Julius, a telephone interpreter, works from his bedroom in Buenos Aires interpreting phone calls between Lithuanian immigrants and United Kingdom Social Services and the East London Women's Health Clinic. Julius himself is an immigrant, first to the United States, then to Argentina. Julius's Argentine partner, Xavier, was also an immigrant, but has now returned home to Buenos Aires to enjoy an early retirement. However, peace and quiet in their household is disrupted by the constant phone calls from Julius's countrymen, who are in trouble abroad. Julius's professionalism begins to crumble...

Twenty years after participating in Lithuania's independence movement as a student, Laima Vince returns on a Fulbright grant to post-soviet Lithuania with her three children. Over the course of four years, while living and teaching and raising her children as a single mother in Vilnius, she conducts interviews with a diverse range of people. In this book she records the life stories of traditional healers, who treat their patients using ancient verbal incantations; trafficked teenage girls and the activist social workers who shelter them; Baltic gay rights activists who fight, and win, the...

Since 2005 the American International School of Hong Kong has developed an Outdoor Education and Leadership Program that enables the whole high school to annually go off campus and take part in outdoor education and adventure, in community service, or in leadership programs in a variety of locations. Every October, the week before autumn break, regular high school classes are suspended and all students take part in this off-campus program. The Adventure Week program is designed to develop students holistically in a way not possible in the classroom or home setting. During the 2013 - 14...

A flight is diverted from Shanghai to Hong Kong and three passengers, Rajesh (India), Paul (USA), and Luna (Indonesia), are thrown together for three days in a cheap hotel in Chungking Mansions. In this play the gritty reality of everyday life in Hong Kong's ethnic neighborhoods is played against the vulnerability of Hong Kong's elite rich and famous. This cultural clash comes to a head when the bumbling hotel manager, Sunil, orchestrates a botched kidnapping of the fictional daughter of a real Lee Ka-Shing, a Hong Kong billionaire real estate developer and philanthropist, and Rajesh, Paul,...

This play for young adults is a contemporary rendition of Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET set in the Hong Kong neighborhood of Mong Kok. The play tells a love story between teenagers from two Mong Kok families, who have been ensnared in conflict since "a business deal went wrong." Raj Kapoor, an Indian, and an idealistic young man, as well as a poet, falls in love with Juliet Chiu, the only daughter of the wealthy and powerful Chius of Mong Kok. Juliet proves to be the perfect match for Raj. Misunderstood by her materialistic parents, Juliet is a sensitive soul who also writes poetry, causing...

DIGGING A HOLE TO CHINA is part travel writing, part memoir. Each chapter can be read as an individual essay or as part of the narrative. Laima Vince relocates to Hong Kong to teach at a Chinese international school. While she is in Hong Kong the Umbrella Revolution breaks out. Students and teachers in Hong Kong find themselves on opposing sides of the demonstrations. Some support mainland China while others dream of universal suffrage and democracy for Hong Kong. While living and working in Hong Kong Laima begins to understand the complex society that is today's China. This book chronicles...

Laima Vince began writing these poems as a MFA student at Columbia University School of the Arts. She continued writing poetry throughout her life, as she passed through many different phases of womanhood--marriage, motherhood, divorce, self-discovery, coming the terms. These poems consider what it means to be a woman in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. The poems also reflect a life of creativity and personal challenge.

It is 1950. World War II has ended. The tiny Baltic country of Lithuania has been occupied by the Soviet Union. Here the war after the war is still raging. It is an underground war--a war that is fought by those who have survived and remained behind after Stalin's massive deportations to Siberia, and after a third of the population has fled to the West. It is a war fought by men, women, and children. Maria is 12. Her father is has been deported to Siberia. Her mother is hiding a resistance fighter who has returned from the West under the floorboards of their little wooden house on the edge of...