Ha Jin and his literature
Thursday, November 19, 2009 - by: Musefresco
Posted in the Category: Ha jinNo Comments »
There are not too many Chinese writers writing in English; and even if there are any, they are not very well known. A few exceptions, though. The reason behind their success may not necessarily be their literary skills but perhaps their highly critical stance towards the Chinese political system. It is not even a bit surprising when only those who dissent from the Chinese State have tasted success. They provide the western world an insider’s view of what they wish to read about: the hellish experience of living under a repressive authoritarian regime. In the tradition of writers such as Nabakov and Conrad, an émigré Chinese writer who started learning English quite late in his life is making a stir in the American literary scene from the nineties onwards.
Ha Jin, as this Chinese writer is popularly known, was born as Jīn Xuěfēi in Lioning, China. Born to a low ranking army official, he enlisted in the People Liberation Army lying about his age when he was 14, when the stipulated minimum age was 16. After serving in the People’s army for five years during the Cultural Revolution, he quit the Army to enroll for a bachelor’s degree in English studies at Heilongjiang University. He obtained his Master’s in Anglo-American literature from Shandong University, following which he left for Brandeis University in the United States on a scholarship for his Ph.D. While in the U.S, still working on his PhD thesis, the events of Tiananmen Square made him decide to stay put in the United States. Unable to find a teaching job, he did all manner of odd jobs before his publishing success convinced Emory University to hire him to both teach and write. Ha Jin is with Boston University at present.
Ha Jin’s first published work was a collection of his poems, Between Silences. He is a prolific writer who has penned many books of poetry, novels and short stories. His short stories and novels have won many prestigious awards barring the Pulitzer Prize. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize way back in 2000 for his second novel “Waiting” but Jhumpa Lahiri went on to win the coveted prize for her debut short story collection, “Interpreter of Maladies”. War Thrash, a very well received book by him on a Chinese POW in Korea, also missed the Pulitzer by a whisker.
The leitmotif in Ha Jin’s novels is the resilience of man which enables him to surpass all odds. Drawing on the universal theme of man’s ability to withstand any sort of hardships, his novels - at least his earlier ones - are part social commentary and part satire on the evils of Chinese socialism and socialism at large. Moving on from writing about life under Communist rule to the immigrant experience in America, his last novel deals with the hardships a person had to endure while trying to integrate with society of the host country and with conflicts between different generations of immigrants. No matter what the subject is, Ha Jin’s works are imbued with an unmistakable humane touch that makes him readable even when he is at his worst.
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