A Good Fall (Vintage International)

This book is a collection of short stories about Chinese immigrants and their new experience settling in New York. Some are relatively new transplants, while others have been in the US for many years. The process of immersing self into a new culture and place, while retaining cultural traditions and personal beliefs, is complex and bewildering to many of the characters. The first compliment has to go to Ha Jin's prose: clear, clean and crisp. Each story is astonishing in its simplicity, deceivingly so. Because none of the stories and life experiences are simple. He writes beautifully, making you care for this odd mix of people so much with so few words. I appreciated how he didn't feel the need to over-explain the complications, he's expecting his readers to have some basic knowledge about Chinese culture. Yet he still adds nuances of depth to these characters so you come away with new understanding of them and their plight, both individually and collectively. For example, the Chinese have the well known reputation for respecting their ancestors far more than the American norm. While assimilating into American culture, some walk a fine line between behaving like everyone else or staying close to their cultural heritage. It's not simple at all. An overbearing mother appears for the most part to be an obnoxious insertion into her son's life, yet she is behaving in the norm. What is fascinating is how he relates to her, trying to respect her and her value system while keeping the peace with his wife. In the end, he makes a painful choice, because the two cannot be blended. Grandparents clinging to their past battle with grandchildren who only see their future, and in the middle a couple try and maintain respect and reasonableness for both generations. In "A Composer and His Parakeets", Fanlin finds that his new role as pet sitter for his girlfriend's parakeet has more depth and meaning than his relationship with her. He finds inspiration, as well as happiness and contentment, by simply caring for the small needs of the little pet. He realizes that just as she had pawned the bird off to him, soon she would leave him. As he composes, his work actually improves significantly as he can openly express himself and not hold back "The Bane of the Internet" shows the suffering of a newly immigrated woman who has to deal with the ease of keeping in contact with her family back home, one she thought she had escaped. While I laughed at some of her plight, the reality of her complaint is all too true. In "An English Professor", we watch a fully competent Chinese professor drive himself insane in his attempt to get tenure because he finds a typo in his application. The lengths he goes to in his desperation and pain, his paranoia and his lack of confidence are by turns humorous and tragic. Underlining it all is the intense drive to succeed and to save face, a theme that runs through many of the stories. A few things surprised me. In imm

This is one of the best short story collections to be published recently. It is comprised of highly literate, yet down-to-earth tales of enchanting, humorous, thoughtful and infuriating characters who will undoubtedly provide readers with much enjoyment and many insights into human nature. The "exotic" quality of a large but little known ethnic group (Chinese-Americans and immigrants) adds to the learning experience. Very well done and highly recommended.

These stories deal with Chinese immigrant life in America. A young monk exposes his temple master's corruption. His expulsion from the monastery becomes a good fall because he is rid of the master and can stand on his own as a free young man who can now eat meat and date a young woman. A sister back in China demands that her U.S.-based sister sponsor her desire for an expensive life. A lonely composer becomes a caretaker for his absent girlfriend's parakeet, only to discover that the creature fills a void in his life. The immigrant stories show that life in America is more complex than those outside it may think. Most of these immigrants are sacrificial lambs slaving in America for the benefit of relatives back home. Secrets abound, and the information one person has on another is a ticket to exploitation and blackmail. The struggles of the Chinese immigrants are every immigrant's story. Set in America they are every American's story, and indeed, they reach the core of every human. Ha Jin has a sharp eye for detail, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. This is a gripping, relatable, unforgettable collection. Reviewed by Emmanuel Sigauke

This book was given to me as a gift from a friend who I had shared my love of Ha Jin's great novel `Waiting' with. Interestingly, as much as I loved `Waiting', I had never picked up anything else by him! So I was excited to start in on this new collection of short stories. There are two things that stand out in this work. First is just the pure craft of it. These are exquisitely crafted stories. Jin is an English professor, after all, but the quality of this writing transcends that of the quality to be expected of any old English professor. It is that of a craftsman who has harnessed a great talent to the extent that the work seems effortless. (I'm sure it's not, but that just confirms my point.) His sentences are crisp and business-like, but not at all dull. In fact they almost crackle off the page. It's this blend of traits that makes this, or any other writing, so good. Second, Jin writes movingly of the experience of the Chinese immigrant in America. The difficulties and hardships these people endure throughout the collection give us an almost instantaneous sympathy for the characters, even ones who aren't all that nice. `Children as Enemies' is about an old couple who are terrorized by their Americanized grandchildren. In `Temporary Love' we see the fall-out of being a `war-time' couple', or men and women who cohabitate in the States pretending to be married while waiting for their real spouses to come from China. In `A Good Fall', a monk is pushed to extreme measures when his `master' kicks him out of his temple, penniless, and without having paid him a penny for his work. Each story, whether they center on this theme or not, uses a different component of it in some way. My favorites were `A Composer and his Parakeet', in which a composer reaches his inner self while baby-sitting a parakeet; `The Beauty' in which a jealous husband investigates his wife for cheating and finds that she's deceiving him in a way he could have never imagined; and `The English Professor' in which an anxious professor up for tenure re-evaluates his career choices and goes through a mini-mid-life crisis. But there really isn't a bad story here. I highly recommend this book.

This book has twelve short stories set in Flushing, one of New York's largest Chinese immigrant communities. Author traverses the anxieties and struggles of the immigrants - some young (Monk down on his luck), some old (grandparents despised by Americanized grandchildren), some rich (professionals) and some dirt poor working in sweatshops and as prostitutes. This is not a soothing or uplifting book - but a real gritty portrait of the day-to-day Asian immigrant struggles with assimilation into American life - the loneliness of being without family back home - the hardship of making a living and learning the language - the yearning of finding someone to love. Unlike other immigrant readings - you won't find them trashing America or wishing to go back home due to the hardship. These immigrants knuckle down and survive - they grind it out in the chase of the American dream - yet can't quite let go of their life back home. Author has a smooth writing style. I found myself remarkably engaged in the conversational style prose and its captivating simplicity. Jin has an innate ability to capture the details of the living conditions of the characters in each of the stories along with a rich imagery of the neighborhoods. If I had any criticism of the collection of stories, is that their conclusions are often too abrupt and fall off a cliff while others are too contrived - in both cases I was left wanting for a more finessed, nuanced or insightful ending. I particularly enjoyed the following passages: "Certainly I wouldn't lend her the money, because that might amount to hitting a dog with a meatball--nothing would come back." "At our ages--my wife is sixty-three and I'm sixty-seven--and at this time it's hard to adjust to life here. In America it feels as if the older you are, the more inferior you grow." "We haven't practiced division and multiplication this year, so I'm not familiar with them anymore." He offered that as an excuse. There was no way I could make him understand that once you learned something, you were supposed to master it and make it part of yourself. That's why we say knowledge is wealth. You can get richer and richer by accumulating it within." "He still felt for this woman. Somehow he couldn't drive from his mind her image behind the food stand, her face steaming with sweat and her eyes downcast in front of customers while her knotted hands were packing snacks into Styrofoam boxes." He remembered that when he was taking the entrance exam fourteen years back, his parents had stood in the rain under a shared umbrella, waiting for him with a lunch tin, sodas, and tangerines wrapped in a handkerchief. They each had half a shoulder soaked through. Oh, never could he forget their anxious faces. A surge of gratitude drove him to the brink of tears. If only he could speak freely to them again." "Rusheng, you worry too much," Molin jumped in, combing his dyed yellow hair with his fingers. "Look at me--I've never had a full-ti