Posted on: Sunday, March 27, 2005
Two top book awards go to Asian-American writers
Advertiser Staff and News Services
Two Asian-American writers have received key book awards:
In announcing the PEN/ Faulkner award earlier this week, co-chairmen Robert Stone and Susan Richards Shreve praised Ha Jin's book as "a powerful, unflinching story that opens a window on an unknown aspect of a little-known war — the experiences of Chinese POWs held by Americans during the Korean conflict."
Ha Jin was born in China, served in the military there, taught himself English and received both bachelor's and master's degrees in English from Chinese Universities before moving to the United States in 1985 to do graduate work. He supported himself as a busboy and a night watchman while he attended Brandeis University. Having decided not to return to China after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, he earned his doctorate in 1993 and now is a professor of English at Boston University. He has published two collections of poetry, three of short fiction and two novels. "Waiting" (1999) won the National Book Award and a previous PEN/Faulkner prize. He also has received the Flannery O'Connor Award and a PEN/Hemingway prize for short fiction.
Ha Jin will receive $15,000; a prize of $5,000 goes to the four runners-up: Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead," which recently won the National Book Critics Circle award; Edwidge Dandicat's "The Dew Breaker"; Jerome Charyn's "The Green Lantern"; and Steve Yarbrough's "Prisoners of War."
• Cynthia Kadohata, author of "Kira-Kira," received the 2004 Newbery Medal for the best children's book of the year. Kadohata, of Long Beach, Calif., said when she received the phone call about the award in early January, her world appeared both unchanged and transformed.
"It's weird," she says. "When they first called to tell me, everything looked exactly the same: The furniture is the same, and you still have to clean the house and change the diapers. But it also feels like the whole world is different. It's hard to describe. There's a sense of confidence I hadn't had in a long time, a sense of security and satisfaction."
Kadohata was, until recently, just another name on that long list of once-promising, now-forgotten authors. Those who did recall her knew that years ago she had published a very strong first novel, "The Floating World." But she's had little recognition since then.
The author used her own background to tell the story of a Japanese family living in the South in the 1950s. "Kira-Kira" — the title refers to the Japanese word for "shining" — is narrated by young Katie Takeshima, who recalls her family's struggle to earn money and relate to the world outside the Japanese community.
The Associated Press and Advertiser books editor Wanda Adams contributed to this report.
• Ha Jin's "War Trash," a novel about Chinese POWs under American captivity during the Korean War, has won the PEN/Faulkner prize for best fiction by an American author.
