{"id":58007,"date":"2019-05-04T01:05:17","date_gmt":"2019-05-04T01:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58007"},"modified":"2019-05-04T01:14:42","modified_gmt":"2019-05-04T01:14:42","slug":"the-celestials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58007","title":{"rendered":"The Celestials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tinhouse.com\/product\/the-celestials-3\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>The Celestials<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tinhouse.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tin House Books<\/a><br \/>\n2013-06-06<br \/>\n320 pages<br \/>\nPaperback ISBN: 978-1-935639-55-8<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/karen-shepard.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Karen Shepard<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tinhouse.com\/product\/the-celestials-3\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/tinhouse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/TheCelestials-RGB.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In June of 1870, seventy-five Chinese laborers arrived in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/North_Adams%2C_Massachusetts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">North Adams, Massachusetts<\/a>, to work for Calvin Sampson, one of the biggest industrialists in that busy factory town. Except for the foreman, the Chinese didn\u2019t speak English. They didn\u2019t know they were <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/North_Adams_strike\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">strikebreakers<\/a>. The eldest of them was twenty-two.<\/p>\n<p>Combining historical and fictional elements, <em>The Celestials<\/em> beautifully reimagines the story of Sampson\u2019s \u201cChinese experiment\u201d and the effect of the newcomers\u2019 threatening and exotic presence on the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_England\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New England<\/a> locals. When Sampson\u2019s wife, Julia, gives birth to a mixed-race baby, the infant becomes a lightning rod for the novel\u2019s conflicts concerning identity, alienation, and exile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Combining historical and fictional elements, The Celestials beautifully reimagines the story of Sampson\u2019s \u201cChinese experiment\u201d and the effect of the newcomers\u2019 threatening and exotic presence on the New England locals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,11,459,8,15,20],"tags":[29742,3712,29743,29744],"class_list":["post-58007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-books","category-history","category-media-archive","category-novels","category-usa","tag-karen-shepard","tag-massachusetts","tag-north-adams","tag-tin-house-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58007"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58013,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58007\/revisions\/58013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}