Ha Jin, author portrait
© Dorothy Creco

Ha Jin

Ha Jin grew up in mainland China and served in the People’s Liberation Army in his teens for five years. After leaving the army, he worked for three years at a railroad company in a remote northeastern city, Jiamusi, and then went to college in Harbin, majoring in English. He has published in English ten novels, four story collections, four volumes of poetry, a book of essays, and a biography of Li Bai. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ha Jin is William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in English and Creative Writing at Boston University, and he has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His writing has been translated into more than thirty languages. Ha Jin’s novel The Woman Back from Moscow was published by Other Press in 2023.
Looking for Tank Man
The Woman Back from Moscow: In Pursuit of Beauty

Books

Looking for Tank Man
The Woman Back from Moscow: In Pursuit of Beauty

Books for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Each May, we honor the stories, histories, and cultures of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. Below is a selection of acclaimed fiction and nonfiction books by AANHPI creators to share with your students this month and throughout the year. Find our full collection of titles for Higher Education here.

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FROM THE PAGE: An excerpt from Ha Jin’s Looking for Tank Man

A Harvard student from China discovers the fraught, hidden history of the Tiananmen Square massacre in this powerful novel of protest and suppression from the National Book Award–winning author.   1 In the fall of 2008, my sophomore year at Harvard, China’s premier came to visit and gave a speech. Urged by the officials of

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