Author Ha Jin Opens Up About His Life and Work
By Dana Mikaelian
CAS Creative Writing Professor Ha Jin didn’t plan on being a fiction writer. He moved to the United States from China in to study American Literature. He always intended to return to China, and didn’t give a writing career much thought. However, the Tiananmen Square massacre of forced a change of plans. Since then, he has become a successful contemporary poet, novelist, and short story writer whose work has earned him the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Hemingway Prize, and, most recently, an invitation to join the prestigious Academy of Arts and Letters. In a recent interview with CAS News, the decorated author discussed how his experiences during the Cultural Revolution in China, and his subsequent years in the United States, have influenced his work and career.
CAS News: Tell me a little about where you grew up and what inspired you to become a writer.
Ha Jin: I grew up northeast of China and didn’t think I’d become a writer. My father was a [military] officer, so I went to the Chinese Army quite early to serve; I left after five years. I then worked at a railroad company for three
Ha Jin Biography
Ha Jin
novelist, poetBorn:
Birthplace: Liaoning Province, China
From the age of 14 until he was 20, Jin served in the People's Liberation Army in China. Upon release, he taught himself English working the night shift as a railroad telegrapher, and received his BA and MA from Chinese universities. In , he moved to the United States to pursue graduate work in English at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He decided to remain in the U.S. after the Tiananmen Massacre in His first two books of fiction, Ocean of Words () and Under the Red Flag (), came on the heels of his poetry collections Between Silences () and Facing Shadows (). Ocean of Words received the PEN/Hemingway award. In , he published a novella, In the Pond. His poignant novel Waiting (), the story of an army doctor in Communist China in the late s, received the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. His novel War Trash, about a Chinese soldier taken prisoner during the Korean War, earned him a second PEN/Faulkner prize in He is on the English faculty at Boston University.
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Ha Jin
Ha Jin is a widely acclaimed author of novels, short stories, and poetry. He launched his writing career in —just three years before joining the creative writing faculty of Emory University in Atlanta—with the publication of a collection of poems entitled Between Silences: A Voice from China.
Since that first book, Jin has produced numerous other works, including the poetry volumes Facing Shadows () and Wreckage (), and the short-story collections Ocean of Words: Army Stories (), Under the Red Flag (), The Bridegroom (), and A Good Fall (). Jin has also published the novels In the Pond (); Waiting (); The Crazed (); War Trash (); A Free Life (), his first novel set in the United States; Map of Betrayal (); and Boat Rocker ().
Early Life and Poetry
Ha Jin is the pen name of Xuefei Jin, born February 21, , in China&#;s Liaoning Province. He grew up during the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution, served in the army, and completed bachelor&#;s and master&#;s degrees in his home country before coming to the United States in to pursue his doctorate in English at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. The
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