American-Chinese poet and novelist Ha Jin is known for a variety of accomplishments in the world of literature, including two PEN/Faulkner Awards and a Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Jin will visit IU as part of the 2017 Arts & Humanities Festival, “China Remixed,” with a public lecture starting at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Grunwald Gallery.
Ed Comentale, associate vice provost for the arts and humanities and director of the arts and humanities council, said Jin is one of the most acclaimed authors of our time.
“He writes beautifully and powerfully about love, politics, nationalism and identity,” Comentale said in an email. “He grew up during the Cultural Revolution in China, but he eventually left the Chinese army to study literature and move to the States. He’s lived in exile ever since, and the characters in his novels are torn between family and individualism, love and duty, nationalism and art.”
Jin will not only lecture to the public Thursday evening, he will also lead a discussion with creative writing students in the morning on “The Politics of the Novel: Writing as Cultural Resilience.”
The author will also be offering scheduled manuscript consultations with aspiring writers in IU’s Master of Fine Arts program.
“I’m most excited to see how students react to his writing, because I think it speaks to many of their own struggles with impending adulthood,” Comentale said. “I am also eager to hear him read aloud. English is Jin’s second language, but he uses it beautifully in his writing, and I’m curious to learn more about how he hears the words and rhythms of his prose in his own ears.”
“China Remixed” as an initiative was designed with the aim of reshaping the way people at IU perceive the traditions, cultures and everyday life in China.
“It is dedicated to exploring China not as a nation or a political entity, but as a vast global diaspora that includes people from all over the world who have either been impacted by Chinese culture or have transformed Chinese culture,” Comentale said.
As a guest lecturer and visitor to the campus, Jin provides not only writing expertise, but a life story that allows students to see how straddling identities can lead to a greater understanding of who one is.
“Ha Jin is a perfect guest because his writing exists between two cultures and his characters are often torn between different regions of the world,” Comentale said. “He writes beautifully about the anxious doubleness of modern life and the strategies that people use to stitch together a sense of self.”
One of the most valuable parts of the college experience is by hearing stories from people of different backgrounds and experiences, he said.
The educational process outside of the classroom includes hearing storytellers such as Jin and Gene Yang, who visited earlier this semester as part of the same initiative. Later in the semester, there will be the opportunity for students to join in with their own storytelling.
“In fact, we’re hosting a dual-language storyslam later this semester that will feature the personal stories of Chinese students at IU,” Comentale said. “Many domestic students never interact with our Chinese students, and vice versa, but I believe that storytelling helps to dissolve superficial differences and generate new, more sympathetic connections between people of different cultures.”
Comentale said he is discovering new facets of Chinese culture every day and at the same time developing an understanding of some of the issues at play between, for example, the social classes and China and Taiwan.
“The greatest joy and most rewarding part of this experience has been listening to our Chinese students, especially the many volunteers working on China Remixed,” Comentale said. “I deeply value the conversation we’ve had about why they are studying at IU, how their parents have invested a lot of money in their education, the pressure they feel to succeed both here and back at home. For me, IU has become a much richer place because of these exchanges.”
