Behind the scenes with Ha Jin
By Tricia Callahan
As violence erupted in Tiananmen Square, knowing he couldn't return, Chinese–born Jin Xuefei made a decision. The plan was to survive here in America. To survive, he would teach, but to teach he would have to publish—in a still–foreign country, in a still–foreign language. It was a career he wouldn't have pursued had he returned to China. By the time I met him at Boston University, where he now teaches creative writing, his span of critically acclaimed work had won him a place among America's most celebrated writers—and the greatest worries he'd faced had been translated into his greatest successes.
This past fall you were a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fiction Fellow at the American Academy of Berlin. How did you spend your time there?
I worked hard, especially on weekends. But I also traveled some to Southern Europe and to Denmark. Four months in Berlin was a bit too long for me because I was separated from my family the entire semester.
Were you working on anything in particular?
Yes, I finished a collection of short stories— A Good Fall.
What was the inspiration for the stories?
Five years ago, I was invited to attend a conference in Flushing, New York. I stayed in Flushing for two days and was moved by the struggle and vitality of the new immigrants there. Afterward, I decided to set a collection of short stories in that place, which I have visited numerous times.
It wasn't until 2007 that you published your first novel set entirely in the United States: A Free Life. What sparked your decision to depart from the contemporary Chinese experience and move toward the U.S. immigrant experience in your fiction?
Writing cannot be separated from the writer's personal existence. I am an immigrant, so it's natural for me to move away from China literarily. But this doesn't mean I won't write about China again. I want to try new things every time.
By Tricia Callahan
As violence erupted in Tiananmen Square, knowing he couldn't return, Chinese–born Jin Xuefei made a decision. The plan was to survive here in America. To survive, he would teach, but to teach he would have to publish—in a still–foreign country, in a still–foreign language. It was a career he wouldn't have pursued had he returned to China. By the time I met him at Boston University, where he now teaches creative writing, his span of critically acclaimed work had won him a place among America's most celebrated writers—and the greatest worries he'd faced had been translated into his greatest successes.
This past fall you were a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fiction Fellow at the American Academy of Berlin. How did you spend your time there?
I worked hard, especially on weekends. But I also traveled some to Southern Europe and to Denmark. Four months in Berlin was a bit too long for me because I was separated from my family the entire semester.
Were you working on anything in particular?
Yes, I finished a collection of short stories— A Good Fall.
What was the inspiration for the stories?
Five years ago, I was invited to attend a conference in Flushing, New York. I stayed in Flushing for two days and was moved by the struggle and vitality of the new immigrants there. Afterward, I decided to set a collection of short stories in that place, which I have visited numerous times.
It wasn't until 2007 that you published your first novel set entirely in the United States: A Free Life. What sparked your decision to depart from the contemporary Chinese experience and move toward the U.S. immigrant experience in your fiction?
Writing cannot be separated from the writer's personal existence. I am an immigrant, so it's natural for me to move away from China literarily. But this doesn't mean I won't write about China again. I want to try new things every time.