Banana

Product Information

The book is published by the independent book publisher Legend Press who impressively had two of their books on the 2015 Women’s Prize shortlist And this idea of British born Chinese - and the prejudices and difficulties of fitting in, faced as a result of the culture clash, is at the heart of the novel and its very title.

Avoiding responsibility, like lying, should be practiced even when not strictly necessary if one really wishes to stay at the top of one's game. Still, the inability to bi-locate leads to occasional and unavoidable assignment of responsibility in one's absence, like when the book club (while I was at work) recently assigned me to choose a book for the coming reading season. Perhaps my real error occurred days earlier, when I mentioned to the Long Suffering Wife (LSW), a fellow book club member, that the book club's list of potential reads never included the micro-history, a genre of which I am very fond. How about the notion that the banana was the fruit referred to in ancient texts about the Garden of Eden. The climate in the Fertile Crescent was not conducive to apples. And there is some softness in the translations of ancient writings. The forbidden fruit was called a fig, which is also what the banana was called. And really, doesn’t it seem a more fitting shape for the job? Which makes it all the more ironic that bananas are essentially asexual. They do not breed. The fruit we eat today came from cloned plants. Mass-consumption bananas has always come from plants that do not propagate themselves, but require man’s intervention. I think it's pretty depressing that this book came out in 2007--nearly 2 decades ago--and none of the problems regarding the monoculture of bananas, the problems with corporations owning GMOs for food billions of people rely on for food, the diseases in banana fruits, etc. have been resolved. I am now pretty convinced that, thanks to capitalism and greed, we are going to lose bananas within the next few decades. However, she learns in the end what love really means and in how many forms it manifest itself. Some are less obvious than others. She also learns that things are not always what it looks like. Because Panama disease was permanently making fallow so much of its existing holdings, the fruit companies had a continuous need for new land, according to John Soluri, author of Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States.”After her grandmother enrolled her into a prestigious school, Xing Li started to face a lot of nasty things like bullies, racial discrimination and many others. She also got a friend, Jay, who's in the same shoes as hers, but it seemed like the bullies targeted her more than Jay. Impeccably observed, often hilarious, and deeply moving... pitch-perfect.’ David Henry Hwang, Tony Award-winning writer. This is yet another entry in the single-subject world of non-fiction. The narrowness of focus in books such as Salt and Cod and The Book on the Bookshelf and The Pencil and Longitude seems to be an increasingly preevalent trend in publishing. I am all for it on one level, since I like delving into the abstruse and wallowing in details that leave most people I know colder than a penguin's butt in the middle of the Antarctic winter; but on another level, I want to stop these publishers before they bore again with books inadequately edited and organized. Banana has crafted this novel in beautiful poetic diction. A novel that is lighter on the plot but the beautiful description of the scenery; the warm summer sea, sweltering ocean, scenic little fishing town, and refreshing weather gives the novel an ethereal quality. Welcome to Books2Door, the one-stop shop for all your children's book needs! We specialise in selling cheap children’s box sets and series at bargain prices.

For young people, particularly, this book is a must-read. It is one of those experiences that forces the reader to learn more about the people they never get to know in their communities. What a wonderful new discovery it can be to accept people different from ourselves, into our lives. Of course it counts for both immigrants and old inhabitants alike. The stories are about the power of time, healing, karma, fate and ultimately hope that becomes a transforming force in each story.One might describe Tsugumi as afrail, sharp-tongued girl because of her horrid attitude, and profanities but behind all this insolence is a strong, fearless human being. Kalau saja tidak ada kesalahan intrepretasi itu, pasti lagu Anita Sarawak yang populer itu akan berjudul Tragedi Buah Pisang. Bananas are incredible: the popular ones have no seed, and reproduce asexually. Since they're all genetically identical, they are very susceptible to disease. In fact, today's banana (the Cavendish) wasn't the first popular banana in the US. That was the Gros Michel, the Big Mike, which arrived around the 1870's. By the turn of the century, Panama disease was wiping out huge areas of banana farms. The companies decided that the best way to fight the disease (actually a fungus) was to stay ahead of it, by consuming huge amounts of new land -- and to do that, they used their money and political influence to get the US military to help them (thus explaining the term "Banana Republic"). The song "Yes, We Have No Bananas" is said to be a reference to the banana shortages caused by the disease. Chihiro spends hours gazing from the window. She feels an emptiness in her heart and is unable to get rid of her past except when she catches the sight of Nakajima, a fragile and brilliant student, from her window. It is interesting though as length of book seems to play a large part in whether they are turquoise/purple or gold/white rather than actual content from what I can see in some of the other scheme books. so you could technically end up with a long chapter book as white but with very simple text in it whilst a complex storyline and harder words could be seen more as purple if it is shorter.

The unconventional story of three young women bewitched into a mysterious and spiritual sleepwalking, sleeplessness, and haunted sleep triggered by the death of a loved one. The stories revolve around dead lovers, unrequited love, or unfaithful affairs. Deeply insightful… Tragedy and trauma are juxtaposed with a jokey colloquialism.’ Bare Fiction MagazineDD was on lime level for a while (fiction) but I thought she was finding it too tough so asked for her to be on white for a bit longer which feels about right for her. I enjoyed this book so much! Even though most parts of this book were sad and heart wrenching, they were also an eye opener and show me of the reality of being Asian in foreign countries. The Life of a Banana is about Xing Li, an orphaned girl who suddenly lost her mother in an accident. She and her older brother Lai Xing went to live with their old, rigid and strict grandmother, an uncle and aunt in one big house.

The writing style is notable as the book is largely written from Xing Li's perspective. As an 11-year-old girl, she writes in a rather childlike manner, commenting very bluntly on the things around her. This allows for a lot of observational humour about Chinese culture to creep in, which is hilarious to me now as a mixed-race British Chinese woman. Grandma's speech. Grandma speaks in broken English. At first, I thought it was because English isn't her native language, but then it's mentioned that she has "tons of brains", and (slight spoiler alert), she has friends who speak excellent English and write in said English with her. And I believe that friend and her grew up together, so why would one have good, standard English, and the other not? Please don't tell me it's just to emphasise the "foreignness", because it doesn't even read like Singapore-accented English to me. Like, even the old ah ma's in Singapore speak better English (those who can speak English, that is). I actually heard about this book in The Straits Times, so I was super excited. It's about British Born Chinese, the Chinese part coming from Singapore. I'll just say up front that my standards for this are probably higher than most other fiction I read, because I've been looking for awesome Singapore fiction. Plus, after that disastrous Singapore Lover book, I'm probably overly sensitive to depictions of Singapore and Singaporeans. The Life of a Banana can make people think in intimate and silent reflection. What we are all called to do is essentially understand that there must not be any form of judgment or condemnation of those who look different. We need tolerance and full acceptance without any prejudice, which makes us more human.’ Vanity FairThe story focuses on Xing-Li, a teenaged girl, who'd lost her parents, and, with her brother, was forced to go and live with her Mum's family and the super-Chinese granny (old skool). At Books2Door, we believe that reading is a fundamental skill that every child should have to help improve their vocabulary, grammar, and critical thinking skills. The novel is brimming with loss, a tinge of nostalgia, and loneliness on the surface but just like Kitchen, this novel also ends in hope for human strength, beauty, and transcendence.