Running Away
About this ebook
Vivid, honest, and boldly resilient, Ha Jin’s latest poetry collection, Running Away, adopts a chorus of narrative voices to tell stories of desperate migration. Poems appear as interviews and confessions, and as a catalogue of departures—journeys that feel “like coming back from death.” These poems survive. Often following the path of undocumented Chinese migrants trekking to the United States by way of South America, speakers navigate dangers and visceral fears, authoritarian governments and hope. They are pulled forward by the future and a desire for liberty in a new country—for “the land destined to become their home.” As poems shift in language and geography, as they cross borders and trek the Rio Grande, as they jump ship and flee countries, Ha Jin unambiguously celebrates departure and praises freedom. Running Away reaches for a future where every door is open to us.
About the author
The poet Ha Jin grew up in mainland China and came to the United States in 1985 to do graduate work at Brandeis University, beginning to write in English in 1990. Since then, he has written four volumes of poetry: Between Silences (1990), Facing Shadows (1996), Wreckage (2001), and A Distant Center (2018). In addition, he has published nine novels, four books of short fiction, and a biography of the poet Li Bai. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. For his work, Ha Jin has earned the National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Asian American Literary Award, and the Townsend Prize for Fiction. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is a professor of English and creative writing at Boston University.