Jonty davies biography books

From sessions with child psychologists to lengthy stuttering boot camps and exposure therapies, he tried everything until finally being told the words he'd always feared: 'We can't cure your stutter. Here, Jonty argues that our obsession with fluency could be hindering, rather than helping, our creativity, authenticity and persuasiveness. Exploring other speech conditions, such as aphasia and Tourette's, and telling the stories of the 'creatively disfluent' - from Lewis Carroll to Kendrick Lamar - Jonty explains why it's time for us to stop making sense, get tongue tied and embrace the life-changing power of inarticulacy.

Helen Davies Sunday Times. David Mitchell. Colm Toibin. Owen Sheers. Start reading the hottest books of the summer. From heart-pounding thrillers to poignant memoirs and everything in between, check out what's new this month. Tell us what you like and we'll recommend books you'll love. Join our mailing list! Table of Contents Rave and Reviews.

As Desmond Shum was growing up impoverished in China, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity, he earned an American college degree and returned to his native country to establish himself in business. They were dazzlingly successful, travelling in private jets, funding multi-million-dollar buildings and endowments, and purchasing expensive homes, vehicles and art.

But in , their fates diverged irrevocably when Desmond, while living overseas with his son, learned that his now ex-wife Whitney had vanished along with three co-workers. Photograph by Jonty Davies. Desmond Shum. By clicking 'Sign me up' I acknowledge that I have read and agree to the privacy policy and terms of use , and the transfer of my personal data to the United States, where the privacy laws may be different than those in my country of residence.

Jonty davies biography books

My father spent hours perched on a stool in front of it learning English. When my parents were downstairs cooking, I set aside my homework to tune into shows about Chinese heroes of the past, listening with equal intent to the narrator and for the footsteps of my parents ascending the stairs. They wanted me to buckle down on my studies. Like many Chinese children, I was a latchkey kid.

I came home by myself at lunchtime and made myself lunch. At an early age, I threw together breakfast, too. Angry with his lot and nursing his resentments, my father took his unhappiness out on me. Actually, I was a model child. He beat me anyway. One day I forgot a homework assignment. That evening, my father thrashed me as if there were no tomorrow.

The wife of the doctor downstairs heard my yelps, walked up the stairs, knocked on our door, and quietly asked my father to knock it off. He stopped. My parents respected that family, especially because the doctor had studied in the West. His wife turned out to be my savior. Each time that my father lunged for me, I prayed that my screams would get her to climb the stairs.

My parents told me that I actually had it pretty good. Other parents punished their kids by making them kneel for hours on a ridged washboard, which split the skin on their knees. I still have nightmares about these beatings. I wake up in a cold sweat with my heart racing. My father and I have never had a reckoning about the past. He never gave a hint that, retrospectively, he was regretful about handling me so roughly.

While she protected her students at school, my mother never afforded me the same courtesy. Instead, she expressed her disapproval, not with beatings, but with words. So, at home, I grew up in an environment of degradation and punishment. Compliments were as rare as eggs were at the time. My parents picked on me for my mistakes. Eventually, most of my interactions with my parents became attempts to avoid criticism rather than win praise.

It was about escaping failure. At that same time, from an early age I experienced this yawning gap between the world outside my home, where I was recognized as a leader, a raconteur, an athlete, even a nice person, and the world of our tiny flat, where my parents seemed thoroughly disappointed with me. Perhaps this is common among kids from China, where expectations are high and criticism constant, and where parents believe that children learn by failure, not through success.

As I matured, the tension grew between these two worlds. Both knew exactly what kind of books would enthrall me. They started me with comic books. Growing up an only child in a society where at the time everyone had siblings, I spent a lot of time alone. So I read. The martial arts books, like the Harry Potter stories of today, pulled me into an imaginary universe filled with complicated relationships in the courts of kings, life-and-death struggles, love and hate, rivalry and revenge, plots and schemes.

My favorite tales followed a similar trajectory. A child witnesses the murder of his parents. Lost in the wilderness, he stumbles into a cave to find an itinerant monk who teaches him the secrets of wushu. I saw myself in this story, battling and beating my own demons. A group of the more athletic among us was told to strip to our undershorts.

The bureaucrat studied my hands and feet and pronounced that I should be a swimmer. My father began taking me to a municipal pool near my primary school. He taught me to swim in typical Chinese fashion: he tossed me into the pool. I struggled to the surface and gulped down a lot of water. Within weeks, however, I was ready for a tryout with a local team.

At the age of six, I won a spot. I used to challenge myself to find shortcuts. I learned fast that there were many routes to get to the same place. We swam from to , after which I walked to school. We often had a second workout in the afternoon. Meets were held on weekends. I soon became number one at the backstroke and number two at the crawl in my age group.

We used to walk to the pool together. In the changing room, on the mornings after my dad had whipped me, I tried to hide the welts on my arms, back, and legs. But he noticed them. He gave me a sad smile. Our trainer, Coach Shi, was a typical Chinese coach: short, squat, with a bad temper. Coaches would sometimes pour hot water from big thermoses into the pool just to watch us, like fish wriggling after food, thrash around in the warm spots in a vain attempt to avoid the chill.

They thought this was hilarious. There were benefits to being on the team.