“Touching and inquisitive … striking and accomplished blend of humour, information and pathos…. An intimate and thoughtful rumination on what it means to be a son, a father, and a man.” -Schema Magazine “Lee seamlessly weaves together elements of painful personal experience, fashion history, and his modern-day quest to learn the art of tailoring and find a place for himself in the world…. Who could have thought these themes could work together? In his first book, Lee has shown us how.” -Jury citation, Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction “Beautifully crafted, Lee’s memoir is a heartbreaking page-turner about a family, an abusive father, and men’s fashion. This beautiful, cleverly executed story gets to the very heart of the most basic masculine bond, and how even through disappointment, abandonment, anger, confusion and pain, a son can love, honour and protect his father.” -Globe and Mail “A personal yet universal story about a son’s quest to understand his father. “A graceful, compelling memoir… A thoughtful, loving and honest narrative, elegant in its clarity and observation.” -Minneapolis-Saint Paul Star Tribune What they’re saying about The Measure of a Man Get the ebook or the trade paperback! Amazon or Indigo/Chapters. FINALIST - Governor General’s Literary Award - Non-Fiction (2011).FINALIST - Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction (2012).FINALIST - BC Book Prize’s Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (2012).FINALIST - Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize for Literary Non-Fiction (2012).A book that will forever change the way you think about the maxim “the clothes make the man,” this is a universal story of love and forgiveness and breaking with the past. With wit, bracing honesty, and great narrative verve, JJ takes us from the French Revolution to the Zoot Suit Riots, from the Japanese Salaryman to Mad Men, from Oscar Wilde in short pants to Marlon Brando in a T-shirt, and from the rareified rooms of Savile Row to a rundown shop in Chinatown.
Woven throughout these two personal strands are entertaining stories from the social history of the man’s suit, the surprising battleground where the war between generations has long been fought.
He also recounts the year he spent as an apprentice tailor at Modernize Tailors, the last of Vancouver’s legendary Chinatown tailors, where he learns invaluable lessons about life from his octogenarian master tailor. Part personal memoir, part social history of the man’s suit, it is a deeply moving and brilliantly crafted story of fathers and sons, love and forgiveness, of fitting in and standing out - and discovering what it means to be your own man.Īs JJ moves across the surface of the suit, he reveals the heartbreaking tale of his father, a charismatic but luckless restaurateur whose demons brought tumult upon his family. When he decides to finally make the suit his own, little does he know he is about to embark on a journey into his own past. For years, journalist and amateur tailor JJ Lee tried to ignore the navy suit that hung at the back of his closet - his late father’s last suit.
0 kommentar(er)
