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...