Bridegroom : : Stories

Locations
Call Number: Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	Reshelving

Saboteur -- Flame -- In the kindergarten -- A tiger fighter is hard to find -- Broken -- The bridegroom -- An entrepreneur's story -- Alive -- A bad joke -- An official reply -- The woman from New York -- After Cowboy Chicken came to town.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Glimpses of life in China submitted by deets on August 6, 2015, 12:48pm This is the first work of Ha Jin I have read, chosen while browsing the library shelves for no other reason than the desire to read more works whose authors are not of the same culture as my own; it will certainly not be the last. The collection of short stories is a fascinating, and sometimes infuriating, look into the cultural norms of Chinese society. Some of the stories are just a few pages long, others 15-20 pages. Each is told simply, with a style that makes it feel as though it is a person simply relating an experience of their own life. There are no grand pronouncements, the reader is allowed to make up their own mind about what it all "means". Through this collection of short stories the life within communism is explored, the lack of freedom to determine one's own path in life, the corruption and inefficiency within the system, and yet it is not expressed with anger, simply written as "the way things are". In the final story, Cowboy Chicken, the peculiar differences between American capitalist business and Chinese culture becomes a focal point, and is an incredibly insightful look at the relative absurdities of both.
I highly recommend this collection of stories, and am looking forward to reading more works of Ha Jin.