Author of the best-selling translation of the Tao Te Ching
By Carol Ann Wilson
Still Point of the Turning World is ForeWord Reviews' 2009 Gold Award winner.
First time author Carol Ann Wilson has received several prestigious and notable finalist nominations for Still Point, including being named a top 4 finalist in the General Non-Fiction category of 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and a finalist in the 2010 Colorado Authors League Awards ceremony celebrating the best in literary excellence for the state of Colorado.
A student, the son of an influential banker, flees mainland China for Hong Kong during the Chinese Civil War and begins a journey that will ultimately lead him to America and the counter-cultural revolution. His story, chronicled in 300 pages of a forgotten biography, was passed down to a virtual stranger who made it her mission to remember the life of Gia-fu Feng.
Born to a wealthy, traditional family in Shanghai, Gia-fu lived through tumultuous periods of exponential change in China. After leaving his homeland for graduate studies in the States, he found himself stranded on the other side of the world with the home he knew crumbling before the world's eyes.
Landing in the mid-1950s at San Francisco's American Academy of Asian Studies, Gia-fu unexpectedly found a niche, a place from which to explore who he was. Within a decade, his path took him to Esalen in Big Sur and the human potential movement of the 1960s. Gia-fu went on to found Stillpoint, a Taoist community of families living simply and honestly with each other in nature.
Teacher, translator and Tai Ji master, Gia Fu-Feng is remembered for his colorful life in which he learned and taught alongside some of the twentieth century's greatest writers and thinkers, including Jack Kerouac and Alan Watts. Through his life and work, he sought to bring the ancient wisdom of the Tao into the modern world. His translation of the Tao Te Ching has sold over 1,250,000 copes and is widely considered to be one of the most readable and influential translations of our time. His translation of Chuang Tsu: Inner Chapters, now published by Amber Lotus in a 35th anniversary edition, has sold over 150,000 copies.
Still Point represents thirteen years of research by dedicated author Carol Ann Wilson, sister to Gia-fu's heir. Using Gia-fu's biographical notes and numerous outside sources, Wilson has given us the extraordinary story of a rogue Taoist sage. To catch up on her current projects, visit her at her website.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60237-296-2
ISBN: 1-60237-296-9
Paperback, 6" x 9"
304 pages, 25+ black & white photographs