by big brothers and sisters,
and later to marry a man of mild temper
who would worry alone about money,
business, household duties, the authorities.
But born the oldest child,
she had to tend her siblings,
cut grass for ducks and geese,
gather firewood in the valley,
and walk miles to shop in the villages.
She’d cook supper
if patients delayed her mother.
Like many women of her generation
she cannot recall a happy episode
in her childhood. Yet she’s resolved
to give her children a loving home
so that they won’t be bowled over
if someone whispers to them “I love you.”
Status
They are referring to the photo
I mailed them last May.
In it I wear a cell phone on my belt
and lean against my rusty Chevrolet
parked before the medical building.
Their letter says my brothers both
have well-paid jobs in Shanghai now—
one is a consultant at a foreign bank
and the other manages a soccer team.
“They each carry a phone like you
but they haven’t bought a car yet.”
My parents have forgotten that I wear a phone
as a custodian at the hospital…
to get the call when a toilet needs cleaning.
An Admonition
All your sufferings are imaginary,
all your losses not worth mentioning
if you keep in mind what you used to see—
peasants eating husks and tree leaves in the spring,
workers feasting their bosses to get a raise,
police rounding up the villagers who refuse to relocate,
women getting sterilized after their firstborn,
newlyweds setting up house in cattle sheds,
worshippers arrested and forced to live
on rotted food if they do not repent—
by comparison, all your misfortunes are imaginary.
Here in America you can speak and shout,
though you have to find your voice and the right ears.
You can sell your time for honest bread,
you can eat leftovers while dreaming
of getting rich and strong,
you can lament your losses with abandon,
if not to an audience, to your children,
you can learn to borrow and get used
to living in the shadow of debt…
Still, whatever grieves you has happened
to others, to those from Ireland,
Africa, Italy, Scandinavia, the Caribbean.
Your hardship is just commonplace,
a fortune many are dying to seize.
Immigrant Dreams
She too sells her hours in America.
Her dream has evolved into a house
on two acres of land with a pool.
She once dreamed of becoming a diva
or movie star or a painter
who specialized in fish and bamboo.
But she gave up art school
and came here to expand her selfhood.
At least that’s what she planned to do.
He didn’t know that at heart
she was a mother and wife,
a woman who would love burgers and fries.
Indeed, dollars can equalize most lives.
If only he were twenty again
or could stop patching his dream
with diffident feet and rhymes.
Heaven
for Dick
Every religion promises a unique heaven
where there’s no sickness, old age, pain, or death.
In Pure Land Buddhism, heaven is said
to lie somewhere in the west,
and you can get there if you do good,
recite Amida’s name every day, and never kill.
You’ll be reborn into that vaulted domain,
not from the spasms of a womb
but from a lotus flower—such a birth saves you from
falling back into a lesser incarnation on earth.
Once you settle in the Pure Land
you’ll suffer no extremes of cold and heat;
you’ll be provided with beautiful clothing
and gourmet food, always ready and warm.
There will be no anger, greed,
jealousy, ignorance, laziness, or strife.
The place is resplendent with precious stones,
towers built of agate, palaces of diamonds.
Huge trees of various gems bear
blossoms and fruits, always fresh.
Giant lotus flowers diffuse fragrance everywhere.
Pools inlaid with seven jewels
hold the purest water, which adjusts itself
to the depth and temperature each bather needs.
Under your feet spreads the ground paved with jade.
Day and night flowers fall from the sky shaded
by nets of gold, silver, and pearls.
In the air waft celestial music and aromas.
Not to mention living with Buddha and bodhisattvas.
Born of flesh and consumed by care,
how can I not marvel at those wonderful things?
How can I not think of mending my ways
to earn entrance to that splendid place?
Yet tired of travel and tangled in the web of dust,
I will pray to the almighty power:
let me be a tree on earth after I die,
a tree that blossoms into fruit every summer.
A Eulogy
Yes, praise—let me think of someone,
who, in suffering, still holds
who, searching in vain for his misplaced gloves,
remembers those who have no hands;
who, while keeping an eye on his god,
does not frown on the gods of others;
who, having lost a contest, is ready to salute
the one who has just outperformed him;
who, in a bustling street, still hears
birds in distant hills;
who, though able to mix with crowds,
is not rattled by their clamor;
who, loving a country, never lets this love
outweigh his love for a woman and children;
who accepts disaster and triumph equally,
making friends with neither;
who treats a limousine just as a vehicle,
a palace as no more than a dwelling;
who, while having coffee with a dignitary,
doesn’t hesitate to step out the door
for a breath of fresh air.
An Exchange
You have been misled by your folly,
determined to follow the footsteps of Conrad
and Nabokov. You have forgotten
they were white Europeans.
Remember your yellow face
and your puny talent—unlikely
to make you a late bloomer.
Why believe you can write verse in English,
whose music is not natural to you?
You have betrayed our people,
scribbling with the alphabet out of
contempt for our ancient words,
which stand like rocks in time’s river,
against the tides of gibberish.
Carried away by hatred,
you have mistaken diversion for devotion.
Even if you’re lucky and earn a seat someday
in the temple housing those high-nosed ghosts,
do you really think they will accept you
just on the merits of your poems?
Be warned—some of them, who were once SOBs,
will call you a clever Chinaman.
For God’s sake, relax a little.
Stop raving about race and loyalty.
Loyalty is a two-way street.
Why not talk about how a nation betrays a person?
Why not condemn those who have hammered
our mother tongue into a chain
to bind all the different dialects
to the governing machine?
Our words, yes, once like a river,
have shrunk into a man-made pond
in which you are kept, half alive,
as a pet to obey and entertain.
So, I prefer to crawl around at my own pace
in the salt water of English.
As for the great ghosts in the temple,
The light of dawn does not discriminate.
A tree, or butterfly, or stream
(unlike the dog corrupted by humans)
does not notice the color of your skin.
To write in this language is to be alone,
to live on the margin where
loneliness ripens into solitude.
Another Country
You must go to a country without borders,
where you can build your home
out of garlands of words,
where broad leaves shade familiar faces
that no longer change in wind and rain.
There’s no morning or evening,
no cries of joy or pain;
every canyon is drenched in the light of serenity.
You must go there, quietly.
Leave behind what you still cherish.
Once you enter that domain,
a path of flowers will open before your feet.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My heartfelt thanks to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for a generous fellowship that enabled me to complete the first draft of this novel in 2000, and to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for a residency during which I worked on “Poems by Nan Wu.”
I am grateful to LuAnn Walther for her comments and suggestions; to Lane Zachary for her critique; to Wilborn Hampton for reading the beginning pages of this novel; and to Dick Lourie and Donna Brook for their comments on the appended poems.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HA JIN left his native China in 1985 to attend Brandeis University. He is the author of the internationally best-selling novel Waiting, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Award; the novel War Trash, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award; the novel The Crazed; the story collections The Bridegroom, which won the Asian American Literary Award, Under the Red Flag, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and Ocean of Words, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award; the novel In the Pond; and three books of poetry. He lives in the Boston area and is a professor of English at Boston University.
Also by Ha Jin
FICTION
Ocean of Words
Under the Red Flag
In the Pond
Waiting
The Bridegroom
The Crazed
War Trash
POETRY
Between Silences
Facing Shadows
Wreckage
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
COPYRIGHT © 2007 BY HA JIN
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Henry Holt and Company, LLC and Jonathan Cape for permission to reprint an excerpt from “The Oven Bird” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1916, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 1944 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC and Jonathan Cape, an imprint of The Random House Group Ltd., London.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jin, Ha, [date]
A free life / Ha Jin.
p. cm.
1. Chinese—United States—Fiction. 2. Immigrants—United States—Fiction. 3. Poetry—Authorship—Fiction. 4. Poets—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3560.I6F74 2007
813'.54—dc22 2007006177
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eISBN: 978-0-375-42526-4
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