Yan’s insightful essays show how attempts to control history and society can be countered by memory and imagination.
An acclaimed Chinese author discusses censorship, artistic independence, and the importance of good writing.
Yan Lianke (b. 1958), one of China’s most prolific and imaginative authors, has won global praise for his novels and stories. He is also an outstanding essayist, as this collection—which “arose out of a series of lectures that the author gave during a trip to North America in the spring of 2014”—amply demonstrates. Much of Yan’s fiction has a labyrinthine strangeness to it; in fact, one of the most interesting pieces here is his acceptance speech for the 2014 Franz Kafka Prize. This tone and approach give him the latitude to be critical of government policies without being direct or strident, although much of his output has been censored anyway (he is often described as China’s most censored author). In several of the essays, Yan examines the Chinese government’s suppression of discussion about social traumas and policy failures in favor of relentlessly positive news. The result is a sort of enforced amnesia, and the author notes that the younger generation has little knowledge of the country’s real history. Despite his great concerns and the recurring themes of his novels, he does not like to be seen as an overtly political writer. His desire, he writes, is to produce novels and stories that are well written and meaningful. Despite the age of these pieces, they seem remarkably fresh, timely and relevant, and the texts serve as a solid introduction to Yan’s fiction, as well as a clear-minded commentary on Chinese society and the place of literature within it. The volume includes an introduction by translator Rojas, who has worked with Yan for many years.
Yan’s insightful essays show how attempts to control history and society can be countered by memory and imagination.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781478030393
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Duke Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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