War Trash by Ha Jin
August 26th 2006 03:27
The narrator of Ha Jin's War Trash remarks at the very beginning of the novel that he is going to tell his story "in a documentary manner so as to preserve historical accuracy." That's an astonishing claim to make at the beginning of what is supposed to be a novel. Isn't documentary manner the hallmark of non-fiction rather than the fiction that we have in front of us? But Ha Jin clearly sticks to his claim and avoids any narrative flourishes, dramatic touches or moralistic overtones, divulging fact after fact with more ruthless clarity than any documentaries might possess. The result is brilliant fiction that opens our eyes to reality that often goes unnoticed in the shrillness of newspaper headlines.
Yo Yuan is a 73 years old Chinese guy visiting his son and grandchildren in America. On his stomach, below the navel is etched a long tattoo which reads "FUCK….U…..S…." Yuan is afraid that this will bar his entry to the US but he is not stopped at the airport. So, once he has met his grandchildren he proceeds to tell the story behind that tattoo and the gaps in it.
The novel then switches to the Korea War and Communist China has sent hundreds of its young men, including Yuan, to halt the advance of American imperialism. The optimism is short-lived as the army is quickly routed by the Americans and hundreds are taken prisoner. The rest of the novel deals with what happened in the prison camp as they wait to be released to an uncertain future: they can either migrate to Taiwan and lose their families or go back to mainland China and be treated as criminals. The mechanics of prisoner exchanges. The politics of war.
The book with its stark title arrived when the heat of Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay had not yet died down. But instead of stoking the flame further, it put the events in context and strangely provided a balm. You hear a lot about Geneva Conventions being tossed aside these days. And yet they were signed in the same period as this book is set in and it will show you exactly what kind of effect those conventions had then and by inference, now. It is not quite the same thing that you would expect. That is why I liked this book though it was a little hard to get used to its style.
After writing this notice, I went and read the review New York Times had given it. Though we are in agreement with its style, the reviewer and I seem to have read the books from opposite directions. It's a wonder how people can arrive at exactly opposite conclusions from reading the same material.
Yo Yuan is a 73 years old Chinese guy visiting his son and grandchildren in America. On his stomach, below the navel is etched a long tattoo which reads "FUCK….U…..S…." Yuan is afraid that this will bar his entry to the US but he is not stopped at the airport. So, once he has met his grandchildren he proceeds to tell the story behind that tattoo and the gaps in it.
The novel then switches to the Korea War and Communist China has sent hundreds of its young men, including Yuan, to halt the advance of American imperialism. The optimism is short-lived as the army is quickly routed by the Americans and hundreds are taken prisoner. The rest of the novel deals with what happened in the prison camp as they wait to be released to an uncertain future: they can either migrate to Taiwan and lose their families or go back to mainland China and be treated as criminals. The mechanics of prisoner exchanges. The politics of war.
The book with its stark title arrived when the heat of Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay had not yet died down. But instead of stoking the flame further, it put the events in context and strangely provided a balm. You hear a lot about Geneva Conventions being tossed aside these days. And yet they were signed in the same period as this book is set in and it will show you exactly what kind of effect those conventions had then and by inference, now. It is not quite the same thing that you would expect. That is why I liked this book though it was a little hard to get used to its style.
After writing this notice, I went and read the review New York Times had given it. Though we are in agreement with its style, the reviewer and I seem to have read the books from opposite directions. It's a wonder how people can arrive at exactly opposite conclusions from reading the same material.
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