Now in Bookstores: Kickboxing Geishas
Japanese women today are the leaders in a socio-cultural movement in Japan that is shaking the country's gender stereotypes to their core. Journalist Veronica Chambers explores these explosive changes. If a geisha's white features were once a familiar archetype, the women of today's Japan wear many faces: girlish and sexy, traditional and trendy, sophisticated and punk. In this fascinating book, Veronica Chambers takes us inside the world of the boundary-busting new Japanese women -- the kickboxing geishas -- who are freely mixing East and West, burying stereotypes, and defining an electrifying new zeitgeist.
Read an excerpt from Kickboxing Geishas or buy a copy from Amazon.com.
Praise for Kickboxing Geishas
"Women the world over are subject to stereotypes. But few are so carelessly pigeonholed as those from Japan, put into boxes as 'exotic,' or 'submissive' or 'inscrutable,' but rarely labelled 'rounded human being.' Veronica Chambers' Kickboxing Geishas does an admirable job to change that. Based on dozens of interviews with Japanese women, she presents a layered, contradictory picture of a rapidly shifting social landscape in which women play a central and catalytic role.
While many books treat Japan as an onion to be peeled, Chambers goes about things the other way. She gradually adds layers, talking to more people and throwing in new ideas that complicate and confuse but, in the end, illuminate." -- David Pilling, Financial Times
"With compassion and warm wit, the author talks to successful Japanese women -- from hip-hop superstars to senior corporate executives and entrepreneurs -- about their education, careers, personal lives and aspirations, and about the social norms they face as they carve out a bold new existence in a country wedded to tradition. Chambers portrays her subjects as social pioneers operating in a cultural vacuum, without the support of a widespread women's movement. Writing in a hip, visually vivid and entertaining style, Chambers fluently places the courage and isolation of these women in a briefly sketched social and economic context, noting that 'today's young career women -- entrepreneurial, independent -- have more [in common] with their hard-working grandmothers than they do with their Bubble Economy housewife mothers.'" -- Publishers Weekly
"A charming adventure and a compelling account of cultural exploration. My own misconceptions about Japan melted away as I read this book. With vivid color, Veronica Chambers portrays a pastiche of Japanese lives: a hip-hopper, a jewelry designer, a snowboarder, a lesbian legislator, an IBM executive. She explains Japan's obsession with Audrey Hepburn, describes the blossoming sex clubs for women, and outlines why so many newlyweds get divorced upon return from their honeymoons. Kickboxing Geishas finds universal humanity in the paradoxes and vibrancy of Japanese women." -- Seth Faison, author of South of the Clouds: Exploring the Hidden Realms of China and former Shanghai Bureau Chief for The New York Times
"Kickboxing Geishas is a knockout! Veronica Chambers punches through the "shoji screen" that separates the true lives of Japanese women from the stereotypes that surround them. Her reporting is as fascinating as it is appealing, her insights as surprising as they are generous." -- Aimee Liu is the author of Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders (2007) and the novels Flash House, Cloud Mountain and Face
Praise for Mama's Girl:
"Extraordinary." -- People
"A troubling testament to grit and mother love. . . While the story of her own achievement under grim, often-violent circumstances is extraordinary, the reader is left feeling particularly grateful for Chambers' compassion. Her portrait of her Panamanian mother -- proud, protective, angry and in need -- is one of the finest and most evenhanded in the genre in recent years." -- The New Yorker
"Affecting and eloquent, Chambers rise is remarkable, as is her spare, lilting writing style. . . Chambers writes with probity. And she illustrates her thoughts with well culled details that are telling and lyrically rendered: A." -- Entertainment Weekly
"Extraordinary emotional and insightful prose." -- San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
"An unforgettable testament to the resiliency of the human spirit and the depth of love." -- Booklist.
"Moving. . . the story of a strong soul growing up." -- USA Today
Praise for her debut novel, Miss Black America:
"Joins Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina and Kaye Gibbons' Ellen Foster as the great contemporary novels of a young woman's coming of age." -- Anthony Walton, author of Mississippi: An American Journey
"Lots of little girls think their fathers are special, but when your dad's a professional magician who can charm anyone, you can't help falling in love with him. Ditto with this moving novel." -- Glamour
"Chambers's gift for detail both charms and chills." -- Newsweek
"An exquisite first novel." -- Booklist
"Chambers gives us a good glimpse of the inner life of a talented girl making her way in the world." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Wise, funny, heartbreaking and honest. . . " -- Darrin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng
Praise for Having It All? Black Women and Success:
"With verve and personal insight, Veronica Chambers charts one of the most important but undercovered social movements of our time -- the rise of black women to their rightful place in American professional life. It's a coming of age story, not just for these women, but for the whole country." -- Jonathan Alter, Newsweek
"Uplifting . . . chock-full of role models. Real ones. Like Chambers herself." -- Los Angeles Times
Selected works
The Joy of Doing Things Badly
Collected essays
Published by Broadway/Doubleday
"Throughout my life," write Chambers, "my willingness to fall flat on my face has been my most marked characteristic." Joke she might, but Chambers is no slouch. In this collection of essays, many first appearing in O, The Oprah Magazine, she documents various successes and shortcomings. She ditches ballet for a free-spirited African dance class, tries kick-boxing despite her fear of being hit, signs on as a philanthropist and is able to donate a study room in her alma mater's library, and travels to exotic locales.
A well-bylined magazine writer, Chambers writes in a breezy, punchy style, although she does address serious matters, including a breast-cancer scare. Through humor, Chambers learns to develop "self-care tools" that prompt her to try new things no matter how foreign or difficult they may seem. Women of all ages will find inspiration in her approach to life and her call for "foolish bravery" in the face of challenges both big and small. Bursting with strong-willed, fiery spirit, Chambers is at the top of her game.
Read an excerpt from Joy of Doing Things Badly or buy a copy from Amazon.com.
Listen to Veronica discuss Joy on NPR.
Miss Black America
A novel
Published by Harlem Moon/Doubleday
A dazzling fiction debut from the author of Mama's Girl, Miss Black America is the warm and tender story of Angela, a young girl growing up in 1970s Brooklyn. Angela goes to school one ordinary day and returns home to find her glamorous and fiercely independent mother gone. Her magician father, Teddo, left to raise Angela alone, insists on keeping Melanie's disappearance shrouded in mystery. As Angela grows to womanhood and struggles to understand her mother's motivation for escaping the bonds of her family, she wryly observes, "My father was a magician, but my mother was the real Houdini."
A universal story that is both finely tuned and elegant, Miss Black America captures the intricacies, pleasures, contradictions, and complexities at the heart of every family. Spare and finely told, this novel will seep beneath your skin and stay with you long after the last page has been turned.
Read an excerpt from Miss Black America or buy a copy from Amazon.com.
Having it All?
Black Women and Success
Published by Harlem Moon/Doubleday
A behind-the-scenes look into the lives of successful middle- and upper-middle class African American women, the groundbreaking Having It All? is sure to spark discussions from cocktail parties to boardrooms. In a single generation, black women have made extraordinary strides academically, professionally, and financially. They've entered the workplace at a far greater rate than white women; increased then enrollment in law schools and graduate programs by 120 percent; and many are now running top companies, or in some cases, the country. Isn't that enough? Not necessarily. With sharp insight, award-winning journalist Veronica Chambers explores the challenges and stereotypes she and other African American women continue to endure, and answers the question often posed to her: What does success mean for black women?
Twenty-first century black women draw their inspiration from a wide range of sources: Claire Huxtable to Audrey Hepburn, snowboarding to basketball, Gloria Steinem to bell hooks. They choose what they like. Yet they are misunderstood by mainstream America and lack an accurate portrayal in the media of their lives. Having It All? interweaves the thoughts and reflections of more than fifty women who occupy this territory. The voices range from Thelma Golden, chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, to a Silicon Valley executive, to medical and legal professionals, and stay-at-home 'mocha moms.'
Successful black women today want it all: marriage, motherhood, engaging work and prosperity. The difference is that they come to the table with the strength, courage and wisdom of black women ancestors who-did-it all, even when they didn't-have-it all. What has gone so undocumented by the media is that modern black women are coming up with creative, satisfying answers to the juggling act that all women face.
Read an excerpt from Having it All? or buy a copy from Amazon.com.
Mama's Girl
A memoir
Published by Riverhead/Penguin
On the streets of Brooklyn in the 1970s, Veronica Chambers mastered the whirling helixes of a double-dutch jump rope with the same finesse she brought to her schoolwork, her often troubled family life, and the demands of being overachieving and being underprivileged. Her mother -- a Panamanian immigrant -- was too often overwhelmed by the task of raising Veronica and her difficult younger brother on her meager secretary's salary to applaud her daughter's achievements. From an early age, Veronica understood that the best she could do for her mother was to be a perfect child -- to rewrite her Christmas wish lists to her mother's budget, to look after her brother, to get by on her own.
Though her mother seemed to bear out the adage that "black women raise their daughters and mother their sons," Veronica never stopped trying to do more, do better, do it all. And now, as a successful young woman who's achieved more than her mother dared to hope for her, she looks back on their relationship in this moving, startingly honest memoir, and shares some important truths about what we really want from our mothers -- and what we can give them in return.
Awards:
- ALA Notable Book
- QPB New Visions Award: Nominee
- ALA Best Book for Young Adults 1997
Buy a copy of Mama's Girl from Amazon.com.