AN INTERVIEW WITH HA JIN
'Somehow I Couldn't Stop'
Published: October 10, 2004
WIGHT GARNER: Given the historical moment, ''War Trash'' is a pretty incendiary title for a novel -- and your subject matter here is incendiary, too. You're writing about the mistreatment by American soldiers of Chinese P.O.W.'s during the Korean War. Does the timing seem uncanny to you?
HA JIN: Yes, it is quite mysterious. But when I started this novel in 2000, I didn't expect anything like this would appear in the news.
GARNER: What was the impetus for this novel?
HA JIN: I had planned ''War Trash'' as a short novel, but somehow I couldn't stop. It stretched over 400 pages. Something inside me just came out, and later I realized what it was: fear. Because when I was a soldier in the Chinese Army, most of the soldiers were afraid of captivity more than death.
GARNER: Why is that?
HA JIN: Because we had seen how the returned P.O.W.'s were mistreated. They were treated the same as criminals. In fact, I knew that the best way for me to remain as a virtuous citizen would be to kill myself. Because if you were captured and you were alive, and returned home, you would be treated like the dregs of society.
GARNER: When you were 14, you lied about your age and joined the People's Liberation Army. How much of your own experience informs this novel?
HA JIN: Quite a bit, because in my first half-year in the army, we stayed in a Korean village. That helped me, because I knew some of their customs and language. That gave me a lot of confidence in the process of writing. I didn't have to do research on these small details. I had a very concrete physical sense of that place and the people.
GARNER: When I last spoke with you, in 2000, your books were not available in mainland China. Has that situation changed?
HA JIN: Only ''Waiting'' is available in mainland China, not the other books. ''Waiting'' didn't deal with political subjects as directly. In a way it is a book about the past, at least to the authorities. By comparison, books like ''The Crazed'' and this one may be more offensive to the authorities. I have heard that publishers have received instructions from above not to publish my work. And major publications were told not to review them.
GARNER: You've lived in the United States for almost 20 years, but all of your fiction has been, up to this point, set in China. In this book, of course, you've moved out of China and into Korea. Why haven't you written a novel that's set in the United States?
HA JIN: That would be a huge jump, you know. I have been hesitating. This book is a kind of a transition toward that space. After this book, my fiction will be set in the States, mainly. But this book is a way to test the water, a place where the Chinese, the Americans, the Koreans, interact. To set my books in America, I'll have to change a lot of things, even just the narrative of speech. There is a very basic technical thing I have to resolve, which is learning how different kinds of people -- immigrants, non-native English speakers, native English speakers -- speak when they interact. That's crucial in handling immigrant fiction. In American literature there has been a tradition from the very beginning. ''My Antonia,'' right? And Nabokov, Henry Roth. So I have to be very careful -- this is not an easy thing to do. I've been working on a novel set in the States. But I don't know whether it will work.
GARNER: ''War Trash'' is definitely not a comic novel, but I had to laugh when, near the end, your protagonist makes an important decision partly based on something he sees on ''The Simpsons.'' Is this a show you're familiar with?
HA JIN: Yes. Quite familiar. My son grew up with it. It's really part of American life. It's not just something that comes and goes. The breadth of humor, the drama -- really it is an outstanding piece of work. I didn't pick that show randomly.
GARNER: You've moved from Atlanta to a town outside of Boston. Have you become a Red Sox fan?
HA JIN: I'm a fan, yes, but I don't follow them totally. The novelist Leslie Epstein is my colleague at Boston University -- his son, Theo Epstein, is the G.M. of the Red Sox. So I really am a fan. But I wish the Celtics were stronger. I saw Larry Bird play when I was a graduate student. They used to be such a great team.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/books/review/1010books-garner.html?pagewanted=print&position=