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Chinese Ethnic Minority Literature

I just finished taking an incredibly eye-opening class about Chinese ethnic minority literature. China has a thriving minority literature scene, and it's absolutely fascinating and full of interesting works, so I wanted to share some of the authors that I learned about this semester! This is, obviously, an incomplete list-- it's pretty heavily biased towards what we read about in class, and there's probably a lot I've missed!

For any authors with full works that have been translated into English, I've listed it under their names. Some other authors may also have poems or short stories published in translation online or in anthologies.

Hani 哈尼

Mo Du 莫獨 (b. 1963) - poems

Hui 回族

Huo Da 霍達 (b. 1945) - novels

  • The Jade King: History of a Chinese Muslim Family (1992)

Zhang Chengzhi 張承志 (b. 1948) -novels, short stories

  • The Black Steed (1990)

Korean 朝鮮族

Jin Renshun 金仁順 (b. 1970) - novels, short stories

Jin Wenxue 金文學 (b. 1962) - novels

Manchu 滿族

Duanmu Hongliang 端木蕻良 (1912-1996)

Lao She 老舍 (1899-1966) - novels, short stories, plays

  • Rickshaw Boy (1945, 2010)

Miao (Hmong) 苗族

He Xiaozhu 何小竹 (b. 1963) - poems, novels

Shen Congwen* 沈從文 (1902-1988) - novels, short stories

  • Imperfect Paradise (1995)
  • Border Town (2009)

Mongolian 蒙古族

Altai 阿爾泰 (b. 1949) - poems

Bao Liying 包麗英 (b. 1968) - novels

Baoyinhexige 寶音賀希格 - poems

Chen Ganglong 陳崗龍 (b. 1970) - poems

Guo Xuebo 郭雪波 (b. 1948) - novels, short stories

  • The Desert Wolf (1996)

Malaqinfu 瑪拉沁夫 (b. 1930)- novels

Naxi 納西族

Sha Li 沙蠡 (1953-2008) - novels

Yang Zhengwen 楊正文 (b. 1943) - novels

Qiang 羌族

Qiang Renliu 羌人六 (b. 1987) - poems

Yangzi/Yang Guoqing 羊子/楊國慶 - poems

Tibetan 藏族

Alai 阿來 (b. 1959) - novels, short stories

  • Red Poppies (2003)
  • The Song of King Gesar (2013)

Tashi Dawa 扎西達娃 (b. 1959) - novels, short stories

  • A Soul in Bondage: Stories from Tibet (1992)

Yangdron 央珍 (b. 1963) - novels

Uyghur 維吾爾族

Alat Asem 阿拉提·阿斯木 (b. 1958) - novels, short stories

  • Confessions of a Jade Lord (2019)

Wa/Va 佤族

  • Burao Yilu 布饒依露 - poems

Yi 彝族

Aku Wuwu 阿庫烏霧 (b. 1964) - poems, essays

  • Tiger Traces: Selected Nuosu and Chinese Poetry of Aku Wuwu (2006)
  • Coyote Traces: Aku Wuwu's Poetic Sojourn in America (2015)

Bamo Qubumo 巴莫曲佈嫫 (b. 1964) - poems, academic articles

Eni Mushasijia 俄尼·牧莎斯加 (b. 1970) - poems

Jidi Majia 吉狄馬加 (b. 1961) - poems

  • I, Snow Leopard (2016)
  • Words from the Fire: Poems by Jidi Majia (2018)

Jimu Langge 吉木狼格 (b. 1963) - poems

Lu Juan 魯娟 (b. 1982) - poems

Ma Deqing 馬德清 (1952-2013) - poems, novels

Na Zhangyuan 納張元 (b. 1966) - essays

*Shen has both Miao and Tujia ancestry, as well as Han. However, I see him listed most frequently as Miao.

More Resources on Ethnic Minority Literature:

Altaic Storytelling: The blog of translator Bruce Humes (translator of Confessions of a Jade Lord, among other works). Has a fairly broad focus, but he's written a lot about ethnic minorities.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Ethnic Literature: China has a thriving infrastructure to support the writing of and research into ethnic minority literature, and this is one of the larger institutions. I believe their research focuses more on oral traditions, but they have some information about contemporary writers as well.

Chinese Women Writers on the Environment: An anthology of eco-fiction by female ethnic minority writers.

Golden Horse Award 駿馬獎: This is an annual award for ethnic minority literature. The wikipedia link lists all the previous winners.

The Leeds Center for New Chinese Writing: Again not specific to ethnic minorities, but features several ethnic minority authors.

Paper Republic: This organization is devoted to translated Chinese writing and isn't specific to ethnic minority literature but has information about and translations of some of the writers on this list.

Poetry International: This website isn't specific to ethnic minorities or even to China, but many of the poets on this list have pages there with a few poems translated into English.

i wish there was a site that was like. video game hints. that were less walkthroughs and more “it’s in this general area” or “this puzzle is easy if you picked up all seven clues. are you missing one?” or “don’t forget you can [mechanic].” sometimes im stumped but i dont want someone to just tell me the answer…

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In a similar vein there is Before I Play which is a site that has contributions to kind of give you a heads up on stuff you probably would’ve liked to know ‘before you played’.

Warning that there may and will be spoilers, though they try to avoid them mostly.  It’s a good resource if you constantly worry you’re missing something important or doing thing wrong.

darth--nickels

TVTropes is such a weird website because the language (and I guess the 'culture') of the site was codified in an extremely specific era of internet use (mid to late aughties), and by members of an extremely specific and insular subgroup (nerds) that it codified all the tropes in what is effectively a dead language. No one talks like that anymore and yet because there's no renaming or updating, and in the 2000s we thought the future was forever babyyyy etc, it all continues to chug along as part of a world where self-respecting adults use words like "woobie". It's remarkable to me because its not a relic or preserved in amber (an online Pompeii like an abandoned geocities page), people are actively using it! Like finding an island where everyone speaks English in the style of Chaucer. I would be just as surprised if a man on the street greeted me "Hail and well met" as if someone in casual conversation deployed the phrase "crowning moment of awesome".

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Optical Camouflage using Retro-reflective Projection Technology (RPT) developed in 1998 at the University of Tokyo.

Beauty and the yearning that it engenders bind the soul to that for which it longs. The more powerful the beauty, the more powerful the longing, and the more powerful the bonds that are forged. “Beauty summons all things to itself,” writes St. Dionysios, “and gathers everything to itself." And the divine beauty, which is beyond beings, and thus can render from itself to beautiful beings the beauty they possess, generates a divine longing (erōs) that leads the soul beyond itself so that it belongs to that for which it longs. Moreover, as St. Gregory of Nyssa points out in commenting on the Song of Songs, the experience of this divine longing renders the soul insatiable: “Even as now the soul that is joined to God is not satiated by her enjoyment of him, so too the more abundantly she is filled up with his beauty, the more vehemently her longings abound.” Nor is this provocative beauty to be found only in the starry skies, for all around us we can find “some slight trace of the divine fragrance, which the whole creation, after the manner of a jar for ointments, imitates within itself by the wonders that are seen within it.”

Bruce V. Foltz, The Noetics of Nature: Environmental Philosophy and the Holy Beauty of the Visible (2013)

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Perhaps God reveals himself only at the very edge of the concepts we are obliged to use, leaving the blessed soul with a sense that something wondrous has happened but with no language appropriate to speak of it.

Kevin Hart, "The Experience of the Kingdom of God", The Experience of God: A Postmodern Response, ed. Kevin Hart and Barbara E. Wall

Sacred odors then were notably complex. As in the graves of would-be saints, the smell of sanctity often mingled with the stench of decay and death. Ancient cities, Thurkill wrote, were characterized by “the stench of human excrement, refuse and disease, accompanied with soothing floral scents and perfumes.” Sacred smells like frankincense and myrrh were used over the centuries to demarcate sacred space — but also to disinfect and disguise putrid areas. […]
This gave holy smells a fundamentally paradoxical nature. In a world where breathing foul-smelling air was seen as the cause of many diseases, incense was seen as a barrier against illness, and, with its holy associations, against demonic possession. But equally, powerful scents could be used to disguise a deeper decay, or to tempt the pious with worldly delights and bodies. Even bad smells had an ambiguous quality. After all, the rotting stench of a starved ascetic’s mouth was simply more proof of his profound holiness.
It’s this ambiguity about smell, […] that gives scent its power as a theological tool. In addition to its flexible moral significance, the experience of an odor often reflects our understanding of divinity. Like God, smell can surround you from an indeterminate source, filling spaces with its invisible presence. But unlike sound, which might do the same, to experience a smell it must first be taken within, in an act — breathing — that is both life-giving and volitional.

—John Last, The Centuries-Long Quest for the Scent of God, Noema Magazine

tumblr won’t let me reblog my last post with this video for some reason ,, but in case you don’t believe me about easter having zero pagan roots, here’s a man with a phd in theology and religion spelling it out for you!!

Rosary used by Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803) Leader of the Haitian Revolution Photo by Nicola Lo Calzo The Cham Project Museum of the Haitian National Pantheon

“Women might well ask, ‘Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well? (Num. 12:2), but if he has, men have not been accustomed to listening.”

— The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theory of the Holocaust by Melissa Raphael

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Among them, the Roman Catholic Womenpriests (hereafter Womenpriests), a reform movement internal to the Roman Catholic Church, are something of an exception. In 2002, the Womenpriests responded to the gendered exclusivism of the priesthood with decisive action: since the Vatican would not approve the ordination of women priests any time soon, these faithful women sought the sacrament by other means, resulting in the ordination of seven women on a vessel in the international waters of the Danube River. The river provided a neutral place for the ceremony, outside the jurisdiction of any local bishop who would be obligated to respond to irregular sacraments taking place within their diocese. Although the Vatican has accused the Womenpriests of inciting schism, they understand themselves to be independent but also fully Roman Catholic, with their priests in full succession in the line of Peter. By sidestepping papal authority on the matter of ordination, they not only challenge the perceived sexism and discrimination within the Catholic Church, but also rewrite the sacramental theology of priesthood, as well as the priest's sacerdotal function.

Claire Maria Chambers, "I Name Myself in Power": The Roman Catholic Womenpriests and the Performance of Relational Authority

“the concept of transgender may also be a much more fruitful way to think about god than simply adding female images to the overwhelmingly male language of tradition. using male and female imagery for god, as do some new prayerbooks and feminist liturgies, tends to reify and reinforce stereotypically masculine and feminine qualities. imagining a transgender god builds on the feminist project of recovering the female aspects of god but highlights the shifting nature of the divine gender and the ultimately problematic nature of gender categories. it incorporates the idea of multiplicity and fluidity as well as insistence on the inadequacy of male metaphors.”

— judith plaskow, “remapping the road from sinai: a conversation between rabbi elliot kukla & judith plaskow”

circling back around to the issue of writers being expected to do all their own goddamn marketing via social media these days, because it completely nixes the possibility of writers being weird shut ins, off-putting eccentrics, or misanthropes. 80% of the literary canon was written by weird shut ins, off-putting eccentrics, and misanthropes. if you weed out everyone who’s the wrong kind of insane to maintain a twitter presence, who on earth is left

I know it's tongue in cheek humor but it's also Truth actually.

I have barely the physical and mental strength, with my illnesses, to be a Writer.

I cannot for the life of me ever be a Published Writer in Today's World because I can't be an instagrammer youtuber hyper influencer go getter promoter publisher Twitter Presence. I'm far too ill for any of that.

So I scribble my little stories on the internet instead. it'd be cool to have them printed in book form one day so I can hold them in my hands and pretend I didn't have to be a One-Person Company Entrepreneur to just... write.

there are many reasons to seek out and become fans of indie movies and generally less widespread media but the craziest one is that like 90% of the time if you express admiration for an underrated movie the cast and crew will just be like. thank you. i’m following you on twitter now. and then you have to live the rest of your life knowing people involved in the making of one of your favorite hidden gems of cinema are seeing your tweets about having a whole blue hawaiian fishbowl to yourself at 4 PM

every time y’all say “I want to fuck that old man” then point at a 30 year old you are introducing an invasive species into the fuckable old man ecosystem