This breezy collection of short stories would be great for a situation where you want to read something substantial, but aren't interested in fancy language. Written with his trademark simple style, Jin's short stories explore aspects of the Chinese-American experience in Flushing. My favorites...
ok, so here's how i got rabies. true story.i'm in thailand. thailand is pretty much awesome, i like going there a lot, as long as you stay away from touristy places like phuket and don't go to bangkok. people get sucked into bangkok and never return.so, i'm in bangkok (of course) and it's hard...
Ha Jin is subtle. He doesn't beat us over the head with an overview of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. So the non-Chinese reader can be a little lost here without that background. (The best preparation I can think of is Nien Cheng's magnificent Life and Death in Shanghai.) The Cultural Revolutio...
Every Man Is an IslandFew American readers know much about the Korean War, despite the many American soldiers who were killed fighting in it and despite the large numbers of American military still stationed in S. Korea, because technically the war has not ended--only a truce has been declared. S...
Before I share my thoughts on this book, I would like you to consider this bit of history: Mao Zedong died in 1976 and the decade-long Cultural Revolution - that shook up China and led to the persecution and death of many Chinese - ended with his demise and with the arrest and eventual conviction...
Ha Jin’s award-winning first short story collection examines the constraints and oppressive measures the communist government in China inflicts on the people. The stories cover themes and issues that are touching, shocking, heartrending, and immediate in their depiction of simple people living un...
An impressive collection of stories, all set among Red Army troops stationed along the Russian border. The stories are told in a deceptively modest style (deceptive in the sense that there doubtless was a tremendous amount of editing and whittling-down that went into these stories' making), and ...
Finally, a chance to read - a chance read - of this fine author I had a chance to hear here in Buffalo on the Big Stage. There was an astonishing turnout then, as though this one writers' series is all there is that might, reliably, turn out everyone of a certain intellectual rank. 'What if every...
A New York Times Notable BookOne of the Best Books of the Year: Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Entertainment Weekly, SlateIn A Free Life, Ha Jin follows the Wu family — father Nan, mother Pingping, and son Taotao — as they sever their ties with China in the aftermath of the 1989 massacre at ...
By mid-January, we still had seven thousand refugees. Many women believed that only through Minnie’s intervention could they get their menfolk back, so they stuck with us. In late January Minnie and Big Liu presented the petition to the Japanese embassy, where an attaché named Fukuda accepted it ...
A front-page article stated that the Soviet Union, tired of the border clashes with the Chinese, had been planning massive air strikes on China’s nuclear installations. The Soviets had been sounding out the leaders of various countries on their reactions if it took such an extreme step. Although ...
Though it was an unstated rule that an older soldier could demand small services from a new soldier, Gu went too far — he would have the two boys wash his bowls and clothes, take his mail to the post office, and even fetch water for him in the morning, as if they had been his orderlies. The new s...
Chang Bofan, the director of the Youth League of the Muji Railroad Company, said, “Who knows? She may already be broken.”“How can you tell?” asked Shuwei, an older clerk.“Haven’t you seen the way she walks?” Bofan picked his flat nose, staring at the chessboard before him.“No. Tell us how she wal...