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The Diary of Ma Yan
May. 20th, 2007 08:25 pmThe Diary of Ma Yan: The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese Schoolgirl by Ma Yan (edited by Pierre Haski, translated from French by Lisa Appignanesi, originally translated from Mandarin by He Yanping)
166 pages (hardcover)
Genre: Nonfiction/YA/Diary
Another reading whim, this time from the tiny school library. The secondhand translation raised my suspicions a bit, but this slim volume lost none of its sombering, heartrending impact. To give just one quote (used on the inside cover): "My stomach is all twisted up from hunger, but I don't want to spend the money on anything so frivolous as food. Because it's money my parents earn with their sweat and blood. I have to study well so that I won't ever again be tortured by hunger."
And that sums up the book better than I ever could. Highly recommended to anyone and everyone, but especially all the Chinese people out there in the world. I wearied long ago of hearing my dad's childhood stories of poverty, but Ma Yan's story is so much more painful. There are thousands of girls like her in rural China--her diary was published only by a chance encounter. And here I am, living in prosperity, with my worst financial worry being unable to afford a summer writing workshop.
It really makes you stop and think, and give heartfelt thanks to fortune of birth, however unfair it seems.
166 pages (hardcover)
Genre: Nonfiction/YA/Diary
Another reading whim, this time from the tiny school library. The secondhand translation raised my suspicions a bit, but this slim volume lost none of its sombering, heartrending impact. To give just one quote (used on the inside cover): "My stomach is all twisted up from hunger, but I don't want to spend the money on anything so frivolous as food. Because it's money my parents earn with their sweat and blood. I have to study well so that I won't ever again be tortured by hunger."
And that sums up the book better than I ever could. Highly recommended to anyone and everyone, but especially all the Chinese people out there in the world. I wearied long ago of hearing my dad's childhood stories of poverty, but Ma Yan's story is so much more painful. There are thousands of girls like her in rural China--her diary was published only by a chance encounter. And here I am, living in prosperity, with my worst financial worry being unable to afford a summer writing workshop.
It really makes you stop and think, and give heartfelt thanks to fortune of birth, however unfair it seems.
