Page 31 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 2 Winter 2014

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radiation oncologists, and surgeons more
ready to cut than to examine data that
argues against radical prostatectomies.
The politics and business surrounding
prostate cancer are given additional em-
phasis in the second half of the book, with
chapters such as “Why Didn’t the Univer-
sities Stop the Epidemic?”
“It seemed to me,” he writes with char-
acteristic bluntness, “from my salaried,
full-time, ‘fox-hole’ in the Veterans
Administration from 1986 to 2002, that
my colleagues in academia and in private
practice were preoccupied with staying
alive economically. The application of
scientific principles to prostate cancer
was an afterthought in desperate times.”
Although skeptical of most PSA testing,
radiation, and prostatectomies, for some
advanced cancer patients he agrees with
the other standard treatment – androgen
deprivation, which lowers the testosterone
levels that feed the cancer. He also de-
scribes other approaches, such as his
own finding that non-steroidal anti-
inflammatory drugs can lengthen the
lives of cancer patients.
The source of Dr. Horan’s passion is
clear page after page, as he values the
prevention of unnecessary suffering
over prevailing approaches to a mal-
ady whose unnecessary treatment, he
argues fervently, is often worse than the
disease itself.
Soy Sauce
for Beginners
By Kirstin Chen ’99
Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, 256 pages,
$23
Reviewed by Sylvia Whitman ’79
What happens if you go home again? In
Soy Sauce for Beginners, debut novelist
Kirstin Chen explores this question
through a globalized lens.
Her marriage failing, 30-year-old
Gretchen Lin takes a break from a grad-
uate music education program in San
Francisco and returns to her native Singa-
pore to sort out her life. She moves in
with her parents, temps at the family soy-
sauce factory, reconnects half-heartedly
with old friends, and pines for her phil-
andering American husband. Home pre-
sents a new source of distress, however,
as Gretchen again confronts the push and
pull of her parents.
After mishandling a food poisoning
incident, Gretchen’s cousin, Cal, has
touched off a succession crisis at Lin’s
Soy Sauce. Although Gretchen’s father
(Ba) has preserved the family tradition of
brewing soy sauce in clay jars, Cal wants
to propel the company into the future by
using fiberglass tanks, at the expense of
flavor. Ba has groomed Gretchen in the art
of making artisanal soy sauce and quietly
wishes she would replace Cal as heir
apparent. Gretchen’s mother (Ma), on the
other hand, has long urged her daughter
to strike out on her own, embracing the
autonomy of life abroad, as Ma had done
briefly as a brilliant literary scholar.
Marriage brought Ma back to Singa-
pore, where she taught at the local
university, a frustrated academic and
closet drinker. Ma’s ailing kidney has
forced her early retirement.
“All I ever wanted was for you to have
a choice,” Ma always told her only child.
But choosing proves much harder than
Gretchen ever expected. With a foot in
both East and West, in both traditional
culture and the 21st century, where does
she belong? How will her choices impact
others?
Shaking off her deference and passiv-
ity, Gretchen must redefine her relation-
ship to her parents, her family, her friends,
and her lovers. She must decide who she
is and what she wants to make of her life.
Chen draws on her own experience
crossing cultures. Born and raised in
Singapore, she paints a complex portrait
of the city-state and its well-heeled young
professionals. Here a “Roaring Twenties”
party at a villa “with floor-to-ceiling
glass windows overlooking a vanishing-
edge swimming pool” coexists with Chinese
puppet shows and burnt offerings for the
annual Hungry Ghost Festival. Simulta-
neously insider and outsider, Gretchen
sees both sides, and the novel soars when
she looks deeply at her own family and its
culinary roots.
The Big Fix: The Hunt for
the Match Fixers Bringing
Down Soccer
Brett Forrest ’91
Game of Shadows meets Among
the Thugs in this revelatory,
true-to-life crime thriller and
exposé involving greed, cor-
ruption, an Asian crime syndicate, and the
fixing of international soccer matches at
the highest levels of the game, including the
UEFA Champions League and the World Cup.
For the Benefit of Those
Who See: Dispatches from
the World of the Blind
Rosemary Mahoney ’79
Rosemary Mahoney tells the
story of Braille Without Borders,
the first school for the blind in
Tibet, and of Sabriye Tenberken,
its founder. Fascinated and impressed by what
she learned from the blind children of Tibet,
Mahoney was moved to investigate further the
cultural history of blindness. She spent three
months teaching at Tenberken’s international
training center for blind adults in Kerala, India,
an experience that revealed both the shocking
oppression endured by the world’s blind, as
well as their great resilience. By living among
the blind, the author enables us to see them in
fascinating close-up, revealing their particular
“quality of ease that seems to broadcast a fun-
damental connection to the world.”
Loving the Sun . . .
Exposed without Fear
Sydney Waud ’59
Besides offering a view into
the biological imperative that
drives some 300 million people
to vacation annually in warm
climates, this book gives up-to-date informa-
tion on what to do and what not to do when
spending time in bright sun relaxing, working,
or playing. There is sound advice on how to
prevent over-exposure and what to look for
on your skin when it has suffered the effects
– both early and cumulative – of too much
ultraviolet radiation. This is an expanded re-
vision and update of the author’s Sunbathing
(Mayflower Press, 1978).
Original Local: Indigenous
Foods, Stories, and Recipes
from the Upper Midwest
Heid E. Erdrich ’82
Local foods have garnered
much attention in recent
years, but the concept is
hardly new: indigenous peoples have always
made the most of nature’s gifts. Their menus
were truly the “original local,” celebrated here
in 60 home-tested recipes paired with profiles
of tribal activists, food researchers, families, and
chefs. The innovative recipes collected here –
from Ramp Kimchi to Three Sisters Salsa, from
Manoomin Lasagna to Venison Mole Chili – will
inspire home cooks not only to make better use
of the foods all around them, but also to honor
the storied heritage they represent.
On the Shelf . . .