Congrats to Vanessa who just published a review of Ha Jin's new book, Writer As Migrant, in the SF Chronicle!<div><br></div><div>Notes can be sent to <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; white-space: pre-wrap; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><a href="mailto:vanessa.hua@gmail.com">vanessa.hua@gmail.com</a></span><br>
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<div><br>Ching-In</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/07/RVM013NCAO.DTL&type=books" target="_blank">http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/07/RVM013NCAO.DTL&type=books</a></div>
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<h1>'The Writer as Migrant,' by Ha Jin</h1></div>
<p>Vanessa Hua</p>
<p>Sunday, November 9, 2008</p></div>
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<p>In the preface to "Between Silences," his first book of poetry, published in 1990, Ha Jin proclaimed that he spoke for those who suffered and endured, those fooled or ruined by history - a Chinese writer who wrote in English on behalf of the downtrodden Chinese.</p>
<p>Nearly two decades later, Jin says that he has come to see the "silliness of that ambition."</p>
<p>"[T]oo much sincerity is a dangerous thing. It can overheat one's brain," he drolly notes in his compelling new collection of essays, "The Writer as Migrant."</p>
<p>Jin, winner of the National Book Award for his novel "Waiting," examines how writers who leave their homelands grapple with issues of identity and tradition. To whom they write, as whom, and in whose interest shapes their artistic vision.</p>
<p>In this slender book, Jin does not share much of his early life, already well chronicled in interviews and articles. As a teenager, he served as a soldier during the Cultural Revolution and went on to study English literature in college. While working on his dissertation at Brandeis University, he saw televised coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, an event that helped him decide to stay in the United States.</p>
<p>Rather, Jin draws upon the works and lives of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Lin Yutang, Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, V.S. Naipaul, Milan Kundera, among others - a brotherhood of writers, of exiles, who have nourished Jin. He writes: "[T]he usefulness and beauty of literature lies in its capacity to illuminate life."</p>
<p>Though the issues are weighty, Jin's prose is straightforward and welcoming. He employs the "we" - as in we, the reader, we, the writer.</p>
<p>The first of Jin's three essays, "The Spokesman and the Tribe," is the most personal, charting his early struggles as a writer, woven in with examples from other migrant authors. Such writers may regard themselves as spokespeople of their native countries, bearing witness and preserving memories. Their critics say that these writers appropriate homeland miseries for personal gain - or worse, are out of touch with the reality of the countries they left.</p>
<p>Naipaul's "A Bend in the River" - a book that changed Jin's life, he says - sustained him when he searched for a job for two years. As he walked to yet another interview, Jin began to doubt his role as spokesman and came to realize that he had to learn to stand alone as a writer.</p>
<p>"Just as a creative writer should aspire to be not a broker but a creator of culture, a great novel does not only present a culture but also makes culture; such a work does not only bring news of the world but also evokes the reader's empathy and reminds him of his own existential condition."</p>
<p>In "The Language of Betrayal," Jin examines the ultimate betrayal by the migrant writer: the choice to write in another language, alienating him from his mother tongue and directing his creativity to another language. He considers how Conrad and Nabokov each dealt with this struggle - Nabokov playful and wisecracking, Conrad developing an elaborate syntax. Jin concludes that migrant writers must imagine ways for their art to transcend any language.</p>
<p>In "An Individual's Homeland," Jin unpacks the notion of return, tracing the journey of Odysseus and how his story was told in poetry and novels. Even with the advent of airplanes and the Internet, which make physical return possible, the struggle remains in how migrant writers view their past and accept it, Jin argues:</p>
<p>"[N]o matter where we go, we cannot shed our past completely - so we must strive to use parts of our past to facilitate our journeys. As we travel along, we should also imagine how to rearrange the landscapes of our envisioned homelands."</p>
<p>In this poignant and provocative book, Jin takes us on this journey, revealing the paths laid by migrant writers before him and perhaps by those who will follow.</p>
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<p>Vanessa Hua is a writer in Southern California. E-mail her at books@sf <a href="http://chronicle.com" target="_blank">chronicle.com</a></p></div>
</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>~~~~~<br>Ching-In Chen<br>THE HEART'S TRAFFIC (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press forthcoming 2009)<br><a href="http://www.redhen.org/arktoi.asp">www.redhen.org/arktoi.asp</a><br><a href="http://www.chinginchen.com">www.chinginchen.com</a><br>
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