BILINGUAL EDITION OF POETRY OUT OF COMMUNIST CHINA BY HUANG XIANG

This facing-page edition makes translations of over 150 poems of contemporary Chinese poet/author Huang Xiang available to the Western world for the first time in a collection. Since he is subject to a long-term ban against publication of any of his writings in his native China, only a few of his poems have ever been read and translated in the West. A member of the proscribed classes by virtue of his birth, he was subjected to harassment, imprisonment and brutality from his childhood until his departure from China in 1997. His writings have already gained high and deserved respect in the small scholarly circle that is familiar with them in China and the West. The book has an extensive bibliography listing all books published by Huang Xiang outside China, plus many that refer to him or quote his works, as well as general works on Chinese poetry. The long biographical introduction will be of great value to scholars who wish to pursue the origins of Underground Literature in which Huang is a major figure, and the later Menglung “misty, obscure”) poetry that followed it. The poems themselves are in clear recitable English. The book’s composition, with the original Chinese on the left and English on the right, matched line for line, offers an excellent pedagogical tool, as well as a subject for study by critics, commentators, and students of language. The book also includes a section of personal photographs, and a foreword by Huang Xiang.