Ha Jin

Jīn Xuěfēi (Simplified Chinese: 金雪飞; Traditional Chinese: 金雪飛; born February 21, 1956) is a contemporary Chinese-American writer using the pen name Ha Jin (哈金). He was born in Liaoning, China. “Ha” comes from his favorite city, Harbin. In 1984, he came to America and began to write about China only in English. His works attract a lot of attention to Chinese culture and history.

Early life

In China

Ha Jin was born in Liaoning, China. His father was a military officer, and Jin joined the People's Liberation Army in 1969 during the Cultural Revolution. In 1981 he graduated from Heilongjiang University with a Bachelor's degree in English studies, and three years later obtained his Masters in Anglo-American literature at Shandong University. Ha Jin grew up in the chaos of early communist China. Ha Jin was on scholarship at Brandeis University when the 1989 Tiananmen incident happened. The Chinese government's forcible put-down hastened his decision to emigrate and was the cause of his choice to write in English "to preserve the integrity of his work." He remained in the United States after his Ph.D. in 1992, publishing his first book of poems, Between Silences, in 1990.

Poetry

Ha Jin has written three books of poetry, Between Silences (1990), Facing Shadows (1996), and Wreckage (2001).

Career

He sets many of his stories and novels in China, in the fictional Muji City. He has won the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel, Waiting (1999). He has received three Pushcart Prizes for fiction and a Kenyon Review Prize. Many of his short stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories anthologies. His collection Under The Red Flag (1997) won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, while Ocean of Words (1996) has been awarded the PEN/Hemingway Award. The novel War Trash (2004), set during the Korean War, won the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Ha Jin currently teaches at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. He formerly taught at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Ha Jin was a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow for Fiction at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, for Fall 2008.

Awards and honors

• Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006);
• PEN/Faulkner Award (2005);
• Townsend Prize for Fiction (2002);
• Asian Fellowship (2000-2002);
• PEN/Faulkner Award (2000);
• Guggenheim Fellowship (1999);
• National Book Award (1999);
• Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award (1997);
• Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction (1996)

Bibliography

• Between Silences (poetry) (1990)
• Facing Shadows (poetry) (1996)
• Ocean of Words (short stories) (1996)
• Under the Red Flag (short stories) (1997)
• In the Pond (novel) (1998)
• Waiting (novel) (1999)
• The Bridegroom (short stories) (2000)
• Wreckage (poetry) (2001)
• The Crazed (novel) (2002)
• War Trash (novel) (2004)
• A Free Life (novel) (2007)
• The Writer as Migrant (essays) (2008)

References

1. John Noell Moore, “The Landscape Of Divorce When Worlds Collide,” The English Journal 92 (Nov.,2002), pp.124–127.

2. Ha Jin, Waiting (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), p. 98.

3. Neil J Diamant, Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949-1968(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), p. 59.

4. John Noell Moore, “The Landscape Of Divorce When Worlds Collide,” The English Journal 92 (Nov.,2002), pp.124–127

5. Ha Jin, Waiting (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), p. 125.

6. Ha Jin, The bridegroom (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000), p.6.

7. Ha Jin, The bridegroom (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000), p.7.

8. Ha Jin, The bridegroom (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000), p.4.

9. Ha Jin, The bridegroom (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000), p.16.

10. Yuejin Wang, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 13 (Dec., 1991), pp.180–182.

11. Ha Jin, Exiled to English (New York Times, May 30, 2009)

External links

• Listen to Ha Jin on The Forum from the BBC World Service
• Boston University staff page
• Watch Ha Jin talk about the challenges of writing A Free Life on BUniverse.
• Author interview in Guernica Magazine (guernicamag.com)
• Online interview with Ha Jin
• On Point: Ha Jin and "A Free Life"
• Ha Jin audio interview re: A Free Life, November 2007
• Exiled to English
• Emotions and dilemmas are universal - Ocean of Words