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This pivot chronicles the life of Charles McCarthy, a San Francisco native and Jesuit missionary to China, and tells the unique and compelling story of a young man who experienced confinement under the Japanese occupation, followed shortly by imprisonment by the Chinese Communists in the 1950's. Through a study of McCarthy's unique epistolary exchanges, it considers the intellectual life of a Catholic missionary, his ongoing fight for equal citizenship rights, illustrating how American Catholic missionaries in Maoist-era Shanghai navigated the social tensions of a nation-state in turbulent transition. This narrative explores Jesuit strategies of resistance and persistence in an era of oppression, and ideological and religious conflict as those sent to fill the missionary spots left by European men lost in the World Wars were caught up in China's mid-century political upheavals.
List of contents
The Young Jesuit.- China During an Era of Change.- Return to Shanghai.- The Prison Years.- The Philippines, a Change in Course, and the Last Years.
About the author
Amanda C. R. Clark, PhD, is the Director of the Library and Associate Dean of Special Programs at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. She has co-authored with her father, Leland M. Roth, Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, and Meaning (2013) and American Architecture: A History (2016).
Summary
This pivot chronicles the life of Charles McCarthy, a San Francisco native and Jesuit missionary to China, and tells the unique and compelling story of a young man who experienced confinement under the Japanese occupation, followed shortly by imprisonment by the Chinese Communists in the 1950’s. Through a study of McCarthy’s unique epistolary exchanges, it considers the intellectual life of a Catholic missionary, his ongoing fight for equal citizenship rights, illustrating how American Catholic missionaries in Maoist-era Shanghai navigated the social tensions of a nation-state in turbulent transition. This narrative explores Jesuit strategies of resistance and persistence in an era of oppression, and ideological and religious conflict as those sent to fill the missionary spots left by European men lost in the World Wars were caught up in China’s mid-century political upheavals.
