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33 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New Life in a New Country, but is it Really a Free Life?, November 1, 2007
Ha Jin's A Free Life begins the same year as one of the Twentieth century's greatest atrocities--the Tiananmen Square massacre--but the book does not take place in China. Protagonist Nan Wu is a native of the frigid city of Harbin, China, but his considerable academic gifts and strong written English skills have afforded him the enviable opportunity of pursuing a political science Ph.D. in America.
Due to his disillusionment with the Tiananmen Square massacre, the disgusted Nan wants to distance himself from all things political, so he drops out of his program of study. However, before he removes himself from the Ivory Tower, Nan and some of his fellow grad students mention a plot to kidnap the children of mainland officials--a plot leaked to Chinese officials, causing Nan to be blacklisted and subsequently left a man without a country. With his wife Pingping and son Taotao also living in America, Nan feels he has little to lose, so he intends to make a new, permanent life in America. In order to support them, Nan takes one of the few jobs that someone armed with an M.A. in the humanities can do: He becomes a security guard.
Nan does aspire to higher things, though. He wants to be a good provider for his family, but even more, he wants to find meaning for his own being. After having his passport taken away by the Chinese consulate, Nan turns to the written word to help relieve his anxieties. However, he does not turn to writing in his native tongue; instead, he turns to the language of his adopted country, devouring book after book of English poetry and spending spare moments at work studying an English dictionary.
Nan feels the need to write for two reasons: to fully embrace the language of his adopted country and to regain a passion that he lost after his first love, Beina, left him while still in China. The resulting numbness has rendered him unable to love Pingping and Taotao fully. Through English poetry, which he feels is more emotive than Chinese poetry, Nan wants to regain a lost part of himself. By writing in English, Nan is also able to distance himself further from his native land. This distancing does not limit itself to China but extends to the Chinese community in America with which Nan finds himself increasingly disgusted each time he interacts with it.
Ha Jin does not whitewash tensions between various racial groups. Those unfamiliar with the tensions within the Chinese Diaspora may be surprised by the vicious arguments between the mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese, not to mention a number of the mainlanders' hatred for the Japanese. Nan's perspective of his community distinguishes this story from the majority of novels dealing with Asian Americans--particularly from those featuring a first generation immigrant. He is upset by his fellow mainland immigrants' willingness to whitewash the atrocities caused by the Chinese government and to support a nationalism that not only is destructive to relations with America, Japan, and Taiwan but also continues to breed hate.
Despite being a massive 672-page novel, A Free Life is an incredibly fast, enjoyable read that is difficult to put down. Perhaps this is because the chapters are rarely longer than five pages and, instead of being one long story, the novel seems more like a collection of vignettes concerning the lives of one man, his family, and the lives of other Chinese expatriates. The magic of A Free Life is that each short vignette is carefully chosen to cast light on one of the family's small victories and defeats. Readers get to experience Nan and Pingping's grief when they are desperately trying to save money, and they get to experience the couple's happiness when the Wus open their own restaurant. These events are not major, but they paint a very real life and help the reader feel closer to the characters.
A Free Life is a masterful work detailing the minutiae of one family's day to day life. While this might seem to be the makings of a cut and dry novel, the novel also details an immigrant's struggle with his native land and fellow immigrants. Though younger generations such as Taotao's are spared the long threads of political intrigue that bind many Chinese expatriates to mainland China, Nan's entire being is ensnared by these threads that threaten to strangle him. However, through his family and his desire to write, Nan might be able to experience "a free life" unhindered by the past.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful Picture of Coming to America from China, December 9, 2007
It's hard to imagine heading to a foreign country like Japan or Korea or even China to start a life with virtually no money and no real job training. Get a job, learn a language, get enough money to pay the bills, learn how a whole new culture really works. This story is well worth reading if only to reconfirm the benefits of living "A Free Life." Here are the things I found unique and interesting about the book:
1. There is really no dramatic story here. It reads like a journal describing every little thought and action including his little fights with his wife and son, everyday relationship with fellow workers, friends, poets. etc.
2. It's very description of the conservative and simple life of the regular Chinese people, those loyal to the old ways of Mao and those trying to flee from the country to start a new life in America and other places. They are willing to put in the long hours, are fiscally very very conservative, worried about every penny and investment. You understand that life is looked at from a different perspective, a perspective that you aren't entitled or worthy when you are born. You are here to work and earn enough money to pay the bills.
3. You can tell that the book is written by an intelligent, educated foreigner. It works well, flows well, is easy to understand and enjoy, but it is almost too straight forward, honest and lacks any poetry or beautiful writing. It seems like you are reading from a personal journal where comments about reactions to life's most mundane things are made. But this is part of what makes it worth reading. You comprehend the frustrations, fears, and real life of very good and devoted people. You can tell that everything that is said is from the heart and ruthfully honest. It takes him a long time to really accept and return the love his hard working devoted wife gives him from day one. He is honest about his fantasies about a girl he was once in love with and how this fantasy affects his life.
4. He opens our eyes to the evolution of China and the thoughts and desires of the Chinese people, how the older generation is still loyal to the old communist government and how the country and younger generation is becoming more and more devoted to capitalism. In a certain way, there is nostalgia for the old Chinese way of life.
5. By the end of the book, it is clear that he has become an American Citizen in all ways and living a conservative, frugal version of the American way of life. He loves it and respects it, but it is very realistically stated.
It is a long and touching story, sometimes a bit boring and slow, but always worth moving ahead. It is well worth the read and it gave me a lot of insight into these people and the sacrifices they make. Driving by Chinese restaurants run by hard working Chinese people feels different now. I want to talk to them and make friends with them and I really do respect them more now that I've had a chance to walk in one of their brother's shoes.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The immigrant story for our times, December 10, 2007
A FREE LIFE is the immigrant story for our times. As the book opens, the reader is introduced to Pingping and Nan Wu, who have traveled cross country to pick up their six-year-old son, Taotao, whose exodus from China they have finally been able to effect. Taotao has not seen his father since he came to America to attend graduate school four years earlier. His mother left China two-and-a-half years later, leaving Taotao in the care of her parents. It is no surprise that after only several days in America, Taotao announces that he is ready to go back home to his grandparents, a fact to which it takes him a long time to become consoled.
A scholar in every aspect, Nan drops out of graduate school on the heels of the Tiananmen Square massacre, which led to meetings with fellow Chinese students where many forms of protest were discussed, including kidnapping the MIT student children of high-ranking Chinese officials. After a fairly standard protest in DC, Nan returns disenchanted, disturbed and determined to give up his graduate studies in the field of Political Science, a field chosen for him by his government.
The family now begins a long evolution. Previously, Nan had envisioned a future involving books, letters, poetry and the mind. Now, forgoing his student stipend, earning a living and establishing a life that provides both security and financial independence for his family becomes a necessity.
From serving as caretaker in a wealthy, divorcee doctor's home (with Pingping), to working as a security guard, to factory work, restaurant service in New York and other various jobs, Nan becomes a downright, sometimes downtrodden, blue-collar American immigrant worker. Underneath it all is the support and frugality of Pingping. Her intensity to provide for both today, tomorrow and the future often dominates everything. The family eventually finds themselves in possession of a Chinese restaurant in Atlanta, a decent home they pay off very quickly and a son with whom they seem to never make a connection.
Through it all, Nan's dream of literary success never wanes. Nor do his thoughts of Beina, the lover with whom he broke years earlier. While much of the books 600 pages is devoted to the everyday struggles of this family while pursuing what is, for them, the American dream of home and business ownership and --- more importantly --- no debt, there arrives a climax as Nan forces himself to come to terms with the decisions he has made, the paths he could have taken and the choices he still could make. Watching his return to China to confront the ghosts of his past, and a journey to Iowa to face what could have been his future, is a jumble of emotions for both Nan and the reader.
Pingping's ceaseless devotion to Nan, her acceptance of his half-love for her, a late-in-life pregnancy and more combine to make her a sympathetic character who carries the weight of the entire family's emotions on her shoulders. Jin often pits the couple against each other, and most often, one must root for Pingping.
The final 30 pages of the book are titled "The Poems of Nan Wu." These are presented as the poetry Nan has been scribbling all these years, some of which he sent to publishers and schools such as the Iowa Writer's Workshop. These pages are so beautiful and so insightful that they establish a side of Nan, a glimpse inside him, that has evaded the reader up until then. Taken with the end of the book, they provide redemption for Nan and a depth to the man around whom this novel revolves.
There are so many other storylines within these pages, it is hard to truly do justice in so few words. Yes, it is an ordinary tale of relatively ordinary lives, but it is their story and Jin makes you really care about these lives, whatever may happen in them. It is a book I find myself thinking about even now, months after putting it down. I handed it off to a very well-read teacher friend at a baseball tournament our sons were playing in. On the third day of the tourney, she handed it back, praising it effusively and scolding Jin for "keeping her up too late." We watched our boys play baseball, living out the American dream in Cooperstown, New York, while --- side by side --- we both contemplated the version of that same dream that Jin had painted. I truly feel that A FREE LIFE should be considered now, and for a long while, to be the voice of the immigrant experience of our time.
--- Reviewed by Jamie Layton
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