Double Happiness

Take a trip to the Middle Kingdom,” opens a short feature review of Double Happiness in the East Bay’s Alameda Magazine.

Go to China “with Tony Brasunas as your guide, in this memoir-travel tome about his experience as a 22-year-old teaching English to ninth-graders at Peizheng High School. Brasunas is there in 1997, before the interconnectedness of the Internet, when ‘the motives of Americans in particular were suspect.'”

“The delightful chapters read like short stories.”

Read the full review: Tony Brasunas Finds Happiness in China

The review closes:

Brasunas pulls it all together for a retrospective that deftly and lovingly depicts the country responsible for his spiritual awakening.

Maggie Sharpe, a journalist for the Bay Area News Group, interviewed me for a feature piece in the San Jose Mercury-News. After asking me a dozen rather harrowing and open-ended questions, she told me to be patient.

A week later, I discovered that she put together a marvelous piece. I don’t know quite what to say. I have to admit it’s the article I imagined someone would write about the book someday.

Read it here: Author to talk about life-changing time in China

The piece appeared shortly before my event at the Alameda library, and I believe it brought out quite a few extra readers, travelers, and curious armchair adventurers.

Ms. Sharpe begins the piece:

When Tony Brasunas left U.S. soil for the first time to teach English in China, he had no idea what a life-altering experience it would be — nor that 15 years later, he would write a book about his teaching, traveling and the transformation he experienced.

She describes the time I fell miserably ill, exploring the niceties of that near-death experience, and digs deeper into what illness meant for my time in China.

Brasunas said that even negative experiences such as getting sick, getting ripped off at the markets and even being ignored or ridiculed by some of his students only increased his learning.

“I followed the thread of my instincts to what I wanted and to who I am,” said Brasunas. “This led me often to experience even ostensibly negative things in a positive light — that the negative moments and the positive moments were both a part of the magic of learning and of life.”

My gratitude to the newspapers that ran this piece (the Contra Costa Times and Alameda Journal also ran the feature), and, above all, to Maggie Sharpe for her excellent questions and even better writing.

Alameda Library Event

If this is the way I close my Book Tour, I might have to open it up again just to close it again.

One of my favorite reading events of the tour took place earlier this month at the Alameda Free Library. What I had called the final event was an event that had it all.

Karin, the librarian who hosted and organized the event, embarrassed me with an introduction. Then I greeted and thanked the 45 or so folks who filed in and took their places. I read the book’s prologue and first chapter.

There was so much curiosity and interest in the room that when I took questions from the audience, I actually had to insist people take turns. It was just delightful and fulfilling to share the story of Double Happiness with so many people.

I’m fairly certain I owe the nice turnout to the excellent article Maggie Sharpe wrote in the local paper that came out just a few days before the event.

Hardcovers & T-shirts

As for the sales of books, that was probably due to these facts: 1. the great nearby bookstore, Books, Inc., sent a representative to handle sales, and 2. I was signing the books, and 3. each new reader went home with a brand new “Trust Yourself” Double Happiness book tour t-shirt.

If you would like to get a signed book and a new t-shirt (while supplies last), you can do so easily right now by Joining the Journey.

Click to enlarge

Concert t-shirts for a book? Absolutely. What started out as a bit of humor has turned into an inspiring and creative side project.

To commemorate the Book Tour, during which I wandered for months and had so much fun seeing so many of you at places all around the country, I’ve created t-shirts with a list of the venues and dates.

In addition, the back of the shirt features the words “Have Fun, Take Chances, Enjoy the Journey.”

On the front are the words “Trust Yourself.”

Free at the Alameda Free Library

In gratitude to my Bay Area friends who have helped me so much along the way, to support Alameda’s great libraries, and to mark this final* event of the tour, I’ll give one of these American Apparel beauties to each and every human who comes to the event next Tuesday at the Alameda Free Library.

How Else Can I Get One?

While supplies last, I’ll include a “Trust Yourself” concert t-shirt when you order a signed book here, from Torchpost, the publisher.

Also, if you write a review, I’ll happily give you a shirt by hand, or mail it to you for the modest cost of shipping.

* Well, OK, I thought the last events of the book tour occurred in January, but here we are going strong into May. So hey, there could be another event I don’t yet know about.