Ha Jin
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(born Feb. 21, 1956, Jinzhou, China) Chinese-U.S. writer. He joined the army at age 14. He received a doctorate at Brandeis University in the U.S., where he remained. His book of stories Under the Red Flag (1997) concerns the Cultural Revolution. His novel Waiting (1999), about Chinese society, won the National Book Award, as well as the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.
For more information on Ha Jin, visit Britannica.com.
Houghton Mifflin Chronology of US Literature:
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Works by Ha Jin
(b. 1956)
| 1996 | Ocean of Words. Ha Jin, who had immigrated to the United States in 1986, wins the PEN/ Hemingway Award for first fiction for this collection of stories set on the Chinese-Russian border and based on the author's experiences in the Chinese army. It is described by reviewer Jocelyn Lieu as "a nearly flawless treasure." A second collection, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award and entitled Under the Red Flag, would appear in 1998. |
| 1999 | Waiting. After publishing a first novel, In the Pond (1998), about a Chinese artist, Ha Jin wins the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for his comic portrait of Chinese life under Communism. Based on the regime's law that a couple without mutual consent must be separated for eighteen years before they can be divorced, the novel examines a Chinese army doctor trapped in an arranged marriage who decides to wait out the time before marrying and consummating his relationship with the woman he loves. |
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Ha Jin
Jīn Xuěfēi (simplified Chinese: 金雪飞; traditional Chinese: 金雪飛; born February 21, 1956) is a contemporary Chinese-American writer and novelist using the pen name Ha Jin (哈金). Ha comes from his favorite city, Harbin.
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Early life
Ha Jin was born in Liaoning, China. His father was a military officer; at thirteen, Jin joined the People's Liberation Army during the Cultural Revolution. Jin began to educate himself in Chinese literature and high school curriculum at sixteen. He left the army when he was nineteen,[1] as he entered Heilongjiang University and earned a bachelor's degree in English studies. This was followed by a master's degree in Anglo-American literature at Shandong University.
Jin grew up in the chaos of early communist China. He was on a scholarship at Brandeis University when the 1989 Tiananmen incident occurred. The Chinese government's forcible put-down hastened his decision to emigrate to the United States, and was the cause of his choice to write in English "to preserve the integrity of his work." He eventually obtained a Ph.D..
Career
Jin sets many of his stories and novels in China, in the fictional Muji City. He has won the National Book Award for Fiction[2] and the 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 a second PEN/Faulkner Award for Jin, thus ranking him with Philip Roth, John Edgar Wideman and E. L. Doctorow who are the only other authors to have won the prize more than once. War Trash was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Jin currently teaches at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. He formerly taught at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Jin was a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow for Fiction at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, in the fall of 2008.
Awards and honors
- Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction (1996)
- Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award (1997)
- Guggenheim Fellowship (1999)
- National Book Award (1999)[2]
- PEN/Faulkner Award (2000)
- Asian Fellowship (2000–2002)
- Townsend Prize for Fiction (2002)
- PEN/Faulkner Award (2005)
- Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006)
Bibliography
Poetry
- Between Silences (1990)
- Facing Shadows (1996)
- Wreckage (2001)
- Ways of Talking (1996)
- The Past
Short story collections
- Ocean of Words (1996)
- Under the Red Flag (1997)
- The Bridegroom (2000)
- A Good Fall (2009)
Novels
- In the Pond (1998)
- Waiting (1999)
- The Crazed (2002)
- War Trash (2004)
- A Free Life (2007)
- Nanjing Requiem (2011)
Essays
- The Writer as Migrant (2008)
See also
- Saboteur (short story) (2000)
References
- ^ "Ha Jin". Bookreporter.
- ^ a b "National Book Awards – 1999". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
(With acceptance speech by Jin and essay by Ru Freeman from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
- John Noell Moore, “The Landscape Of Divorce When Worlds Collide,” The English Journal 92 (Nov. 2002), pp. 124–127.
- Ha Jin, Waiting (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999)
- 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.
- Ha Jin, The bridegroom (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000)
- Yuejin Wang, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 13 (Dec. 1991)
- 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
- Audio: Ha Jin in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion programme The Forum
- "Ha Jin's Cultural Revolution" - New York Times Magazine profile (2000).
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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
Houghton Mifflin Chronology of US Literature
The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Mentioned in
Bichunmoo
(2000 Epic Film)
The First Emperor
(2006 Music Film)
Ha
(family name)
Waiting
(novel)
» More