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After winning both the 1999 National Book Award and the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for
Fiction for his last book, WAITING, Ha Jin returns with a collection of 12 stories
encompassing very personal dramas involving Chinese citizens in contemporary China. THE
BRIDEGROOM considers the difficult transitions with which Chinese men and women are faced
as the influence of Western society changes the traditionally Eastern world they have
lived in for so long.
These stories are not quite as moving and impassioned as the marriage story around which
WAITING concentrated. However, "Saboteur," the opening tale, is a frightening
story of how a young, newly married couple finds their everyday lives at the beck and call
of a corrupt political system. The title story, "The Bridegroom," concerns a gay
man who takes a bride as a fence against the prejudices of Chinese society. Every one of
these pieces pits good citizens against the evil empire's minions, the police, and other
security officials who make up as they go along the rules of the new society. Ha Jin left
his native land for the United States in 1985 and he clearly hasn't come to terms with the
outrageous disrespect for humanity and human rights that is apparently the law of the land
in this transitional phase of a confused but still mighty nation.
Jin is an interesting writer in that he doesn't try to contain his vitriol against the
system that forced him out of the country before the unsuccessful student rebellion and
the massacre of Tiananmen Square. In his own way, he continues the rebelliousness of his
country folk by writing about the horrors of life in contemporary China while living in
exile in a free society. However, the direct and emotional nature with which he writes
about these situations makes up for the two-dimensional victims that populate these
stories. As an American who has only known the freedom of protesting too much, I found THE
BRIDEGROOM to be an obvious although compelling paean to the twisted desires of
maintaining what is good about one's tradition while changing what doesn't fit in this
time period anymore.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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