third collection of poetry, Wreckage, which focuses
mainly on China’s ancient history and its impact
on contemporary China.
Ocean of Words, Ha Jin’s first collection of short
stories, was published in 1989, the same year as
Facing Shadows. It deals with life in the Chinese
Army along the border between China and the for-
mer Soviet Union in the late 1960s and early ’70s, a
time when war between the two Communist coun-
tries seemed imminent. Set in a rural town during
the Cultural Revolution, Jin’s second collection of
short stories, Under the Red Flag, focuses on the
everyday existence of common Chinese people as
they face major political and social changes. Pub-
lished in 2000, Jin’s third collection of stories, The
BRIDEGROOM, concentrates on life in China in the
early 1980s.
Jin’s major achievement, though, is his novels.
Jin is a prolific writer: Within four years, he pub-
lished three novels, namely IN THE POND (1998),
WAITING (1999), and The CRAZED (2002). In 2004
he produced his latest novel, WAR TRASH, which
explores the little known history of Chinese POWs
held in American and South Korean camps during
the Korean War.
Ha Jin has become celebrated as one of the
most prominent nonnative authors in English,
which places him in the same tradition as such
luminaries as Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabo-
kov. Yet, while there are many similarities between
him and his predecessors, there are also striking
differences. For example, even though he has lived
in exile for almost 20 years, Jin continues to write
mainly about contemporary China. Among other
things, this means that he has to translate Chi-
nese culture for a largely non-Chinese audience.
Also, despite being interested in ideas, he always
underscores how people’s intellectual or spiritual
lives are shaped by material conditions, especially
in such a regimented society as China. Because of
Jin’s unfailing empathy toward ordinary people
and his acute sense of humor, his writings testify
to the human will to persevere notwithstanding
seemingly overwhelming obstacles.
Jin has been the recipient of several presti-
gious literary prizes, such as the PEN/Faulkner
Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Flannery
O’Connor Award, and the National Book Award.
Most of his fiction has been translated into his na-
tive language, Chinese, including Ocean of Words,
Under the Red Flag, The Bridegroom, Waiting, In
the Pond, and The Crazed. Almost all of those texts
have been published in Taiwan, where a consider-
able amount of scholarship has been devoted to his
work. So far, though, the only one of Jin’s texts that
has appeared in translation in mainland China is
his novel Waiting.Bibliography
Garner, Dwight. “Ha Jin’s Cultural Revolution.”
New York Times Magazine, 6 February 2000, pp.
38–42.
Jin, Ha. “Ha Jin: An Interview with Liza Nelson.”
Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art 5, no.
1 (2000): 52–67.
Zhang, Hang. “Bilingual Creativity in Chinese En-
glish: Ha Jin’s In the Pond.” World Englishes 21, no.
2 (2002): 305–315.
Jianwu Liu and Albert BrazJoseph, Lawrence (1948– )
Lawrence Joseph has enjoyed two long and suc-
cessful careers simultaneously since the mid-1970s:
one as a highly esteemed lawyer and professor of
law, with experience in labor, securities, antitrust,
bankruptcy, and mergers and acquisitions; and
the other as an award-winning poet and essay-
ist. Joseph thus falls into a long line of American
poets—Wallace Stevens, Edgar Lee Masters, T. S.
Eliot, and James Dickey foremost among them—
who have managed to balance artistic and corpo-
rate pursuits, but Joseph’s high degree of success
in the field of law sets him apart even from such
prominent dual-career poets.
Lawrence Joseph’s grandparents, who were
among the first Arab immigrants to the United
States, were Lebanese and Syrian Catholics. His
father, Joseph Alexander, was co-owner of a gro-
cery and liquor store; his mother, Clara Barbara
Francis, was a chef. Born in Detroit, Joseph gradu-
ated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Mich-
igan in 1970. He thereafter attended CambridgeJoseph, Lawrence 139