Three new books in the former native speaker's library

Since the Association of Asian Studies conference this year was cancelled, I took advantage of the University of Hawai'i Press Asian Studies online sale (you can still order by 3/31!) to buy a couple of books that I have been interested in for a while:

• Maritime Ryukyu, 1050-1650, by Gregory Smits (2019)--I got interested in this book after reading John Grant Ross' enthusiastic review on the bookish.asia blog. 
• Liminality of the Japanese Empire: Border Crossings from Okinawa to Colonial Taiwan, by Hiroko Matsuda (2019)--this book combines two of my favorite kinds of research methods--archival work and oral histories--to tell the story of Okinawans who immigrated to Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period there. Paul Barclay has a positive review of the book in Japanese Studies. 

The books showed up on my porch today, so I donned my hazmat suit and brought them in. Since we're all socially distancing ourselves right now, I might even get a chance to read them in the near future, especially if I don't read my books in the order that I buy them. 

I'm currently reading another book that I ordered earlier:

• Inconvenient Strangers: Transnational Subjects and the Politics of Citizenship, by Shui-yin Sharon Yam (2019). I haven't seen any reviews of this book yet, but I'm interested in Yam's discussion of storytelling as a way to promote what she calls "deliberative empathy" among different and differently-empowered groups in a society. I'm also interested in the book's focus on Hong Kong as a site of struggle among competing populations of Hongkongers, South Asians, Southeast Asian domestic workers, and mainland Chinese migrants.
  

Hopefully posting these books will force me to read them!