China On My Mind
Dear Friends,
Welcome to June’s Substack.
I hope you’ll enjoy this month’s blog China On My Mind. The audio version is available by clicking the link in the blog or clicking the link here for all podcasts. https://joanneleedomackerman.substack.com/podcast
Book News shares information, appearances, awards, and interviews on my latest novels Burning Distance and The Far Side of the Desert, including an appearance at the upcoming American Writers Festival in Chicago June 6.
The Writer at Risk section this month focuses on Belarusian writer and translator Vacłaŭ Areška sentenced to eight years in prison.
The Books to Check Out section features Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan and Theo of Golden by Allen Levi.
In the Scene section you’ll find a photo relating to text from my novel The Far Side of the Desert. Words of the Month share a couple of words you may not use but might like to know.
Thank you to everyone who has come to bookstores, libraries, book clubs and online for my new novels Burning Distance and The Far Side of the Desert. Also available are my novel The Dark Path to the River and short story collection No Marble Angels. Word of mouth sells books so thank you for spreading the word!
If you’d like to have me speak at a venue or with a book club, click here. Thank you too for reading and sharing this free monthly Substack On the Yellow Brick Road. I hope you’ll stay in touch!
China on My Mind
I recently returned from Taiwan and the Philippines as part of a small delegation and trip long planned by the International Crisis Group, a trip which coincidentally overlapped with President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing. From meetings with politicians current and former, with military current and former and with media, the perspectives varied, but one unsurprising conclusion abided—China looms and waits.
China’s mascots—the giant panda and the dragon—symbolize the dual power China projects into the world and particularly onto its neighbors. The panda represents peace, friendship, good fortune and is the face most commonly offered at global events, but the fire-breathing Chinese dragon is also a symbol, one of strength and imperial power.
China made clear at the summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump that Taiwan remained a central issue, with a “red line” or noose around the island nation that could lead to conflict if crossed. Xi apparently indicated that he was not seeking war but declared China would not tolerate Taiwan declaring independence.
A nation of 23 million people, Taiwan’s citizens live in a functioning democratic state around the size of Switzerland, with free enterprise and freedom of expression and with just 100 miles of the Taiwan Strait in the South China Sea between them and the mainland and with several Taiwanese-administered islands only a few miles off China’s coast. United by a shared ethnic, linguistic, and cultural heritage and family and economic connections, the Taiwanese and mainland Chinese are divided by governmental and economic systems—one a democracy with regular elections for leadership, the other an autocracy whose government and leadership are chosen by one party—the Chinese Communist Party whose members include only 7% of the population—one out of 15 citizens. The population of the mainland is roughly 1.4 billion people.
Few of those we spoke with expected an imminent military threat from China but acknowledged that if it came, it could be swift and would require major resistance of the population who are increasingly trained in nonviolent resistance. It is more likely the panda will continue to squeeze in a bear hug, though no one dismissed the possibility of the dragon suddenly roaring to life. While the citizens live their quotidian lives, they are aware of the threat. Their leaders continue to debate and argue the best way to negotiate relations with the mainland. All have a clear memory of what happened to Hong Kong and its loss of freedoms when mainland China took over.
The challenge for the Philippines is less existential but no less present as China challenges the sovereignty of maritime limits which the Philippines have won in international courts and which China still disputes. Both countries dispute the sovereignty of certain of the 7000 islands the Philippines claim and dispute who has sovereignty over large swaths of the South China sea where seven countries, including the Philippines and Taiwan, assert competing territorial claims.
Our trip to the two areas was brief but highlighted the vibrancy of the societies and clarified the tensions. The quiet, and sometimes not so quiet, tensions of neighbors oceans away can, as we know, send tsunami waves across the globe.
Upcoming Event:
Saturday, June 6, 2026
4:00 pm CDT
American Writers FestivalBased on a True Story: Thrillers
In conversation with Brian Morra, author The Able Archers and The Righteous Arrows
American Writers Museum
180 N Michigan Ave
Chicago, ILSaturday, June 6, 2026
5:00 pm - 5:30 CDT
American Writers Festival
Book Signing
American Writers Museum
180 N Michigan Ave
Chicago, IL
I’m honored that The Far Side of the Desert (Oceanview Publishing) was named a finalist in the Suspense category for the 2025 National Indie Excellence Awards. The novel was also awarded the 2025 Bronze medal in the Suspense/Thriller category by the Independent Publishers Association (IPPY) Book Awards.
Published in 2024, The Far Side of the Desert was released in paperback April, 2025. I hope you’ll order, read and enjoy. If you’ve already read the hardcover, I hope you’ll buy the paperback and give to friends!
“The Far Side of the Desert is a riveting thriller with richly nuanced characters and fast-paced action. The plot imaginatively taps into recent history to illustrate the human dimensions of terrorism—both the complex psyche of the perpetrators and the gnawing questions among those sucked into their vortex. I binged until the end.”
—Robin Wright, author of Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World
Burning Distance (Oceanview Publishing, 2023 and paperback in 2024) was honored by the 2024 American Book Fest International Book Awards as a Finalist in the Best Mystery/Suspense and Thriller/Adventure categories.
“Burning Distance opens with a mystery, glides into a love story, and unfolds into a political thriller. Set against the backdrop of 1980s and 90s global politics, readers will be up way past their bedtimes eagerly turning pages to discover what happens to Lizzy and Adil. A story of war, family, history, politics, and passion. Joanne Leedom-Ackerman’s evocation of the era is pitch-perfect. A great read!”
—Susan Isaacs, New York Times best-selling author of Bad, Bad Seymour Brown
Thanks to Monica Hadley and Writers Voices for the recent interview about The Far Side of the Desert. You can listen here.
Selected recordings of past events and interviews:
Interview with Monica Hadley, Writers Voices
Strategies for Living Podcast: Finding Resilience Through Story
Interview with Janeane Bernstein on NPR’s KUCI, Get the Funk Out!
Book Launch for Akram Aylisli's People and Trees with Plamen Press
Why Baldwin Matters Series, The Alan Cheuse International Writers Center
Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café in Asheville, NC
Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York City with Salil Tripathi
Baum on Books on WSHU Public Radio
Interview with Anna Roins of Authorlink
Interview with Deborah Kalb
For more podcasts, videos and interviews, click here
Vacłaŭ Areška (Belarus)
(Sources include PEN International, PEN Belarus, English PEN, and Literary Review)
Belarusian writer, translator, political scientist and union leader of the Radio-Electrical Manufacturing Workers, Vacłaŭ Areška is serving an eight-year prison sentence, accused, along with others, of “calling for restrictive measures aiming to harm the national security of Belarus,” “inciting other social hatred or enmity” and “creating an extremist formation and participating in it.”
Arrested April 2022 and placed in the KGB remand prison in Minsk, Areška was tried behind closed doors in November 2022 and sentenced to eight years in a medium-security prison and labeled “an extremist.” His appeal has been denied.
A graduate from the Belarusian State Academy of Arts with a theater studies major, Areška has worked in the theater and at the National Art Museum. He taught at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts, translated works of the Belarusian Baroque from Old Polish and led book and computer reviews on translation, published his own translations and initiated the creation of the Book of Honor in memory of victims of repression. He also edited the bulletin of the Union of Workers in the Radio-Electronic Industry.
During his imprisonment, his eyesight is said to have significantly deteriorated. According to former prisoner Alaksandr Mancevič, who was pardoned and exiled to Lithuania, Areška has been denied medical care for his eyesight. “During the day, he asks: ‘Is there sun in the sky today?’ The most terrible thing is that at night he must feel his way to the toilet in the dark. He falls, injures himself, and bleeds.”
In a statement by the Belarusian human rights community regarding the arrest of Vacłaŭ Areška and others:
“We consider their prosecution and imprisonment politically motivated, related to the non-violent exercise of freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and association, as well as related to non-violent activities aimed at protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms and recognize them as political prisoners in accordance with para. 3.1, 3.2 of the Guidelines on the Definition of Political Prisoners.”
To Take Action for Vacłaŭ Areška:
To write Vacłaŭ Areška:
Place of detention: Penal colony No. 22. 225295, Brest region, Ivacevičy, station Damanava, PO Box 20, Belarus
Send appeals to the Belarusian Embassy in your country urging them to raise the cases of Vacłau˘ Areška and to call for their immediate release.
After more than five years in prison, Dr. Hany Babu, an associate professor of language and linguistics at Delhi University, has been granted bail by the Bombay High Court. Arrested in July 2020, he was charged, along with other noted Dalit and Adivasi rights activists, for allegedly inciting caste-based violence through speeches at a rally in December 2017. He languished in prison without a hearing for bail and without a trial for five years. Bail was granted on the grounds of prolonged pre-trial detention with a warning that “justice delayed should not become justice denied.”
(Details of Dr. Hany Babu case can be found in the Writers in Risk profile October 2025 Substack)
After more than five years in prison, Amanda Echanis, Philippine poet, writer, and activist has been cleared of a charge of illegal possession of firearms and explosives. She was arrested at her home where she was caring for her one-month-old child and detained without evidence. The court has found that the prosecution failed to establish its case. Her case has raised questions of evidence planting and violations of due process. The delays kept her in prolonged pre-trial detention, taking away her right of a speedy trial and five years of her freedom.
(Details of Amanda Echanis can be found in the Writers at Risk profile in April 2025 Substack.)
An attack on a writer, the shutting down of a publishing house, the torching of a newspaper reduce the space in the world where ideas can flow. Freedom of expression is vital to writers and to readers but is challenged daily around the world. Listed here are organizations whose work on human rights and in particular issues of freedom of expression I’ve been engaged with directly and indirectly over the years. Some of the organizations have broader agendas, but all have contributed to keeping space open for the individual voice.
PEN International (with its 147 centers in over 100 countries)
PEN American Center
English PEN
PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
Amnesty International USA
International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Article 19
Index on Censorship
Poets and Writers
Authors Guild
International Center for Journalists
The two novels featured this month Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan and Theo of Golden by Allen Levi span a generation, the first the story of a family and a nation that opens with the birth of a daughter at a crucial moment in 1947 Taiwan and the second opening at the end of a character’s far-flung life in a quiet town in Golden, Georgia. Both have been heralded for their humanity and scope, the one in a global political context, the other in a personal interior journey. And both novels I’ve read in the past month, thus their pairing.
Shawna Yang Ryan’s Green Island opens with the birth of the narrator whose life the reader follows from 1947 Taiwan when the island was emerging from Japanese occupation and battling the Chinese Communists and eventually separating from the mainland Communists to live through an era of “white terror” when the government led by Chiang Kai-shek imposed decades of martial law and political oppression. The story continues through America’s recognition of mainland China and withdrawal of recognition of its close ally the Republic of China (ROC) known as Taiwan in favor of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In 1987 Taiwan finally became a free and functioning democracy though still in China’s shadow. The narrative includes this history as well.
As in any masterful novel, these events and themes play out in the lives and psyches of characters who live and struggle through these times, beginning with the abduction of the narrator’s father Dr. Tsai arrested because of a paper he wrote opposing the persecutions. Along with others, he is imprisoned under desperate conditions on Green Island and presumed dead. The trauma this experience causes him and his family affects the decades to come, alienating him from his family even as he shapes the course and characters of his family members.
The narrator eventually marries, moves to Berkeley, California, has a family of her own and finds herself faced with moral and ethical choices that echo the dilemma her father faced when loyalty to family and friends encounters the demands and threats of the state.
Shawna Yang Ryan has crafted an epic drama which introduces the reader to a cast of memorable characters. The novel poses questions that have no easy answers but profound consequences and renders history through an intensely personal lens.
Winner of the Best Book Award in Fiction from the Association for Asian American Studies, Green Island educates the reader in the history of Taiwan through the lives of its citizens and witnesses.
One of the memorable passages from Green Island: After years of bitterness, a good friend said to me that anger is an ember, and the one who holds it is the only one who is burned. This advice woke me up. I realized we all have a chance to remake the world. We don’t have to hold on to the world as it came to us. We can have a vision and make the world anew. Every day, we have a second chance. This is what I hope to pass on with my music.
I closed the magazine. Were these her own words, or focus-group tested and churned out by her management? Her optimism devastated me.
Opening from Green Island:
MY MOTHER LI MIN’S labor pains began the night that the widow was beaten in front of the Tian-ma Teahouse.
The first cramp was unmistakable. She leaned against the wall and pressed her fingers to the underside of her belly. All her previous children had taken their time, leisurely writhing for days before they finally decided to emerge. She expected the same with her fourth.
The children, freshly bathed and rosy from the hot water, their hair still damp, were upstairs in bed. She went outside and around the house to add more kindling to the furnace that would keep the water warm for my father’s bath. A wave went through her, like a girdle expanding, pulled from the front of her pelvis to her back. She exhaled. Some women toiled up until the moment that they gave birth in a field, then went back to work while nursing the still-bloody newborn. This was women’s lore. My mother, however, had given birth each time in her husband’s clinic, with hot water and a midwife, and then appreciatively followed the prescription for a reclusive month indoors, hair unwashed, eating chicken soup, attended by a Cantonese woman her husband hired. No fields for her.
—
Across town, the widow, who sold black market cigarettes in front of the teahouse run by the popular silent film narrator Zhan Tian-ma, was about to become infamous.
She was just a young woman with a dead husband, sitting on her haunches behind a cheap makeshift stand on a busy road. She was a few years older than my mother, with two children playing in the waning light on the sidewalk next to her spindly-legged table. The lights on the street were coming up, and people—artists, writers, actors—the types who would drink, smoke, and laugh their way through the end of the world—drifted out of the teahouse. Often, they stopped at the widow’s stand. She even sold American cigarettes. They tore open the pack right there, lighting up with a match she gave them.
The night was chilly, and smoke mixed with breath in the cold air. The widow’s eyes settled on a pair of lovers who meandered down an alley, whispering, arm to warm arm. She was gazing in their direction, thinking of her dead husband, when the Monopoly Bureau agents approached. She knew only a smattering of Mandarin but did not need it to translate their haughty faces, or their greedy hands confiscating her cigarettes.
A shout of protest flew from her lips.
People turned.
One agent’s face blazed, and he cursed the widow, reaching once more for her cigarettes. She grabbed his arm and he shouted, “Let go!” Ignited by his tone, the crowd drew closer, clamoring for the agent to stop. In a way, weren’t they all widows selling black market cigarettes? And can shame—or pride—explain why the agent threw the widow to the ground, fumbled for his pistol, gripping it as if he would shoot, and then slammed the butt into her head? Was he merely saving face?
Allen Levi’s first novel Theo of Golden has been gathering readers since it was published and abides on best seller lists across the country, including high up on The New York Times best seller list, a position Theo would appreciate but not aspire to, rather like the author I presume.
The story of an anonymous stranger in his twilight years arriving in the small community of Golden which sits on the meandering Oxbow River, Theo of Golden is both a personal saga and a morality tale, gently suggesting how we all can connect, be kind, build and nourish our communities. The novel is not dogmatic but emphatic by the example that Theo offers as he meets one by one the citizens of Golden from all generations, classes and backgrounds and celebrates the humanity in each, rather like a modern day “Our Town.”
He begins by purchasing portraits of citizens that have been sketched by a local artist and hung in the local coffee shop. He then gives these portraits to each citizen with his own particular blessing, sharing along the way small insights into himself.
The mystery of the novel is quiet—Who is Theo? Where does he come from and what is his hinted wealthy past that takes him back to New York for a period. His journey and the way he touches the lives of others, sees and brings out the best in them, has a religious overtone, though not preaching, rather like a wayshower of how to navigate a world that has perhaps lost its way or at least its commitment to kindness and to its fellow citizens whatever their background. For many I think Theo of Golden has been a tonic for the period we are in.
“He…loved…you. And so, I say to you, my friends and neighbors, followers of Christ and those not, if you would honor the memory of Gamez Theophilus Zilavez, then do good, bestow kindness, strive for beauty, seek and find the river that leads to life everlasting, and draw from the fountain that never runs dry.”
From Theo of Golden:
Theo was in Golden for only a year, from springtime to springtime. He arrived just before Easter, when the Boughery and the Promenade were an ocean of dogwood blooms and azaleas. When pollen settled like a lemon patina on every exposed surface in the city.
Over time, his friends would learn that he had a great fondness for rivers. Be it the Douro of his childhood, the Seine of his glory days, the Hudson of his retirement, or the half dozen others that flowed through his various hometowns, he had a riparian instinct that seemed to draw him toward moving water. Growing up in a maritime nation might have had something to do with it. Perhaps every son of Portugal has the sojourning spirit of Magellan in his blood.
Whatever the reason, it is not surprising that he chose to live beside the Oxbow when he was in Golden. From his back window, facing west, he could see it at any hour of the day. From just outside his back door, three stories up, he could hear it. Or so he said. At every place or any hour, with his eyes closed, he could feel it, could sense its determined pursuit of the gulf, its winding journey south, its glad march to the Atlantic.
Only a year. Not so long. But long enough to create a current of his own and to catch others in it. Without knowing it, a whole cadre—Asher, Tony, Ellen, Basil, dozens of others—was being carried along by the vortex that was Theo.
Image and passage of text from my novel The Far Side of the Desert:
His great uncle now lived in Vigo, Spain, on the Galician coast, and his properties were run by locals who didn’t care who came and went and didn’t ask questions.
Over the years I’ve accumulated a running list of words I haven’t known from two main sources: WordDaily and WordGenius and from the books I read.
Mizzle
/ˈmiz(ə)l/
Part of speech: Noun
Light rain; drizzle
Example:
“The day was characterized by a cold, persistent mizzle.”
Beebread
/ˈbē ˌbred/
Part of speech: Noun
bitter yellowish-brown pollen stored up in honeycomb cells and used mixed with honey by bees as food
Examples:
“You can tell if a hive is in use by the presence of beebread.”
“Honeybees carry pollen back to the hive to be turned into beebread.”
“Even bees need to eat; they dine on a substance called beebread.”
I’ve spoken at bookstores, university classes, book luncheons and in-person and zoom book clubs and look forward to more ahead. I enjoy giving readings and addressing audiences in many venues and moderating discussions on a wide range of topics and most of all meeting readers.
Click here for a list of future and past public events.
Or fill out the speaking request form to schedule an event.
I like engaging with readers so if you are in a Reading Group or Book Club and read one of my books, I’m glad to be in touch by email, zoom, or when possible in person. I can also suggest discussion topics.
Fill out the reading group form here to schedule a meeting.
