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Book Cover for: The Writer as Migrant, Ha Jin

The Writer as Migrant

Ha Jin

Novelist Ha Jin raises questions about language, migration, and the place of literature in a rapidly globalizing world.

Consisting of three interconnected essays, The Writer as Migrant sets Ha Jin's own work and life alongside those of other literary exiles, creating a conversation across cultures and between eras. He employs the cases of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Chinese novelist Lin Yutang to illustrate the obligation a writer feels to the land of their birth, while Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov--who, like Ha Jin, adopted English for their writing--are enlisted to explore a migrant author's conscious choice of a literary language. A final essay draws on V. S. Naipaul and Milan Kundera to consider the ways in which our era of perpetual change forces a migrant writer to reconceptualize the very idea of home. Throughout, Jin brings other celebrated writers into the conversation as well, including W. G. Sebald, C. P. Cavafy, and Salman Rushdie--refracting and refining the very idea of a literature of migration.

Simultaneously a reflection on a crucial theme and a fascinating glimpse at the writers who compose Ha Jin's mental library, The Writer as Migrant is a work of passionately engaged criticism, one rooted in departures but feeling like a new arrival.

Book Details

  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • Publish Date: Feb 29th, 2024
  • Pages: 112
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.50in - 5.50in - 0.26in - 0.32lb
  • EAN: 9780226833835
  • Categories: American - General

About the Author

Jin, Ha: - Ha Jin is the author of ten novels, four collections of short stories, and seven books of poetry. He is professor of English at Boston University.

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Book Cover for: Waiting: Introduction by Rachel Khong, Ha Jin
Book Cover for: A Good Fall, Ha Jin
Book Cover for: Ocean of Words: Stories, Ha Jin
Book Cover for: The Crazed, Ha Jin
Book Cover for: The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po), Ha Jin
Book Cover for: A Song Everlasting, Ha Jin
Book Cover for: A Distant Center, Ha Jin
Book Cover for: The Writer as Migrant, Ha Jin
Book Cover for: A Free Life, Ha Jin
Book Cover for: The Bridegroom: Stories, Ha Jin
Book Cover for: A Map of Betrayal, Ha Jin
Book Cover for: Nanjing Requiem, Ha Jin
Book Cover for: The Boat Rocker, Ha Jin

Praise for this book

"Ha Jin is uniquely placed to address the responsibilities and challenges of the displaced writer. Offering both historical context and a strong personal vision of the migrant writer in America today, these essays are thought-provoking, often inspiring, and, above all, unfailingly interesting."--Claire Messud
"Through this tangle of voluntary and forced migrations, Ha Jin offers the reader a string of glittering insights. For example, that exiles, like Tennyson's Ulysses, can confuse personal longing with collective need; . . . that nostalgia is never more than individual longing; that memory, when manipulated for even the best of reasons, can become a dangerous falsehood."--Alberto Manguel "Spectator"
"The Writer as Migrant serves as an excellent primer into the migrant experience, and makes a good read for anyone who has lived 'elsewhere.'"--Deji Olukotun "World Literature Today"

"[The Writer as Migrant] demands to be read slowly, and savored. You may find yourself pausing frequently to think about some especially trenchant observation and to reflect on the generosity and intelligence with which [Ha Jin] helps us understand what makes us different from, and similar to, the people with whom we co-exist on our endlessly fascinating, precious, and increasingly populated world."

--Francine Prose "Washington Post Book World"
"In arguing for a literature that transcends language, Ha Jin challenges us to rethink the basics. How important are the words in which a work is written? What value ought we place on its translatability? Opinionated, provocative, and poignant, The Writer as Migrant is real grist for the mill."--Gish Jen
"Though the issues are weighty, Jin's prose is straightforward and welcoming. . . . In this poignant and provocative book, Jin takes us on this journey [to our envisioned homelands], revealing paths laid by migrant writers before him and perhaps by those who will follow."--Vanessa Hua "San Francisco Chronicle"
"Ha Jin questions the author's nostalgia for home and conjures up another dwelling place in the house of literature. . . . These essays offer a thoughtful and thought-provoking defence of the author's right to define his own reasons for writing and to fashion his own home."-- "Times Higher Education"
"[Jin] writes with admirations and delicacy about writers as diverse as V.S. Naipaul and W.G. Sebald. . . . Unsurprisingly, many of the books most valuable passages concern the craft of writing."--Francine Prose "New York Times Book Review"

"Jin's book is lucid and original. No author of his stature has treated this subject in such an inclusive manner. Highly Recommended."

-- "Choice"