Jin Xuefei (; born February 21, 1956) is a Chinese American poet and novelist who uses the pen name Ha Jin (). The name Ha comes from his favorite city, Harbin. His poetry is associated with the Misty Poetry movement.

Early life, education, and immigration

Ha Jin was born in Liaoning, China. His father was a military officer; at thirteen, Jin joined the People's Liberation Army during the Cultural Revolution. Jin began to educate himself in Chinese literature and high school curriculum at sixteen. He left the army when he was nineteen as he entered Heilongjiang University, later earning a bachelor's degree in English studies. This was followed by a master's degree in Anglo-American literature at Shandong University.

Jin grew up in the chaos of early communist China. He was on a scholarship at Brandeis University when the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre occurred. The Chinese government's forcible crackdown hastened his decision to emigrate to the United States, and was the cause of his choice to write in English "to preserve the integrity of his work." He eventually obtained a Ph.D. One of his mentors was literary critic Eugene Goodheart.

Career

Novels and short writing

Jin sets many of his stories and novels in China, in the fictional Muji City. He has won the National Book Award for Fiction

Awards and honors

  • Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction (1996)
  • PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel (1997)
  • Guggenheim Fellowship (1999)
  • National Book Award for Fiction (1999)
  • PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (2000)
  • Asian Fellowship (2000–2002)
  • Townsend Prize for Fiction (2002)
  • PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (2005)
  • Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006)
  • Dayton Literary Peace Prize, runner-up, Nanjing Requiem (2012)
  • PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for A Distant Center (2019)

Books

Poetry

  • Between Silences (1990)
  • Facing Shadows (1996)
  • Ways of Talking (1996)
  • Wreckage (2001)
  • Missed Time
  • The Past
  • A Distant Center (2018, Copper Canyon Press)

Short story collections

  • Ocean of Words (1996)
  • Under the Red Flag (1997)
  • The Bridegroom (2000)
  • A Good Fall (2009)

Novels

  • In the Pond (1998)
  • Waiting (1999)
  • The Crazed (2002)
  • War Trash (2004)
  • A Free Life (2007)
  • Nanjing Requiem (2011)
  • A Map of Betrayal (2014)
  • The Boat Rocker (2016)
  • A Song Everlasting (2021)
  • The Woman Back from Moscow: In Pursuit of Beauty (2023)
  • "Looking For Tank Man" (2025)

Biographies

  • The Banished Immortal (2019)

Essays

  • The Writer as Migrant (2008)

See also

  • Saboteur (short story) (2000)

References

  1. John Noell Moore, "The Landscape Of Divorce When Worlds Collide," The English Journal 92 (Nov. 2002), pp. 124–127.
  2. Ha Jin, Waiting (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999).
  3. Neil J Diamant, Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949-1968(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), p. 59.
  4. Ha Jin, The Bridegroom (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000).
  5. Yuejin Wang, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 13 (Dec. 1991).
  6. Ha Jin, "Exiled to English" (New York Times, May 30, 2009).
  • Listen to Ha Jin on The Forum from the BBC World Service
  • Boston University staff page
  • Author interview in Guernica Magazine (guernicamag.com)
  • Ha Jin audio interview re: A Free Life, November 2007
  • Exiled to English
  • Audio: Ha Jin in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion programme The Forum
  • "Ha Jin's Cultural Revolution" - New York Times Magazine profile (2000).
  • Ha Jin at Library of Congress Authorities — with 20 catalog records