Review: The Poker Bride

The Poker Bride by Christopher Corbett

America is a land of immigrants. I was always pretty aware of this basic fact as a kid, because I knew exactly where I came from. My paternal grandfather had a thing for genealogy, and, well, the rest of my grandparents were French. While I definitely absorbed the stereotype of an American being white, blonde, and blue-eyed, it puzzled me to some degree, because just looking at the world around me said different. As an adult, I know why: the 2010 census predicts that, by 2043, America will be composed of minorities as a majority. This pictorial featuring mixed race people in National Geographic offers a view of what the average American really looks like. This may seem like a new development to some, but that’s only because the American history taught in American schools is a little pale.

The Literary Horizon: Love in a Fallen City, The Poker Bride

Recently, I watched a magnificent video that really drove home the underlying racism in Joss Whedon’s Firefly, a space western. While I’ve been just as concerned about the racism in the live action production of Avatar: The Last Airbender (behold as the two Inuit characters turn sparklingly white!), Firefly has the real life analogue of the Wild West. That’s really all I have to explain this week’s selections for The Literary Horizon–a selection of short stories by a celebrated Chinese author finally in English after several decades, and a book about the Chinese and the American railway.