This is one of three titles under consideration for this year's Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads, which will focus on China and America: Bridging Two Worlds.

From the remarkable Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award for his celebrated novel Waiting, The Bridegroom: Stories is a collection of comical and deeply moving tales of contemporary China that are as warm and human as they are surprising, disturbing, and delightful.

In the title story, the head of security at a factory is shocked, first when the handsomest worker on the floor proposes marriage to his homely adopted daughter, and again when his new son-in-law is arrested for the "crime" of homosexuality. In "After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town," the workers at an American-style fast food franchise receive a hilarious crash course in marketing, deep frying, and that frustrating capitalist dictum, "the customer is always right."Ha Jin has triumphed again with his unforgettable storytelling in The Bridegroom: Stories.

Ha Jin was born in China in 1956.

Jin has published two collections of poetry, Between Silences and Facing Shadows, and two collections of short fiction, Ocean of Words, which received the PEN/Hemingway Award, and Under the Red Flag, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for fiction as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999. In 2004, he published War Trash, which also won the PEN/Faulkner Award.

He lives in the Boston area and is a professor of English at Boston University.

What did you think of this book? Tell us!

Here is a comment submitted to the Ann Arbor District Library website:

Submitted by TriciaT on Fri, 09/21/2007 - 2:37pm.

ANN ARBOR /YPSI READS - My ranking of the three choices would be 1-RED AZAELA, it tells a real story about the time of several changes of the Chinese government and the world changes of sexual choices, 2- BRIDEGROOM STORIES, nice to have a selection of stories which can be discussed for difference of ideas and also a little humor is wonderful, 3 -THE 8TH PROMISE,

This comment was received by the Ann Arbor District Library:

Both The Bridegroom by Ha Jin and Red Azalea by Anchee Min are available in a recorded format from the Washtenaw County Library for the Blind and Physically Disabled so that people registered with our library will be able to participate in Ann Arbor Ypsilanti Reads. At this point, The Eighth Promise by William Poy Lee is not available in a recorded format. I would like to urge the committee to select one of the titles that is available to our consumers. We will then be able to read the selected title for our January 2008 Book Lovers Club.

Thank you for your consideration.

Margaret Wolfe
Librarian Coordinator
Washtenaw County Library
for the Blind & Physically Disabled