Mo Yan: Laureate of the 2009 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature

Abstract

Mo Yan Laureate of the 2009 Newman Prize forChinese Literature Haiyan Lee 3 On March 5, 2009, the acclaimed Chinese novelistMo Yan received the first Newman Prize forChinese Literature at a ceremony held on thecampus of the University ofOklahoma in Norman. The prize honors Harold J. and Ruth Newman, whose generous endowment for a chair enabled the creation of OU's Insti tute forU.S.-China Issues, and was initiated by the institute's director, Peter H. Gries, who sought my col laboration as consultant and jury coordinator. Taking WLT's Neustadt International Prize for Literature as our model, we envisioned a merit-based prize to be awarded biennially in recognition of outstanding achievement inprose or poetry by a living authorwriting inChinese. In the spring and summer of 2008, we assembled a juryof seven distinguished literaryexpertswho nominated seven candidates, read their representative works, and selected the winner in a transparent voting process. As the inaugural laureate, Mo Yan received a commemorative medallion, a certificate, and $10,000. Mo Yan was nominated by theprominent translatorHoward Goldblatt, who also translated his latest novel, LifeandDeath Are WearingMe Out. The novel iswritten in a quasi-traditional narrative style and uses the Buddhist trope of transmigration toweave a dense web of human and animal lives convulsed by China's five decades of revolutionary transformations. The jurors included Kirk Denton (Ohio State University), Howard Goldblatt (University ofNotre Dame), Liu Hongtao (BeijingNormal University), Peng Hsiao-yen (Academia Sinica, Taiwan), Xu Zidong (LingnanUniversity, Hong Kong), Zhang Yiwu (BeijingUniversity), and Zhao Yiheng (SichuanUniver sity).They nominated the following sevenwriters and representativeworks, respectively:Yan Lianke's Dreams of Ding Village (2006),Mo Yan's LifeandDeath AreWearingMe Out (2006), Jin Yong's TheDeer and the Cauldron (1969-72), Zhu Tianxin's Old Capital (1997), Wang Anyi's The Song ofEverlastingSorrow (2000), Wang Meng's The Transformer(1985), and Ning Ken's The City of Masks (2001). The nominees were well-established maestros as well as rising stars based in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The genres and themes were wide ranging: from magical-realist renditions of theChinese countryside caught up in the turmoil of land and market reform,a historical panorama that both crowns and radically revises the martial-arts novel tradition, a postcolonial exploration of city and memory, an epic portrayal ofmodern Shanghai as condensed in the lifeof a former Miss Shanghai turned petty urbanite, and a satire about the predicament of the semicolonial intellectual, to Internet installment fictionabout drifters and seekers. The diversity and strengthof thenominations posed a great challenge for the jury.Yet Mo Yan emerged as the consensus winner after four rounds of voting by positive elimination. Mo Yan isno stranger to the readers ofWLT. In Summer 2000 he was featured in thesepages along with scholarly surveys on his lifeand work. This time, we highlighthis accomplishment as an ingenious storyteller. Interspersed with Mo Yan's acceptance speech and Howard Goldblatt's nomination statement are threevignettes thatboth announce and showcase his ties to the traditionalChinese artof storytelling exemplified by the Qing author Pu Songling (1640-1715). These are thenfollowed by two scholarly essays, one ofwhich elucidates Mo Yan's indebtedness to thenativist traditionsofmodern Chinese literature, while theother explores the comic spirit thatpervades his writings and endears him to filmmakers like Zhang Yimou. Haiyan Lee isAssistant Professor of Chinese literature at Stanford University. She isthe author of Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950, winner of the Association for Asian Studies2009 Joseph Levenson Book Prize. ...