On the Transnational Identity of Ha Jin,the First Chinese American Winner of National Book Awards for Fiction,and His Works

School of Foreign Languages,Tonghua Normal University,Tonghua,China Email：thnuedu@126.com

[Abstract]With winning National Book Awards for Fiction as the first Chinese American winner,Ha Jin enters the ranks of transnational literature.The development and realization of transnational identity lies in his writing and publishing Chinese stories in English language.With the writing materials about China,and writing skills gained in the U.S.,his personal transnational identity has been achieved,which may contribute to the fusion of world literature and mutual exchange of different cultures.

[Keywords]National Book Awards for Fiction;Transnational Identity;Ha Jin;Chinese American Writer;World Literature

Introduction

Transnational identity,as an important attribute of world literature,has constituted the major object of world literature in the globalized era with canonization.Canonization needs to be verified for a long time in the literary history,while transnational identity can be found by the readers,including from different culture background.Since these works have transcended the traditions of the people that their writers belong to and incorporated the common values and aesthetic tastes shared by other nations(Jiang,2011,p.11).According to Goethe,the intermediary form that occurs between the literature of different nationalities is regarded as a kind of world literature.

Ha Jin’s winning the National Book Awards for Fiction by virtue of profound transnational identity in his works can be regarded as the intermediary form between Chinese literature and American literature.Transnational identity of Ha Jin and his works can be shown as the following aspects:winning National Book Award for Fiction as the first Chinese American winner,writing Chinese stories in English language,and transmutation of Ha Jin’s identity from a Chinese to a Chinese American writer.

Winning National Book Award for Fiction as the First Chinese American Winner

American writer Ha Jin,who was born in a small town in Northeast China,won the 50th National Book Awards forWaiting(1999),by which he entered the field of vision of domestic and foreign literary criticism circles.National Book Awards in academic circles is regarded as“American Nobel Prize for Literature”,a number of American writers have been honored world-wide with this prize.Ha Jin became the third minority winner of National Book Awards since Issac Bashevis Singer and Jerzy Kosinski,and the first Chinese American writer to receive this honor in the form of novels as well.Since then,Ha Jin won the Faulkner Prize for Fiction twice forWaitingandWar Junk,and was shortlisted twice for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Kiriyama Prize for Literature.

The mission of National Book Award is“to celebrate the best of American literature,to expand its audience,and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America.”Waitingas Ha Jin’s award-winning novel in 1999,is based on a true story that Ha Jin heard from his wife when they were visiting her family at an army hospital in Northeast China.The protagonist Lin Kong worked in a military hospital in Muji.He married Shuyu,a rural woman from his hometown under the arrangement of his parents instead of from the wholehearted love in the bottom of heart.So he was forced to wait the prescribed 18 years before he could obtain a divorce and marry another woman.So the title“Waiting”of the novel refers to Lin’s waiting to divorce Shuyu so he can be with Manna in the story,and also“a notionally transient circumstance,a temporary stop between two points,takes on permanence in his life”(Varsava,2015,p.130)from the perspective of philosophy of life.

All he could do was helplessness,void,and confusion in the second unhappy marriage,which make him fall into a new pain.Marrying his beloved Manna finally,he discovered that the marriage neither means the happiness nor warmth he had hoped for.Beginning in 1963 and stretching a twenty-year period,Waitingpresents a portrait of a decent but deeply flawed man,Lin Kong,whose life is spoiled by his inability to experience strong emotions and to love wholeheartedly.The ups and downs in the plot of the novel make it quite readable,as Chairman of the 2016 National Book Awards for Fiction James English(2017)points out that“the selected works should be loved by readers at first reading,and can be successful in both readability and seriousness.”

The description of the Northeastern customs and secular sentiments in the novel still sets it apart from other emotional novels that describe the family and marriage entanglements in urban and rural China,which adds to the seriousness of the novel.Apart from a critical and commercial success,Waitingwon a National Book Award for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.The same as Te-hsing Shan(2012),Ha Jin’s work transcends regional and national restrictions and has universal value in the literary world.

AfterWaiting,Ha Jin won a second PEN/Faulkner Award again forWar Trash(2004),set during the Korean War.AndWar Trashalso ranked him with Philip Roth,John Edgar Wideman and E.L.Doctorow who are the only other authors to have won the prize more than once,and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.While the reasons for his winning so many prizes in American literary circle,including the outstanding National Book Awards,are attributed to not only description of the social customs and special culture in Northeast China,but also the philosophical reflections on the depths of human nature,that is identity of human problems rather than differences between nations.

Writing Chinese Stories in English Language

All of Ha Jin’s creative inspiration comes from his life experience in the Northeast China.Not only his life experience in Northeast is concerned in his novels,but also many Chinese Northeast elements are contained.What Ha Jin insists is writing Chinese stories about Chinese people,Chinese culture and Chinese history,and Chinese spirit.

Ha Jin’s works are full of native elements of the Northeast China,including some details such as the name of places.Although he has been writing novels in English,his stories basically happen at two fixed points in space.One is a virtual city in northeast China:Muji City(based on Jiamusi);one is the Northeast town of Xiemating(based on Liangjiadian Town in Jin County as the prototype).For example,his short story collection“The Groom”,the ten stories in it are all concentrated in Muji.

The surroundings in the Northeast China that Ha Jin loves deeply are an inexhaustible source of his creation.Ha Jin said that he“likes those northern cities and even the snow-covered winters”,which of course includes the local characters and their languages.Many of his short stories take place in the town of Xiemating,based on Jin County,Liaoning,where Ha Jin was born.Out of his familiarity with his hometown,this story contains not only a large number of vivid and refined descriptions of the scenery in Northeast China,but also a large number of Northeastern dialects and sayings.Even if these contents are presented in English,after being re-translated into Chinese,they still allow us to feel the Northeast rural atmosphere beyond the lines.

In addition,the tenacious and unyielding spirit of Chinese people has also entered the classic American literature through Ha Jin’s works.The characters in Ha Jin’s novels also has a typical Northeastern mark.The longing for life and the factors of positive optimism in the nature of the Northeastern people are also fully demonstrated in Ha Jin’s works.In his short stories and novelWar Trash,Ha Jin’s main male characters Li Wan,Yu Yuan,etc.have a tenacious and persistent in adversity,this kind of strong spirit of life and destiny emotions such as fearlessness,stubbornness have everything to do with the people of Northeast China in the midst of snow and ice,must long-term struggle with the harsh natural environment.Most of plots in his works are unfolded by portraying the hard work of ordinary people and the emotional problems of urban people.

While different from other works of new immigrant writers[New immigrant writers mainly refers to the writers who went abroad after the reform and opening up in mainland China but still wrote in Chinese language overseas,and their works are called as new immigrant literature.],such as Geling Yan and Xiaolong Qiu,Ha Jin’s are all in English written and published.Their works are all known for expressing Chinese society and Chinese culture,the world described in their works is in line with the history,society and the history of mainland China.There is a direct or indirect connection with social reality.And the mother tongue of new immigrant writers is Chinese,English is their acquisition language.

Writing in Chinese language for new immigrant writers is straightforward and easy,but Ha Jin chose the other harder path written in English,even he has to self-translate his work in a cultural and historical milieu of bilingualism,cultural hybridity,and transnationalism.As Hui Meng&Hong Cai(2020,p.1)suggests,Ha Jin’s self-translated work A Good Fall employs“nativized”discourse norms and strategies to convey the particularities of two language systems,but the practice of his self-translation might open up new fictional paths and new ways of writing,challenging monolingual rules and generating more bi- or multilingual texts that define the future of global literature.With much labor,some despair and freedom,eventually,the transnational identity of Chinese culture is achieved in English countries in Ha Jin’s works with his hand.

Transmutation of Ha Jin’s Identity

Just as his works,Ha Jin’s identity has undergone a threefold change:born in China,grew up in the United States,and became a Chinese-American writer.He has completed the transmutation of his identity with recognition by American academic circles.

The life experience in China has enriched him the content of writing.Ha Jin was originally named Jin Xuefei.He was born in a remote town in Jin County,Liaoning Province in 1956.After joining the army,he served as a soldier in the communications company of Hunchun County,Jilin Province.After studying for four years,he took the pen name Ha Jin because of his love for Harbin a city in northeast China.Before he went to study in the United States in 1985,Ha Jin’s life in the country was mainly limited to the three northeast provinces.Although he has not created any works during that time,his hometown has left an extremely deep mark on his life,leading to his future creations not only based on the life of Northeast China,but also the people of Northeast China.The enthusiasm,optimism and vitality in his character are also fully demonstrated in his works.

The growth process in the United States has enabled him to gain writing skills and language expression skills.After receiving an M.A.in 1984 at Shandong University,he came to the United States to begin his doctoral work at Brandeis.In the meantime,he was accepted into Boston University’s Creative Writing Program in 1991 with the novelists Leslie Epstein and Aharon Appelfeld.After teaching poetry,fiction and English Literature at Emory University in Atlanta for nine years,he returned,as a faculty member,to Boston University teaching creative writing as a full professor until now.

With writing materials about China,and writing skills gained in the U.S.,Ha Jin is insisting writing stories about China in English.In the eyes of American readers,he is praised for his style of writing like Dickens.It is notable that he has achieved such an achievement in the acquisition language rather than mother tongue.

As an American writer who insists on writing stories in Northeast China in English language,Ha Jin has won many important American literary circles,including the Flannery O’Connor Award for Novels,Hemingway Foundation Award,and National Book Awards for Fiction.Through the internal research techniques of Northeast China dialects,Chinese cultural images,metaphors and symbolic symbols,as well as the characteristics and strategies of selftranslation in Ha Jin’s literary works,it is obviously seen that the inevitability of Ha Jin’s great literary achievements in the United States.Especially the“defamiliarization“ of English in his works and the English expression of Northeast idioms can fully demonstrate the influence of Ha Jin’s literature on the value trend of the American and cross-cultural literary circles.

Ha Jin has entered the list of American literary classics,in 2006 was even elected to a fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Among the many Chinese American writers,Ha Jin has won many important awards in the literary world,has also been nominated several times for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction,and is known by American readers as the“winning professional household”among Chinese writers.Professor Ning Wang in Tsinghua University has also pointed out that“Ha Jin would be the most competitive person for the Nobel Prize in Literature,and his works will also be included in various authoritative selections of world literature”(2012,p.9).Currently,he has become a keen object of criticism by Chinese and American literary critics.Ha Jin’s understanding of the human living environment transcends national boundaries and time,and is aimed at the living conditions of human beings all over the world.Ha Jin’s novels show the social conscience shared by all intellectuals instead of an element of political ideological field.

Conclusion

As the only Chinese American writer who has won both the National Book Awards and the Faulkner Award for Literature,Ha Jin has been the most well-known Chinese American writers in the American literary world today.

With winning National Book Awards for Fiction as the first Chinese American winner,Ha Jin enters the ranks of transnational literature.It is undeniable that the reason why Ha Jin’s work has achieved great success in the American literary world is because it fits into the mainstream of literary significance in the pursuit of literary significance and the mainstream of creation in the contemporary literary world,and can satisfy the Western society’s curiosity about the Eastern mysterious aesthetic impression.According to definition of“Weltliteratur”by Goethe,world literature refers to all the ways to understand,learn,tolerate,accept and love other national literature.The storyWaitingabout China can be regarded as an intermediary form of acceptance and communication between the Chinese culture and American literature.

The development and realization of transnational identity lies in his writing and publishing Chinese stories in English language.He was regarded as a miracle by American literary critics,and even was named as“the writer among writers”by New York Times.He has entered the vision of international literary criticism.And the abundant Chinese elements,such as the large-scale presentation of Northeast China’s folk customs,natural environment factors,as well as Northeast’s slang,Chinese spirit in his novels make readers from China form a strong Chinese feelings,so many Chinese literary critics tend to belong to Ha Jin as a member of the Northeast region writer group.

Besides his works,Ha Jin himself also completed the transmutation of his identity:from a Chinese boy born in Northeast China,to a young man growing up in the United States,and to Chinese-American writer with recognition by American academic circles.With the writing materials about China,and writing skills gained in the U.S.,the personal transnational identity has been achieved,which may contribute to the construction of Ha Jin’s distinctive style,diversified American contemporary literature,and even the fusion of world literature and mutual exchange of different culture.

Acknowledgments

This paper is funded byA Study of National Book Awards,a Project of 2018 Humanities and Social Science Research Planning Project of Education Department of Jilin Province,the Project serial number:JJKH20180875SK;andA Study of Regionality and Internationality of Chinese American Writer Ha Jin,a Social Science Fund Project of Jilin Province,the Project serial number:2019B185.I would like to express my thanks to everyone who has helped me.