A Note from the Owner

Hi. My name is Yao Jiang, the curator and proprietor of Ideal Peasant Books. I grew up in Beijing, China, and immigrated to the US in pursuit of a doctoral dedgree. After finishing graduate school at Vanderbilt, I moved once again, this time with my husband and our two very large, fluffy, and loving pups, Gogo and Meggie, for a postdoctoral position at U Penn. Years later, our pups are gone, our children grown – more or less, it is a process after all, and we are enjoying every minute of it – my academic career behind me, and so many cities, landscapes, continents even, disappearing in the rearview mirror also – for how can it be otherwise? – I find the only constancy in my life are my books. The Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe I brought from home – the real home, with my childhood bed, upon which they used to sit – they were at every subsequent home of mine also, and on my bookshelf they sit still as I’m typing this.

I founded Ideal Peasant Books because I believe in books. Most of all I believe in the rereading of books. I believe in the act of pouring yourself into a book over and again, and receiving new meanings from old pages. For we are, each and everyone of us, such stuff as dreams are made on… or, as Doctor Who once put it, we are all stories in the end.