Facing Shadows

by Ha Jin

Poetry. This is the second volume of poems from Chinese ex-patriot poet Ha Jin, who moved to the United States after the Tiananmen massacre. "These poems are unflinchingly lucid, luminous, brave, and the shadows faced in this book are faced with a powerful light"--Thomas Lux. His poems have appeared in journals such as AGNI and Poetry, and he holds a doctorate in American Literature from Brandeis University. In 2004, his novel War Trash won the PEN/Faulkner award; his previous novel, Waiting, won the 1997 National Book Award. Ha Jin teaches English at Boston University.

Genres: Poetry, China

70 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Ha Jin is the pen name of Jin Xuefei, a novelist, poet, short story writer, and Professor of English at Boston University.Ha Jin writes in English about China, a political decision post-Tiananmen Square.

Ha Jin grew up in mainland China and served in the People’s Liberation Army in his teens for five years. After leaving the army, he worked for three years at a railroad company in a remote northeastern city, Jiamusi, and then went to college in Harbin, majoring in English. He has published in English ten novels, four story collections, four volumes of poetry, a book of essays, and a biography of Li Bai. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ha Jin is William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in English and Creative Writing at Boston University, and he has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His writing has been translated into more than thirty languages. Ha Jin’s novel The Woman Back from Moscow was published by Other Press in 2023.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this book of poetry was pretty weak, and Jin was just rehashing tried and true themes without originality. He is a great writer, but I think he is much better at prose, with the exception of Wreckage.

[Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very nice collection of poetry that can be moving and inspiring at times. The author shows a good degree of humility in his subjects. His topics range from simple things to political events. I liked the poem about wanting to be a stone in a river; it was simple, but it had some rich imagery as well. I am glad I got to read this collection, and I would be happy to read more by this author.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely, simple poems written in a second language he learned late in life.
Writing about Tiananmen Square, and his realization he can't go back to his homeland. Also some very personal poems, but much about the sadness of an immigrant who knows he can not return to the country of his birth, and the sadness of seeing what was happening there.

[N. · Rating 4 out of 5]

“..What’s the use of promising?
I have promised, a hundred times,
but never return. Wherever we go
our cause is the same:
to make a living and raise children.
If a poem arises, it’s merely
an accidental blessing.”

[Jamey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Touching and genuine.

[Mark]

Requested from BCU 16 January 2011. Saw Angel's review here.

[boocia]

this was an interesting one stylistically! i think it can be hard for me to feel like straightforward sentences are "allowed" in (my own) poetry, a lot of these poems have a 'fact-reporting' or non-flowery succinctness to them ("He was to arrive at San Francisco, / a six-year-old flying from China alone / for twenty hours."). the effect is very meditative to me, in the way where describing / stating a mundane thought or fact estranges and makes you want to ponder it, which i guess does remind me of chinese poetry or haikus or something. he does have little twisty glimmers of floweriness ("Things become beautiful, / even hailstones in the strawberry fields") that have more weight against how dry the rest comes off.

thematically there is an immigrant's practicality i feel. poems about how america is profit-driven, about how hard it is to 'make it', about not wanting to sell out but wanting to make money; but also appreciating its relative freedom (not capital-f freedom in the virtue sense though, just an understanding that you can say/print what you want without as much scrutiny) compared to china. the bitterness/rage at China for its crackdown on Tiananmen square protestors and its corrupt government and brainwashed people is sort of tempered by grief; he does want to go home, he does sort of believe that maybe the country can turn it around. this last bit is kind of interesting to me, because i think it comes from a place of growing up believing in your country/culture enough to be sad when it betrays you. that unfamiliar-to-me communal attitude is just always kind of appealing.

that being said the man does have bad-dad vibes, definitely poems with a bit of self-importance of fatherhood and projecting onto his son, and a poem about showing his pro-chinese-gov 6 year old images from the bloody mutilated aftermath of the tiananmen square massacre, including a hanged man, to prove a point, which maybe i'm just being a baby about this but maybe you can let your 6 year old just have badly formed opinions about china for a few years since he is after all 6. in general i kinda felt a conservative bent in the way he thought about parenthood and also about women in his love poems, but also idk

i enjoyed those little intertextual winks as well, like "On a Pottery Figure of a Storyteller from the Eastern Han Dynasty) as a riposte to "Ode on a Grecian Urn", or the line from "Apology" that goes "Please forgive me. / I didn't mean to chill your birthday / and season the chicken and honeydew / with a tart argument." that echoes "This Is Just to Say" with chill, honeydew, I didn't mean to, forgive me etc. writerly poems, fun.

[Pheng Heong Tan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read the first few pages and the last few, in that order. What I saw turned out to be more about Ha Jin than I had wanted to read: his dream about his grandmother (p. 12), his opinion of what constitutes nobility to the Chinese (p. 66), and more "should's" (p. 69) and "ought's" (p. 66, again) than I care for.

I am having the impression he writes to console himself (p. 58: "I hear a voice whisper... 'You'd better father yourself.'") and while it may be well and good for Mr. Ha Jin to read poems that are about consoling himself, I, for one, can think of other books that are more interesting to me and which I imagine are more worth my time.

This book gets one star in this Goodreads-review, in case anyone is interested in how Mr. Ha Jin processes /expresses his sadness - or doesn't. (hint, on p. 13: "... I learned long ago / a busy bee feels no sorrow.")

[Bethany G · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was hit or miss for me! Some of the poems really had beautiful imagery and drew me in while others felt a bit disjointed.