Why does the caged bird sing because it has a song in its heart

Author: South Bridge

Despite various difficulties such as the epidemic and travel restrictions, Xia Shang's "Overseas Chinese Novel Annual Exhibition 2020" as curator was still published as scheduled. I got a heavy volume, read it quickly, and was quite touched. What is Chinese Literature? Its narrow meaning refers to "Chinese literature written by Chinese immigrants to other countries", which is a branch of immigrant literature.

Xia Shang is a writer from Shanghai, who wrote the "Chronicle of the East Bank" in the Qingming Dynasty and the Upper River Pattern, and also used experimental techniques to write the "Wanderings of beggars" at the bottom level. The rest of his works include "Taxidermy", "Bengal Tiger", "Naked Undead", "Music Box", "Guess Boxing Game", and "Momentary Tale". His writing achievements are obvious to all, and I also have appeal, organizing a novel annual exhibition, supported by overseas literary friends, and famous and up-and-coming artists have come to participate in the exhibition, which is also a phenomenon-level event.

Among the overseas Chinese writers, there are non-immigrants who have student visas, permanent residents with Chinese passports and US green cards, and Chinese nationals who have entered the United States, and there have always been nuances. "Have you solved your identity?" is like asking in the past "Have you eaten?" "Like, it's a common inquiry. In reality, the identity is concrete, and in the text, there are differences in the identities of "overseas Chinese" and "Chinese" and "Chinese" living abroad. In fact, its definition is also vague. In literature, vagueness is good, and vagueness has articles to do.

"Did your identity settle?" It is a soul torture that is often found in works, no less than "where do you come from, where are you going, who are you", "identity" is actually a sub-question in these three classical questions. Nationalities and nationalities are never simple and sometimes intertwined. Overseas Chinese held activities, originally from Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the old overseas Chinese, even once did not go to China, the surname Chen changed to the surname Tran, Lao Wu became Charles Ng, Xiao Ruan became Nguyen, it is okay, go together, everyone pottluck together. There are also ethnic minorities under the big family of the Chinese nation, and the intersection of nationality and ethnicity appears, and the situation is even more complicated. These complexities may be confusing or cause headaches to others, and for the author of the novel, they are rich in material. Overseas creative world is vast and promising.

The writers selected by the "Annual Exhibition" have their thresholds, but this threshold is not all market conditions, that is, the popularity of writers. In addition to the famous artists who have become popular because of film and television, there are also some powerful writers who are not very well known in China, and there are some potential emerging writers. Overseas Chinese writing has its own ecology, writing, publishing, translating, and reviewing.

This season of "The Annual Exhibition" can see the thousands of weather in the circle. Many of the authors are scholars, such as He Shupi, Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Zhange Ni, Associate Professor at Virginia Tech, and Jizhou Chen, Ph.D., in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. Scholars can see the accumulation of knowledge: Ni Zhanye's "Micro Cloud Decline Grass", the title should be canonized from Qin Guan's "Man Ting Fang" "Mountains smear micro clouds, tianlian decay grass, painting horn sound broken door", which is a historical novel based on the story of Yue Jiajun, with historical exploration and feminine delicacy in the middle, such as a wild history of Yue Yun.

As the curators say, most of the authors are women, overseas immigrant men are often forced to work hard for their livelihood or career development, some women live at home with children, "mom" and excellent works, most of the authors are "ticket friends" authors, there are accountants, programmers among the authors, Xia Zhou's own main business is design, belongs to the cutting-edge novelists.

The key to "playing tickets" is no pressure, no diligence of professional writers, so down, there may be no enterprising. Or it is a fragile mentality, afraid of being judged, so there is always a "counterfeiter complex", and dare not look at yourself as a writer.

People who live a carefree life on a regular basis do not necessarily produce good works. Many of the greatest works are the result of the writer's hard life, not amateur flower fist embroidery legs, nor the icing on the cake of the right business. People who get rid of the mentality of "playing tickets" can use the convenience of foreign countries in many aspects to write with their hearts, including Zhang Huiwen and Li Zishu, who have done more successful things in this regard.

Overseas writing often fights alone, occasionally getting together at a table, finding a restaurant in Houston or New York City to get together once, it is rare, not to mention the mixed circle of altars, which also makes writing have a certain sense of purity. Overseas writing can be published in a small number of overseas newspapers and periodicals, such as the Overseas Chinese Daily and the World Journal, and it is a good thing that self-publishing is easier and less limited. The disadvantage is that it is written in Chinese, and if the subject matter is focused overseas, it is difficult for domestic readers to empathize with each other based on experience. Chinese potential readers, like the consumer goods market, are mostly domestic. Once you go abroad, your influence will naturally be cut off, perhaps less than one percent of similar writers. So overseas writers also like to flock to the group for warmth. Helpless where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, when encountering the US election, the writers are also lined up left, center, right, and left, and the quarrel is a mess, which is also a big spectacle, which is worthy of a big book.

There are two things that have changed overseas writing in recent years. First, the popularity of online writing has broken the inherent boundaries, making the Pacific Ocean a big pond, and the boundaries between domestic circles and foreign circles have begun to blur. For example, He Sockspi is the chief writer of the million-level WeChat public account "Myrrh Garden", focusing on criminal suspense and reasoning, but also formed a world of its own. Many writers have given up pure literary writing to engage in more profitable knowledge paid writing.

The other is the epidemic, which has broken down geographical differences and made new links between writers and readers, writers and publishing, and writers and writers. For writers who are committed to growing up, new opportunities are everywhere, but people are busy dealing with the impact of the epidemic on their lives and turning a blind eye to these.

In terms of pure literature, overseas writers write with Chinese, but the difference is that cross-cultural life experiences make people have a new examination of the reconstruction of past experiences. Chen Ruilin, who settled in Houston, wrote the novel "Meet", which has a compact and seductive story and a warm color. After all, pure love is not everywhere, after the vicissitudes of middle age, meeting a kiss always makes people cry. Similarly, physical distance also produces psychological distance. Changes in experience and reading have made siblings born of half-mothers gradually strangers.

"One Hundred Percent pain" by the novelist Black Child in Japan is a kind of reverse reflection on traditional family affection, opening the carpet of traditional ethical relations and making people see the unclean and unbearable underneath. The helplessness of being displaced from overseas, mixed with cultural differences, national differences, and intergenerational differences, will also resonate with people in similar situations. Ling Shan's "Those Lights That Illuminate Our World", in the home between girlfriends, writes the symphony of pots and pans of overseas life, and the conflict and helplessness in overseas marriage.

From uprooting life at home to starting over overseas, who hasn't had a twist and turn? I have not lived overseas for three or five years, and it is difficult to understand the taste. The stories in the novel often have readers speculate whether they are the author's real experience. In the chest, some people pour it with wine, or with culture. Everyone has some entanglements in their hearts, and it can be said that they are carrying a work, not to be unhappy. As Maya Angie put it: Do you know why the caged bird sings? Because it has a song in its heart.

Nowadays, writing overseas has passed the era of struggle narrative of "foreign insertion". "Overseas Chinese Novel Annual Exhibition 2020" is valuable that in a more prosaic and realistic overseas narrative, it reflects on overseas life. Many of the writers are the same age as me, and the Fanghua era is fixed in the 1980s and 1990s. At the beginning of that year, when I heard that the writer was in awe, the writer had ideals and pursuits for writing good novels. Nowadays, the title of "writer" is not worth much. At the same time, the new readers, who have completed various standardized examinations in China, have been seriously injured, who knows that when they arrived at american universities, they went into the tiger's den and wrote paper to write crippled. It is good to be able to send a circle of friends, write three or two sentences, usually a string of emojis. As for writing with a certain length, where is the idle work? The gang invited by Xia Shang to exhibit is not good enough to be the "old man" of the old-style cultural circle. Look at their words, it is also a witness to an era. (South Bridge)

Source: Beijing Youth Daily