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Summary
Summary
From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash comes a new novel that eloquently re-imagines the American immigrant saga. Jin tells the story of the Wu family, that sets out on a journey through contemporary America in search of a sense of belonging.
Author Notes
Ha Jin left his native China in 1985 and is now a professor of English at Emory University. He is author of, among other works, two short-story collections: Ocean of Words, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, and Under the Red Flag, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for fiction in 1999.
He lives in Atlanta.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ha Jin, who emigrated from China in the aftermath of Tiananmen Square, had only been writing in English for 12 years when he won the National Book Award for Waiting in 1999. His latest novel sheds light on an emigre writer's woodshedding period. It follows the fortunes of Nan Wu, who drops out of a U.S. grad school after the repression of the democracy movement in China, hoping to find his voice as a poet while supporting his wife, Pingping, and son, Taotao. After several years of spartan living, Nan and Pingping save enough to buy a Chinese restaurant in suburban Atlanta, setting up double tensions: between Nan's literary hopes and his career, and between Nan and Pingping, who, at the novel's opening, are staying together for the sake of their young boy. While Pingping grows more independent, Nan-amid the dulling minutiae of running a restaurant and worries about mortgage payments, insurance and schooling-slowly snuffs the torch he carries for his first love. That Nan at one point reads Dr. Zhivago isn't coincidental: while Ha Jin's novel lacks Zhivago's epic grandeur, his biggest feat may be making the reader wonder whether the trivialities of American life are not, in some ways, as strange and barbaric as the upheavals of revolution. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
"*Starred Review* A poet as well as a fiction writer, Ha Jin writes of sacrifice, isolation, and valor with uncommon perception. In his earlier novels, including Waiting (1999), winner of the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and War Trash (2002), also a PEN/Faulkner Award winner, he looks back to China, his homeland. In his seventh work of fiction, Ha Jin anatomizes the immigrant experience. Nan Wu, a Chinese graduate student in Boston, drops out after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He would like to abandon his marriage, too, but his sense of duty toward Pingping and their young son is stronger than his desire for passion and the freedom to write poetry. So Nan laboriously progresses from busboy to chef, then purchases a small Chinese restaurant outside Atlanta, Georgia. He and Pingping work hard, live frugally, and strive to understand their baffling new world, including white friends who adopt a Chinese daughter. While Pingping evinces great strength of character, Nan remains deeply conflicted over his longing for art and his commitment to pragmatism until his ruminations on everything from the lives of birds to the differences between Chinese and English precipitate a profound liberation. For Nan, a free life is an honest and creative life. Capacious, pointillistic, empathic, and tender, Ha Jin's tale of one immigrant family's odyssey in America affirms humankind's essential mission, to honor life."--"Seaman, Donna" Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Ha Jin's first novel set in the United States is about a Chinese immigrant who works hard to get ahead. RUN down to the bar and rouse the culture editor: the impossible has happened. In the dispiriting age of Bush and Britney, with our military still bogged down in Baghdad and our media still bewitched by Beverly Hills, an accomplished, respected American writer (a recent National Book Award Winner, in fact) has published a serious patriotic novel. Its title, "A Free Life," is not altogether ironic. Its subject, everyday bravery and nobility in a system built on risk and too often based on mutual exploitation, is delivered straight. Finally, its Chinese-born author, Ha Jin (whose seven previous works of fiction have all been set abroad), seems positively pleased and proud to be here. Or at least his characters do. Nan and Pingping Wu, a husband and wife, are the sort of persevering newcomers, firmly set on a legal path to citizenship by way of unremitting thrift and toil, whom presidents like to point to from the podium during major addresses on the economy. Much as Jin himself did, the Wus came from China to study, not to stay, but they realized after the Tiananmen Square massacre (as Jin did too, he's said in interviews) that they couldn't go home again and be themselves, since both their selves and their native land had changed. "A Free Life" is the story of their family's naturalization - bank deposit by bank deposit, dental appointment by dental appointment, appliance purchase by appliance purchase - and like most novels of what professors call "The American Immigrant Experience," it's chiefly a tale of trial and error. The trials provide the drama, the errors the comedy, and their overlap the pathos. It's an orthodox format, hard to reinvent, mostly because reinvention is its theme. For Nan, who's at graduate school in Boston when the tank turrets swivel in downtown Beijing, the first trick is to switch from brains to brawn. To support the good wife whom he doesn't truly love and the young son, Taotao, whom he doesn't quite understand, he gives up the life of the mind, which suits his temperament, for the lot of the laborer, which doesn't. On one of his early jobs as a security guard, he runs out to a market for a snack and finds himself waylaid on his return trip by a boozy, aggressive man and woman who badger him to come with them to a party packed with "purty girls." Nan's confusion about their motives panics him. Once he's back at his post with the trusty pocket dictionary he's using to improve his English and the tattered literary classics that speak to his stifled dream of writing poetry, he concludes that he's barely avoided being forced to join in an orgy or a smut film. Had he weakened, it might be all over for him now. His aspirations are thoroughly middle-class - a decent house, a healthy bank account and maybe, someday, time for thought and art - and while he knows he's starting from the bottom, he also knows that, in America, there's nothing under the bottom but more bottom. As Jin puts the Wus through their paces as up-and-comers who might become down-and-outers at any moment (or so their exaggerated sense of caution causes them to fear), the story develops the cycling, skipping rhythm of a dirty compact disc. Each step up for the Wus - from renter to owner, employee to employer, bricked-in city dweller to waterfront suburbanite - stirs a vivid burst of hope followed by a fresh new stretch of static, as when the Wus grow mistrustful of the lawyer who uses a legal tactic called a "straw" to secure their joint title to a small restaurant they've bought in Atlanta's allbeige strip mall outskirts. "Stupefied, Nan couldn't help but imagine that they'd sold their business for only one dollar. At the same time, he kept reminding himself that he shouldn't be too paranoid or think ill of Mr. Shang. ... According to the attorney, they'd receive a notice about the registration from the deeds office within two months. What could the Wus do in the meantime? It looked like they could do nothing but wait anxiously." The nervousness of the Wus is not infectious but sympathy-inducing, like watching a bright child learn to spell. You know she will; you just wish that she knew, too. Given the novel's 600-page-plus length, the Wus' regular lapses into bafflement breed no suspense about their ultimate destinies. As they blunder along through the hazards and the hassles of ascending sandy Mount Capitalism, from confronting bouts of sickness without sufficient insurance to losing, in stages, their only child's attention to the nonstop come-hithers of the Internet, the sheer volume of unread print and untouched paper signals us that their climb will go ahead, with lots of skids and slipups, naturally, but no headlong plunges, even at the end. Volatility, after all, is a measure of health in a free market, and the elementary algebra of Jin's narrative pace - as slow, implacable and steady as interest accumulating in a savings account - implicitly promises that his dimes and quarters of mundane description and petty conflict will result in a full piggy bank for all. Neither does Jin give his people flaws or problems grave enough to threaten their well-being. Pingping's chronic fretting is not disabling, and Nan's nascent ambitions as a poet aren't the kind that lead to leaps off bridges if they go unattained. The Wus' credentials as model neopuritans - their humility, self-sacrifice, efficiency and unremitting skepticism about easy credit in all its forms, including the loans to the erotic self afforded by commercial sex and porn, which Nan feels calling to him on occasion - are so unassailable that if they failed, the book would wind up as an Upton Sinclair-ish protest novel; a case study in humanity's futile puniness against the Great Machine. The Wus are the only ones who can't see that they're moving up, which feels almost jokelike because the novel's timeline - from the late '80s to the late '90s - was, we know now, an era of mass bounty. The novel's sole mystery is how satisfied the Wus will feel when they pull up the rope ladder behind them and kick back in their little piece of heaven. The range of possibilities is narrow. They won't be euphoric - it's not their way - but they won't be radically disappointed, either. A headspinning windfall might unhinge them, yes, but what seems most likely, and what we watch occur, is their introduction to the faint melancholy of "Is this all there is?" American comfort, followed by Nan's resolution to aim higher on the spiritual and mental plane the instant his mortgage is paid off. IMPECCABLE kitchen-sink realism? Not really. The two steps forward, one step back progression of the Wu's acculturation may be true to the actual experiences of countless naïve, non-native English speakers, but it feels here more like a monastic meditation or a ritual breathing exercise than a fictional documentary. Jin's simple sentences, familiar sentiments, and uneventful three- to fivepage chapters that typically end with such pulse-suppressing non-cliffhangers as "the day before the Wangs returned, the Wus moved out of the bungalow and set up their residence at 568 March Drive," appear to derive from a highly refined aesthetic of anti-excitability. Life, from day to day, seems hardly to alter, yet it shifts beyond recognition over the years - this is what fascinates Jin, apparently, and it's what the Zen-like composure of his prose and his conveyorbelt time-sense seek to demonstrate. This proved, the experimental apparatus keeps on operating, though, repeating the same results with dwindling verve and testing the inner Buddhist in Jin's audience in ways that some may find calming and others sedating. Aside from a bruising medical episode concerning the abortion of a dead fetus, the novel's fiercest interludes are rhetorical, as the Pledge of Allegianceminded Nan debates the China-first set at various gatherings. Eventually, thanks to a winning raffle ticket, he gets to see firsthand the country he left, which has been transformed during his absence into a carnival caricature of the nation he left it for. That Nan finds China's rapaciousness familiar from what its blackest propagandists have alleged about America is the novel's only excursion into cynicism. Nan has seen the future, and it ain't us. His retreat to Atlanta and a menial job that will at last allow him to write poetry feels oddly elegiac - a great leap backward into a New World that he was too busy growing into, and growing fond of, to notice becoming ancient. Walter Kirn is a regular contributor to the Book Review. His latest novel is "The Unbinding."
Kirkus Review
A Chinese immigrant family's experience of 1990s America is treated at epic length in this heartfelt new novel from the NBA-winning author of Waiting (1999). Following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Nan Wu, seeking a better life for his wife Pingping and their son Taotao, precedes them to America, where he briefly studies political science before realizing he must abandon his ambition of living as a poet and novelist and provide for his family--who join him four years later as live-in household staff for a wealthy woman residing in the Boston area. Over the next decade, Nan moves in and out of U.S. literary circles (encountering, among others, Allen Ginsberg-like confrontational poet Sam Fisher), but finds neither satisfactory outlets for his creative energies nor relief from longing for the woman he didn't marry--all the while subsisting in a companionable, though not loving marriage, and enduring the trials of fatherhood, as Taotao struggles through assimilation and adolescence. The family moves to an Atlanta suburb, operating then purchasing a thriving restaurant, and appear, at last, "Americanized." But Nan's conflicted relationships with fellow Chinese-Americans who profess a love for their homeland that he cannot share erodes his energies and keeps him suspended between freedom and tyranny, the workaday world and the ideal realm of literature. The author's trademark clarity produces numerous lucid, moving scenes, and the gathering weight of the struggles endured by the Wus seizes the reader's attention. But the book's amplitude is unselective. When it ends with extracts from Nan's "Poetry Journals" and 30-plus pages of his deeply autobiographical poems (a blatant echo of Doctor Zhivago, one of Nan's favorite books), we realize that these concluding pages tell his story far more succinctly than do the bloated 600 pages that precede it. A book that has obviously been labored over, yet still feels inchoate and unfocused. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
"Crossing over from China to America" describes not only the theme behind this latest work from National Book Award-winning author Ha (Waiting) but also his own transition as a storyteller as he breaks away from novels based in China and sets this work in the United States. Keeping to his use of strong male protagonists, Jin opens with Nan Wu, who, with wife Pingping, is reunited for the first time in three years with six-year-old son, Taotao (he's just been flown to the United States from China). Opening in 1989 and spanning nearly a decade, the novel is divided into six parts and multiple brief chapters that follow the Wu family's fierce determination to make a better life for themselves. Though living the "American dream," Jin's characters, as in his other novels, are not without conflict. Nan, for instance, struggles with his passion to become a successful author even as he works to support his family. Transitioning his characters from Chinese immigrants to Chinese Americans, Jin takes his writing to a new level as he skillfully crafts an ambitiously angst-filled yet masterly tale of assimilation overflowing with both heart and culture. Highly recommended for public and academic library fiction and Asian American fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/07.]-Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One Finally Taotao got his passport and visa. For weeks his parents had feared that China, even if not closing the door outright, would restrict the outflow of people. After the Tiananmen massacre on June 4, 1989, all the American airlines except United had canceled their flights to Beijing and Shanghai. At the good news, Pingping burst into tears. She quickly rinsed the colander in which she had drained the shredded turnip for her jellyfish salad, took off her apron, and set out with her husband, Nan Wu, for the town center of Woodland, where the office of Travel International was located. The plane ticket cost seventy percent more than the regular fare because it had not been purchased three weeks in advance. The Wus didn't hesitate; as long as Taotao could get out of China in time and safely, it was worth any price. They also bought round-trip tickets from Boston to San Francisco for themselves. Neither Pingping nor Nan could go back to China to fetch Taotao, who had been staying with Pingping's parents for the past three years. And since no one in Pingping's family had a passport--not to mention the difficulty in getting a visa from the U.S. embassy--the boy would have to fly by himself. Pingping's brother, a middle school physics teacher who had just returned to their parents' home for the summer vacation, had agreed to take his nephew from Jinan City to Shanghai. There Taotao would be left in the hands of the American flight attendants. Barely six, he wasn't allowed to change planes unaccompanied, so his parents would have to go and collect him in San Francisco. The travel agent, a bosomy brunette with olive skin and long hair, helped Nan make a reservation for the least expensive room at a hotel near Union Square, where the three of them would stay the first night before flying back to Boston. Altogether the trip would cost them close to $3,000. Never had they spent money so lavishly. They arrived in San Francisco in the early morning of July 11. They hadn't expected it to be so chilly; nippy gusts were ruffling pedestrians' hair and forcing people to squint. A storm had descended the night before, leaving shop signs tattered and soggy; a few traffic lights were out of order, blinking endlessly. But the ebony facades of some buildings had been washed clean and glossy, and the vigorous wind smelled of the ocean. Pingping, without any warm clothes on, couldn't stop shivering and then began hiccupping violently on their way to the hotel. Nan tried massaging the nape of her neck to relieve her spasms, and once or twice he slapped her back in an attempt to shock her out of them. This trick had worked before, but it didn't help today. Nan had called United Airlines twice to find out whether Taotao was actually on the plane, but nothing could be confirmed. He was told that the boy's name didn't come up in the computer. Things were still chaotic in China, and many passengers had been switched to this flight from other airlines that had canceled their services, so there wasn't a complete passenger list yet. "Don't worry, Mr. Wu," a pleasant female voice consoled Nan. "Your son should be all right." "We were told zat he is on zer plane." Nan often mismanaged the interdental sound that the Chinese language doesn't have. "Then he should be." "Do you have anozzer way to check zat?" "I'm afraid I don't, sir. Like I said, he should be okay." But between "should be" and "is" stretched a gulf of anguish for the boy's parents. If only they knew where their son actually was! Nan's brother-in-law had said on the phone that he left Taotao with a group of American air stewardesses, one of whom was an Asian and could speak a little Mandarin. Now the Wus just hoped he was on the plane. Three hours after they had checked into the hotel, they returned to the airport by a shuttle bus. The plane wasn't supposed to arrive until 12:30. Since it was an international flight, the Wus were not allowed to enter the restricted terminal. All they could do was stand outside customs, staring at the chestnut-colored gate that seemed resolved to remain shut forever. Several times they asked the people at the information desk whether Taotao was on the plane, but nobody could tell them that for certain. A thin, broad-faced woman in a dark blue uniform appeared. She looked Chinese but spoke only English. Hoping there might be another way to find out their son's whereabouts, they asked her to help. Her round-chinned face stiffened. She shook her head and said, "If that lady at the desk can't do anything for you, I can't either." Distraught, Pingping begged her in English, "Please check it for us. He is our only child, just six year old. Three years I didn't see him." "Like I said, I really can't help you. I have work to do, okay?" Nan wanted to plead with her too, but the woman looked annoyed, so he refrained. In her eyes, which had more white than black, Nan had caught a flicker of disdain, probably because she knew they were from mainland China and suspected they were still red inside, if not red to the bone. He wrapped an arm around Pingping, whispering in Chinese, "Let's wait a little longer. I'm sure he'll come out soon. Don't worry in advance." Between themselves they spoke Mandarin. The way his wife had begged that woman upset him. Pingping, though thirty-three, looked almost ten years younger than her age, with large vivid eyes, a straight nose, a delicate chin, and a lissome figure. Perhaps that woman was jealous of her pretty features and liked seeing her in agony. At last the gate opened and spat out a string of passengers. Most of them looked exhausted, their eyes dull and inert, and several walked unsteadily, pulling wheeled suitcases or lugging bags. The Wus stepped closer and gazed at the new arrivals. One by one the passengers went by. A tall black man in a baggy blazer cried, "Hey, Toni, so great to see you!" He stretched out his right arm, a dark canvas ukulele case hanging from his left shoulder. Toni, a skinny girl wearing a nose stud and a full head of cornrows, buried her face in his one-armed hug. Except for that cheerful moment, though, most passengers seemed groggy and dejected. Some of the Asians seemed uncertain what to do, and looked around as if wondering who among those standing by were supposed to receive them. Within five minutes all the new arrivals had cleared customs. Slowly the gate closed. A chill sank into Nan's heart; Pingping broke into sobs. "They must have lost him! I'm sure they lost him!" she groaned in Chinese, holding her sides with one arm. Tugging Nan's wrist, she went on, "I told you not to let him take the risk, but you wouldn't listen." "He'll be all right, believe me." His voice caught, unconvincing even to himself. The hall was hushed again, almost deserted. Nan didn't know what do. He said to Pingping, "Let's wait a little more, all right?" "There was only one flight from China today. Don't lie to me! Obviously he was not on it. Oh, if only we had let him wait until somebody could bring him over. We shouldn't have rushed." "I know." Then the gate opened again. Two stewardesses walked out, the tall one, a blonde, holding a young boy's hand while the other one, slight and with smiling eyes, was carrying a small red suitcase. "Taotao!" Pingping cried, and rushed over. She swooped him up into her arms and kissed him madly. "How worried we were! Are you all right?" she said. The boy in a sailor suit smiled, whimpering "Mama, mama" while pressing his face against her chest as if shy of being seen by others. He then turned to Nan, but his face registered no recognition. "This is your daddy, Taotao," his mother said. The boy looked at Nan again and gave a hesitant smile, as if his father were a bigger friend being introduced to him. Meanwhile, Pingping went on kissing him and patting his back and stroking his head. The two stewardesses asked for Nan's ID, and he produced his driver's license. They compared his name with their paperwork, then congratulated him on the family's reunion. "He was fine on the plane, very quiet, but a little scared," said the short woman, who looked Malaysian. She handed Nan the suitcase. He held it with both hands. "Sank you for taking care of him on zer way." "Our pleasure," said the blonde, who wore mascara and had permed hair, her face crinkling a little as she smiled. "It's wonderful to see a family reunited." Before Pingping could say anything, the women left as if this were their routine work. "Thank you!" she cried at last. They turned their heads and waved at her, then disappeared past the gate. Chapter Two Nan had not seen his son for four years. Taotao seemed frailer than in the photos, though he was definitely more handsome, with a thin nose and dark brown eyes, like his mother's. Together the Wus headed for the bus stop, both parents holding the child's hands. Approaching an automatic door, the boy somehow stopped and wouldn't exit the building. He asked his mother, "When are we going back?" His Mandarin had a slight Shandong accent, since he had lived with Pingping's parents. "What? What are you talking about?" said Pingping. "Uncle and Aunt are waiting for us in Shanghai." "Really?" "Yes, they'll meet us there." "Who said that?" "They told me to come and take both of you back. Let's go home now." "Can't we stay just another day?" Nan stepped in, having realized that his in-laws must have tricked Taotao into traveling with the flight attendants. "No, I want to go home." Nan forced a smile and choked back a wave of misery. "Don't you want to see dolphins and whales?" he asked. "Real ones?" "Sure." "Where are they? Here?" "No, we're going to make a stop in a city called Boston, where there're lots of whales and dolphins. Don't you want to see them?" "Yes," Pingping chimed in. "We'll visit a few places before heading for home." "All right?" Nan added. The boy looked uncertain. "Then we'd better let Uncle and Aunt know our plan. They're still waiting for us at the Shanghai airport." "I'll call them. Don't worry," said his father. So Taotao agreed to return to the hotel with them. Nan was carrying him piggyback on the way to the bus stop while Pingping went on talking with him, asking what food he had eaten on the plane and whether he had been airsick. The din of the traffic muffled the voices of mother and son, and Nan couldn't hear all their conversation. His mind was full, in turmoil; but he was happy. His child had come. He was sure that, eventually, the boy would become an American. But what about himself? He was uncertain of his future and what to do about his life, not to mention his marriage. The truth was that he just didn't love his wife that much, and she knew it. Pingping knew he was still enamored of his ex-girlfriend, Beina, though that woman was far away in China. It seemed very likely to Nan that Pingping might walk out on him one of these days. Yet now he was all the more convinced that they must live in this country to let their son grow into an American. He must make sure that Taotao would stay out of the cycle of violence that had beset their native land for centuries. The boy must be spared the endless, gratuitous suffering to which the Chinese were as accustomed as if their whole existence depended on it. By any means, the boy must live a life different from his parents' and take this land to be his country! Nan felt sad and glad at the same time, touched by the self-sacrifice he believed he would be making for his child. On the bus Taotao was sitting on his mother's lap. A moment after they pulled out of the airport, to his parents' astonishment, the boy said, "Mama, there was a big fight in Beijing, do you know? Hundreds of uncles in the People's Liberation Army were killed." "It was the soldiers who shot a great many civilians," his father corrected him. "No, I saw on TV bad eggs attacking the army. They burned tanks and overturned trucks. Grandpa said those were thugs and must be suppressed." "Taotao, Dad is right," his mother broke in. "The People's Army has changed and killed a lot of common people, people like us." That silenced the boy, who looked cross, biting his lips, which puffed up a little. He stayed quiet the rest of the way. It was two o'clock. They decided not to return to the hotel directly, and instead went to Chinatown for lunch. At a fruit stand Nan bought a pound of Rainier cherries for Taotao, who had never seen such yellow cherries, each as big as a pigeon's egg. Pingping rinsed a handful of them with the water from the bottle she carried. The boy ate a few and found them delicious; he saved the rest for his younger cousin Binbin, the daughter of Pingping's sister. He didn't want to throw away the stones and instead slotted them into the patch pocket on his jacket so that he could plant them in his grandparents' front yard, where there were already two apricot trees. They didn't go deep into Chinatown but just entered a Cantonese restaurant close to the ceramic-tiled archway at the intersection of Bush and Grand. A stout middle-aged woman showed them to a table beside a window. As soon as they sat down, she returned with a pot of red tea and three cups and put everything before them. She glanced at them quizzically and seemed to be wondering why they were dining at such a place. She must have known they were FOJs--fresh off the jet--who would scrimp on food to save every penny. After looking through the menu and consulting Pingping, Nan settled on two dishes and a soup and ordered all in the large size. He avoided the cheaper dishes on purpose, though he had no idea what "Moo Goo Gai Pan" and "Seafood and Tofu Casserole" tasted like. They sounded strange to him. The "Three Delicious Ingredient Soup" didn't make much sense either, but, unable to speak Cantonese and ashamed of asking what was in it, he just ordered it. He disliked these nebulous names. Why not call things what they were? The Chinese here just wanted everything to sound fancy and exotic. The waitress smirked, collected the menus, and left. Excerpted from A Free Life: A Novel by Ha Jin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
