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sakichan's review against another edition
3.0
More reviews at Book Lust.
A Free Life is the story of a Chinese family that emigrates to the United States not too long after the death of Mao Zedong. The primary protagonist, the father Nan Wu, is loyal to his wife and young son, but hasn’t been able to forget his first love who scorned him a few years before. He struggles to find what he wants to do in America, quitting his political science graduate degree, moving on to buy a Chinese restaurant in Georgia, and coming to realize the “American Dream.” But somehow he never feels content with his life, and struggles continually with the real definition of “success,” whether is should be defined as having the money to support your family, or producing some work that will keep alive your memory after your death.
This book took me an eternity to get through. However, that doesn’t mean it was bad. Let me explain – At the end of September I returned the US after spending 13 months in Shanghai. I have a deep interest in Chinese culture and people, and so I’ve meant to read more literature written by Chinese or Chinese-Americans. Ha Jin was one of the most recommended writers, and maybe I shouldn’t have chosen A Free Life as the first book of his that I read. I’m disillusioned with immigrant novels, finding them to be mostly the same – the struggle for a job and money, dealing with racism, trying to keep ties with their motherland. This book has much of that, and that is why it took me so long to get through.
I would have given up on the book, but Ha Jin presents China in a way different from other authors of immigrant novels. He came to the United States just before the Tiananmen Square massacre, and is quite critical of his home country. Throughout the book, Nan Wu confronts other Chinese immigrants who spout blind patriotism and scorn for Americans, while he himself finds himself increasingly detached from the country he came from. He presents a view of China from a middle ground, one that I haven’t seen before. Not to mention Nan is one of the most likable protagonists I have ever come across in a novel.
Final judgement, I’d have to say that I don’t recommend this book to most people. However, I am willing to read other books by Ha Jin in the future. I take no issue with his writing, only with the overall plot of the book.
A Free Life is the story of a Chinese family that emigrates to the United States not too long after the death of Mao Zedong. The primary protagonist, the father Nan Wu, is loyal to his wife and young son, but hasn’t been able to forget his first love who scorned him a few years before. He struggles to find what he wants to do in America, quitting his political science graduate degree, moving on to buy a Chinese restaurant in Georgia, and coming to realize the “American Dream.” But somehow he never feels content with his life, and struggles continually with the real definition of “success,” whether is should be defined as having the money to support your family, or producing some work that will keep alive your memory after your death.
This book took me an eternity to get through. However, that doesn’t mean it was bad. Let me explain – At the end of September I returned the US after spending 13 months in Shanghai. I have a deep interest in Chinese culture and people, and so I’ve meant to read more literature written by Chinese or Chinese-Americans. Ha Jin was one of the most recommended writers, and maybe I shouldn’t have chosen A Free Life as the first book of his that I read. I’m disillusioned with immigrant novels, finding them to be mostly the same – the struggle for a job and money, dealing with racism, trying to keep ties with their motherland. This book has much of that, and that is why it took me so long to get through.
I would have given up on the book, but Ha Jin presents China in a way different from other authors of immigrant novels. He came to the United States just before the Tiananmen Square massacre, and is quite critical of his home country. Throughout the book, Nan Wu confronts other Chinese immigrants who spout blind patriotism and scorn for Americans, while he himself finds himself increasingly detached from the country he came from. He presents a view of China from a middle ground, one that I haven’t seen before. Not to mention Nan is one of the most likable protagonists I have ever come across in a novel.
Final judgement, I’d have to say that I don’t recommend this book to most people. However, I am willing to read other books by Ha Jin in the future. I take no issue with his writing, only with the overall plot of the book.
hbelle01's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
dommdy's review against another edition
2.0
Meh. I found the characters annoying, irritating and I could not relate to them or sympathize with them.
colls's review against another edition
3.0
An engaging story of a family who has immigrated to America. The Chinese-American experience was fascinating and the development of the character's was poignant. It seemed at once familiar and foreign at the same time - much like the experience of finding your home must feel like.
thuonghtran's review against another edition
4.0
4.5/5
An unexpectedly good read. Felt very relatable at times. An honest yet ideal depiction of the immigrant story.
Half a point docked because after a certain point I was so tired of Nan talking about his ex-girlfriend oh my god. I was soo glad after we got over that arch my god, it felt like it spanned for way too long LOL
An unexpectedly good read. Felt very relatable at times. An honest yet ideal depiction of the immigrant story.
Half a point docked because after a certain point I was so tired of Nan talking about his ex-girlfriend oh my god. I was soo glad after we got over that arch my god, it felt like it spanned for way too long LOL
baklavopita's review against another edition
4.0
I tend to love novels that span a life or generations, so the environment was ripe for me to love this book. I did love this book. It's the story of a Chinese couple's life in America. The husband's character was too whiney. But the marriage was so real. I appreciated that while it wasn't a marriage made in heaven, it wasn't a stereotypical portrayal of a bad marriage. The marriage, their son, the characters seem very real, and I was captured by the story. It was a little puzzling to me that it was so difficult for the husband to figure out that love at 18 is not the same as love at 45. My biggest complaint was how the book ended. The story ends, and then there are all these poems that the husband wrote. The poems are an important part of the story and tell some of the story on their own. But it interrupted the ending and didn't wrap things up as thoroughly as I wanted.
jennyshank's review against another edition
4.0
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2007/nov/09/migrants-art-imitates-life/
Migrant's art imitates life
Chinese author, character juggle jobs to survive in new country
Jenny Shank, Special to the Rocky
Published November 9, 2007 at midnight
It's hard not to read the story of Nan Wu, the protagonist of Ha Jin's expansive new novel, A Free Life, as an imagining of another life the author might have led.
Jin, whose luminous Waiting won the National Book Award, was assigned by his Chinese college to study English, a field he did not favor, but which eventually led to his traveling to the United States for graduate school. Jin remained here after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre made it impossible for him to return in good conscience. He earned his Ph.D. while balancing gigs as a night watchman and a busboy and eventually chose to write in English, in part because the sort of honest writing he wished to do could not be published in China.
Jin, working painstakingly in a language that he'd learned relatively late in life, published two volumes of poetry before beginning to publish fiction - and the rest is history.
In A Free Life, the fictional Nan Wu is assigned to study political science in college, but while in America at work on his Ph.D., he becomes disillusioned with the subject following the events at Tiananmen Square. Wu decides to forgo his studies and strike out on his own with his family, leaving the sheltered world of academia.
Though his passion is for poetry, he is married and has a young son, and knows he must become a businessman to survive. He takes a job as a night watchman that allows him to read and study the English dictionary, and at one point he asks a Russian coworker with a shady side business for advice. "In America there're only two ways to acquire riches," the coworker advises. "First, use others' money; second, use others' labor."
Wu is never able to follow this formula, having to earn every dollar through his own efforts. Eventually, he takes a job in a restaurant, learns to cook and moves his family to the Atlanta area where they buy a small Chinese restaurant and start taking a crack at their American dream.
Part of what makes Wu so compelling as a character, however, is that his American dream has more dimensions than the typical story of an immigrant saving and slaving until he owns a home and can send his children to good schools. Wu does plenty of backbreaking work at the restaurant, but he is unwilling to abandon his artistic yearnings and pour all his hopes into the life of his son, as fellow Chinese immigrants urge.
Wu's tenacious if spotty pursuit of his development as a poet echoes another great American novel of immigration, Willa Cather's My Antonia, in which the title character's Bohemian immigrant father puts aside his art - fiddle playing - to make a go in America but ultimately can't bear up under the struggle. It's clear the choice Wu makes to continue with his poetry despite his difficulties is a life-saver.
Another dimension to Wu's American dream is that he's an inveterate romantic, still harboring a crush on his first girlfriend, Beina, who jilted him before he met and married his wife, Pingping. Wu doesn't feel the intense passion toward Pingping that he had for Beina, and the couple's open acknowledgement of this is a source of tension in the relationship.
Pingping is devoted to her husband, a diligent mother, hard-working, adaptable and sharp - the reader falls in love with her far earlier in the book than Wu is able to. The wayward nature of Wu's heart troubles him, and the fact that his continuing crush on Beina causes him such distress, even though he remains a faithful husband, is an insight to his character. He values transparently honest living; for him thoughts and words are the same as deeds.
These themes of the pursuit of the American dream and longing for passionate rather than companionate love underlie A Free Life, but on the surface the book focuses on adjusting to life in this country. The striking insights Ha Jin offers about life in America show what America looks like to an outsider and how odd English idioms can sound to a non-native speaker. At one point, Pingping thinks playing "hooky" must have something to do with being a hooker.
And when the Wus first buy a house, they can't "figure out what the little red flag on the mailbox was supposed to do." So they guess: "Now every morning before going to work, Nan would raise the tiny flag as a way to greet the postman. . . . Then one day Pingping found a slip of paper in the mailbox, bearing these words: 'Don't let your kids play with the flag! Keep it up only when you have mail to go.' "
The American way of using credit to acquire material goods is foreign to the Wus. They live in great anxiety during the years when they have a mortgage on their home, even though Wu insists to Pingping, "We must shed our Chinese mind- set and learn to accept insecurity as a living condition."
Wu can't adhere to his own advice and puts aside his poetry for a time to concentrate on making money. But by the end of the book, he's returned to his art, and the novel closes with a selection of poetry he's written about the events of his life, pieces that any reader who has come to root for him will enjoy.
Wu's choice to write in English, like Jin's, was a deliberate one. Most Americans live their lives in the same language they were born into, feeling no more than a mellow love for it. In A Free Life, another excellent book that, like Waiting, involves the thwarted pursuit of passion, Jin has proved, through crystalline prose studded with unusual words, that he has a rare ardor for his adopted language.
A Free Life
• By Ha Jin. Pantheon, 672 pages, $26.
• Grade: A
On immigration
"For the initial years it was like having a blood transfusion, like you are changing your blood."
- Ha Jin in an interview, talking about his first years in America after leaving China
Jenny Shank's fiction has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review and other journals. She writes about books for New West.net and lives in Boulder.
Migrant's art imitates life
Chinese author, character juggle jobs to survive in new country
Jenny Shank, Special to the Rocky
Published November 9, 2007 at midnight
It's hard not to read the story of Nan Wu, the protagonist of Ha Jin's expansive new novel, A Free Life, as an imagining of another life the author might have led.
Jin, whose luminous Waiting won the National Book Award, was assigned by his Chinese college to study English, a field he did not favor, but which eventually led to his traveling to the United States for graduate school. Jin remained here after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre made it impossible for him to return in good conscience. He earned his Ph.D. while balancing gigs as a night watchman and a busboy and eventually chose to write in English, in part because the sort of honest writing he wished to do could not be published in China.
Jin, working painstakingly in a language that he'd learned relatively late in life, published two volumes of poetry before beginning to publish fiction - and the rest is history.
In A Free Life, the fictional Nan Wu is assigned to study political science in college, but while in America at work on his Ph.D., he becomes disillusioned with the subject following the events at Tiananmen Square. Wu decides to forgo his studies and strike out on his own with his family, leaving the sheltered world of academia.
Though his passion is for poetry, he is married and has a young son, and knows he must become a businessman to survive. He takes a job as a night watchman that allows him to read and study the English dictionary, and at one point he asks a Russian coworker with a shady side business for advice. "In America there're only two ways to acquire riches," the coworker advises. "First, use others' money; second, use others' labor."
Wu is never able to follow this formula, having to earn every dollar through his own efforts. Eventually, he takes a job in a restaurant, learns to cook and moves his family to the Atlanta area where they buy a small Chinese restaurant and start taking a crack at their American dream.
Part of what makes Wu so compelling as a character, however, is that his American dream has more dimensions than the typical story of an immigrant saving and slaving until he owns a home and can send his children to good schools. Wu does plenty of backbreaking work at the restaurant, but he is unwilling to abandon his artistic yearnings and pour all his hopes into the life of his son, as fellow Chinese immigrants urge.
Wu's tenacious if spotty pursuit of his development as a poet echoes another great American novel of immigration, Willa Cather's My Antonia, in which the title character's Bohemian immigrant father puts aside his art - fiddle playing - to make a go in America but ultimately can't bear up under the struggle. It's clear the choice Wu makes to continue with his poetry despite his difficulties is a life-saver.
Another dimension to Wu's American dream is that he's an inveterate romantic, still harboring a crush on his first girlfriend, Beina, who jilted him before he met and married his wife, Pingping. Wu doesn't feel the intense passion toward Pingping that he had for Beina, and the couple's open acknowledgement of this is a source of tension in the relationship.
Pingping is devoted to her husband, a diligent mother, hard-working, adaptable and sharp - the reader falls in love with her far earlier in the book than Wu is able to. The wayward nature of Wu's heart troubles him, and the fact that his continuing crush on Beina causes him such distress, even though he remains a faithful husband, is an insight to his character. He values transparently honest living; for him thoughts and words are the same as deeds.
These themes of the pursuit of the American dream and longing for passionate rather than companionate love underlie A Free Life, but on the surface the book focuses on adjusting to life in this country. The striking insights Ha Jin offers about life in America show what America looks like to an outsider and how odd English idioms can sound to a non-native speaker. At one point, Pingping thinks playing "hooky" must have something to do with being a hooker.
And when the Wus first buy a house, they can't "figure out what the little red flag on the mailbox was supposed to do." So they guess: "Now every morning before going to work, Nan would raise the tiny flag as a way to greet the postman. . . . Then one day Pingping found a slip of paper in the mailbox, bearing these words: 'Don't let your kids play with the flag! Keep it up only when you have mail to go.' "
The American way of using credit to acquire material goods is foreign to the Wus. They live in great anxiety during the years when they have a mortgage on their home, even though Wu insists to Pingping, "We must shed our Chinese mind- set and learn to accept insecurity as a living condition."
Wu can't adhere to his own advice and puts aside his poetry for a time to concentrate on making money. But by the end of the book, he's returned to his art, and the novel closes with a selection of poetry he's written about the events of his life, pieces that any reader who has come to root for him will enjoy.
Wu's choice to write in English, like Jin's, was a deliberate one. Most Americans live their lives in the same language they were born into, feeling no more than a mellow love for it. In A Free Life, another excellent book that, like Waiting, involves the thwarted pursuit of passion, Jin has proved, through crystalline prose studded with unusual words, that he has a rare ardor for his adopted language.
A Free Life
• By Ha Jin. Pantheon, 672 pages, $26.
• Grade: A
On immigration
"For the initial years it was like having a blood transfusion, like you are changing your blood."
- Ha Jin in an interview, talking about his first years in America after leaving China
Jenny Shank's fiction has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review and other journals. She writes about books for New West.net and lives in Boulder.
gkgkgk's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
relaxing
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Racism, and Xenophobia
wordnerdy's review against another edition
3.0
Sigh. I wanted this book to be awesome--Ha Jin is awesome!--but it REALLY could have benefited from closer editing. It was way too long and dragged a bit--not that his story of a Chinese family acclimating to life in America isn't a great one, but really nothing much happens in it. It's all about a wannabe poet's daily life, which is great, but hard to get caught up in for 600+ pages. Not to mention a couple of character notes that kept popping up--if you've already said that a couple act like newlyweds, does it really need to be repeated in those same words a hundred pages later? Before reading this, I thought it'd be a likely contender for the end of the year list, but instead I give it a B.
gaiusgermanicus's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed Nan's story. He's a good man trying to do his best in a difficult situation.