The University of Wisconsin Press

---

Memoir / Travel / Lesbian Interest

---

 

Mr. Ding's Chicken Feet On a Slow Boat from Shanghai to Texas Gillian Kendall A reeling, funny, moving journey across the Pacific Ocean, told by the sole woman aboard a Chinese ship After accepting a job teaching English on a small engineering vessel traveling from Shanghai to Texas, Gillian Kendall embarks on a strange journey with no ports of call but exotic emotional landscapes. She is the only female aboard, surrounded by Chinese men. The cosmopolitan graduate student suddenly has to adjust to an alien world, thick with cigarette smoke, unusual sea creatures, and male sexuality. Kendall invites readers to travel with her across cultural divides as deep and mysterious as the Pacific while she explores her own culture, orientation, and heart. Excerpt Too shy to sit next to anyone, I sidled to the end of the nearest table, where Zhao, the chief engineer, and a few others were chewing heartily. A bowl of chicken feet graced the middle of the table, braced by several large bottles of beer and some jars of evil-looking pickles. I pointed to the central dish, saying "I would like to taste this." Several plates and chopsticks were thrust in my face, the owners cheerfully offering me their uneaten food. "That's okay." I bent over the communal bowl. The greasy steam made me gag. A dozen or so gray-yellow claws poked up at me. Each foot had four long, skinny toes, and each toe had a tiny, oval nail on the end. The joints, where the skin wrinkled, looked like human knuckles. I picked up the smallest foot, but it looked like the hand of a sick old lady. Shuddering, I dropped it. –from Mr. Ding's Chicken Feet Gillian Kendall is a freelance writer who lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The Sun magazine, Glamour, Girlfriends, and Curve. She is the coauthor of How I Became a Human Being, editor of Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing, and contributed a short story to The Student Body. For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu Of related interest: How I Became a Human Being A Disabled Man's Quest for Independence Mark O'Brien, with Gillian Kendall “O’Brien conveys his pain, his suffering, his depression, his anomie—without resorting to tugging at our heartstrings.” —Felice Picano, author of Like People in History

October 2006 LC: 2006007361 CT 216 pp. 6 x 9 Paper $22.95 t ISBN 978-0-299-21944-4 e-book $12.95 t ISBN 978-0-299-21943-7   Adobe Digital Edition (PDF) About our e-books Printing and cut/paste allowed, access on six different devices. ADD TO CART   Click here for a further explanation of the shopping cart feature. Terrace Books is a trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press

Home | Books | Journals | Events | Textbooks | Authors | Related | Search | Order | Contact

If you have trouble accessing any page in this web site, contact our Web manager. E-mail: webmaster@uwpress.wisc.edu Updated June 25, 2012 © 2012, The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System