Award-winning author to speak at literary banquet

By Luis Jiménez
Staff Writer

Ha Jin, winner of the 1999 National Book Award for his novel "Waiting," will be on campus today and Thursday as the distinguished writer to be honored at the 70th Annual Literary Awards Banquet, 7 p.m. Thursday in the Purdue Memorial Union North Ballroom.

The banquet will feature Jin as the keynote speaker. Jin is a Chinese best-selling author who has been honored with numerous awards such as the PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel "Waiting" and the PEN/Hemingway for his novel "Ocean of Words."

The department of English, which is sponsoring the awards celebration, will also host two other activities featuring the distinguished writer.

He will read from his fiction at 7:30 p.m. today in Fowler Hall and have copies of his books on sale. He will also hold an informal discussion session about his work at 11 a.m. Thursday at the Undergraduate Library Bookstall. Both events are free and open to the public.

Jin was born in northeastern China where he served as a soldier during the time of Russian-China hostilities.

While he was a radio operator for the People’s Liberation Army, Jin learned English from a daily radio program because at the time, Mao Zedong’s rule had shut down all the colleges and schools in China.

When schools reopened in 1977, Jin studied English at Harbin University and earned a master's degree in American literature from Shandong University. He then traveled to the United States to earn his doctorate degree at Brandeis University. When news of the Tiananmen regime in China reached him he decided not to return to China.

Wendy Flory, a professor of English, said Jin's literary work appeals to college students because all of his stories and novels are set in China.

"The way of life he describes is very harsh and is something very different from what you would experience in America," said Flory. "It's not so much as what (students) can relate to as that they are fascinated by how different life was when he was their age."

This is not the first year a famous author has come to Purdue. Every year, the department of English invites someone to speak at the literary awards celebration. Other writers who've come include Derek Walcott, who came in 1990; John Irving, who came in 1986; and Tennessee Williams, who came in 1972.

Although Jin's novels and short stories deal with important issues such as war and oppression, he focuses more on the experiences of individual characters and how they manage to get by. But he does this with a generous dose of humor.

"His stories are very interesting to a western reader, not also because they deal with this unfamiliar culture but because they are often humorous in a kind of black-humor way," Flory said.

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