miles Day, all Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, architects. The magazine became part of Condé Montrose Nast's publishing empire when he bought an interest in it in 1911; he became its sole owner in 1915. Nast transformed it into a magazine about interior design, as part of his trend toward specialized publications aimed at niche markets. UK edition A UK edition was originally planned to be launched in the late 1930s, but was ca ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lincoln Center For The Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 million visitors annually. It houses internationally renowned performing arts organizations including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, and the Juilliard School. History Planning A consortium of civic leaders and others, led by and under the initiative of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III, built Lincoln Center as part of the "Lincoln Square Renewal Project" during Robert Moses's program of New York's urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s."Rockefeller Philanthropy: Lincoln Center" ( [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Identity Politics
Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, social class, or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these identities. Identity politics is deeply connected with the idea that some groups in society are oppressed and begins with analysis of that oppression. The term is used primarily to describe political movements in western societies, covering nationalist, multicultural, women's rights, civil rights, and LGBT movements. The term "identity politics" dates to the late twentieth century although it had precursors in the writings of individuals such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Frantz Fanon. Many contemporary advocates of identity politics take an intersectional perspective, which accounts for the range of interacting systems of oppression that may affect their lives and come from their various identities. According to many who describe th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Metropolitan Home
''Metropolitan Home'' is an interior design magazine published by Hearst Magazines. The magazine focuses on "high-end modern design and interiors, blended with intelligent reporting, to connect with a progressive reader mindset." History and profile The magazine was launched in 1974 as ''Apartment Life''. It focused primarily on urban lifestyles. In 1981, the publisher rebranded it as ''Metropolitan Home''. ''Metropolitan Home'' was part of the Meredith Corporation until 1992 when it was acquired by Hachette Publications. The first issue under Hachette appeared in January 1993. The publisher reduced it from monthly to bi-monthly publication. Its annual Design 100 issue was their largest selling single issue. In 2009, Hachette decided to concentrate on its top interior design magazine, ''Elle Decor ''Elle'' (stylized ''ELLE'') is a worldwide women's magazine of French origin that offers a mix of fashion and beauty content, together with culture, society and lifestyle. T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery ''The Mousetrap'', which has been performed in the West End theatre, West End since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. ''Guinness World Records'' lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies. Christie was born into a wealthy upper middle class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Seven Dials Mystery
''The Seven Dials Mystery'' is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons on 24 January 1929 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. In this novel, Christie brings back the characters from an earlier novel, ''The Secret of Chimneys'': Lady Eileen (Bundle) Brent, Lord Caterham, Bill Eversleigh, George Lomax, Tredwell, and Superintendent Battle. The novel received mostly unfavourable reviews. One reviewer noted a change in style ("Less good in point of style") but felt the novel "maintains the author's reputation of ingenuity." Another was quite disappointed in the change in style from some of her earlier novels, saying that she had "deserted the methodical procedure of inquiry into a single and circumscribed crime for the romance of universal conspiracy and international rogues." Another felt that the story started out well, but then earned sharp criticism for the author as "she has carefully avoi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a variety of forms originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. These texts include instructions, stories, poetry, and prophecies, among other genres. The collection of materials that are accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon. Believers in the Bible generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration, but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text can vary. The religious texts were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections. The earliest contained the first five books of the Bible. It is called the Torah in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (meaning ''five books'') in Greek; the second oldest part wa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production. Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film '' Sanshiro Sugata''. After the war, the critically acclaimed '' Drunken Angel'' (1948), in which Kurosawa cast the then little-known actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another fifteen films. '' Rashomon'' (1950), which pr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Martin Ritt
Martin Ritt (March 2, 1914 – December 8, 1990) was an American director and actor who worked in both film and theater, noted for his socially conscious films. Some of the films he directed include '' The Long, Hot Summer'' (1958), '' The Black Orchid'' (1958), '' Paris Blues'' (1961), '' Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man'' (1962), '' Hud'' (1963), '' The Spy Who Came in from the Cold'' (1965), ''Hombre'' (1967), '' The Great White Hope'' (1970), ''Sounder'' (1972), '' The Front'' (1976), '' Norma Rae'' (1979), '' Cross Creek'' (1983), '' Murphy's Romance'' (1985), ''Nuts'' (1987), and '' Stanley & Iris'' (1990). Early career and influences Ritt was born to a Jewish family in Manhattan, the son of immigrant parents. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. Ritt originally attended and played football for Elon College in North Carolina. The stark contrasts of the depression-era South, against his New York City upbringing, instilled in him a passion for ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |