Work
"Mo Yan"—meaning "don't speak" in Chinese—is a pen name.[7] In an interview with Jim Leach, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, he explains that name comes from a warning from his father and mother not to speak his mind while outside, because of China's revolutionary political situation from the 1950s, when he grew up.[3]Mo Yan began his career as a writer in the reform and opening up period, publishing dozens of short stories and novels in Chinese. His first novel was Falling Rain on a Spring Night, published in 1981. Several of his novels were translated into English by Howard Goldblatt, professor of East Asian languages and literatures at the University of Notre Dame.[8]
Mo Yan's Red Sorghum is a non-chronological novel about the generations of a Shandong family between 1923 and 1976. The author deals with upheavals in Chinese history such as the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Communist revolution, and the Cultural Revolution, but in an unconventional way; for example by portraying the suffering of the invading Japanese soldiers.[1] His second novel, The Garlic Ballads, is based on a true story of when the farmers of Gaomi Township rioted against a government that would not buy its crops. The Republic of Wine is a satire around gastronomy and alcohol, which uses cannibalism as a metaphor for Chinese self-destruction, following Lu Xun.[1] Big Breasts & Wide Hips deals with female bodies, from a grandmother whose breasts are shattered by Japanese bullets, to a festival where one of the child characters, Shangguan Jintong, blesses each woman of his town by stroking her breasts.[9] The book was controversial in China because some leftist critics regarded Big Breasts's portrayal of Communist soldiers as lazy, indiscriminate slaughterers, as an endorsement of the Kuomintang's role in fighting the Anti-Japanese War.[9]
Extremely prolific, Mo Yan wrote his latest novel, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out in only 42 days.[3] He composed the more than 500,000 characters contained in the original manuscript on traditional Chinese paper using only ink and a writing brush. He prefers writing his novels by hand rather than by using a pinyin input method, because the latter method "limits your vocabulary".[3]
Style
Mo Yan's works are predominantly social commentary, and he is strongly influenced by the social realism of Lu Xun and the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez. In terms of traditional Chinese literature, he is deeply inspired by the folklore-based classical epic novel Water Margin.[10] He also cites Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber as formative influences.[3] A major theme in Mo Yan's works is the constancy of human greed and corruption, despite the influence of ideology.[1] Using dazzling, complex, and often graphically violent images, he sets many of his stories near his hometown, Northeast Gaomi Township in Shandong province. Mo Yan says he realised that he could make "his family, people I'm familiar with, the villagers..." his characters after reading William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.[3]Mo Yan's writing is characterised by the blurring of distinction between "past and present, dead and living, as well as good and bad". His female characters often fail to observe traditional Chinese gender roles, as the mother in the Shangguan family in Red Sorghum fails to bear her husband sons, and is instead an adulterer, becoming pregnant with girls by a Swedish missionary and a Japanese soldier, among others. Male power is portrayed cynically in Big Breasts & Full Hips, and there is only one male hero in the novel.[9]
Relationship with other writers
Mo Yan strongly advocates that Chinese authors read foreign authors and world literature.[11] At a speech to open the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, he discussed Goethe's idea of "world literature", stating that "literature can overcome the barriers that separate countries and nations".[12]The Chinese writer Ma Jian has deplored the lack of solidarity and commitment of Mo Yan vis-a-vis other Chinese writers and intellectuals who were punished and/or detained despite the freedom of expression recognized by the Constitution.[clarification needed][13]
Mo Yan has been criticised for hand-copying Mao Zedong's Yan'an Talks on Literature and Art in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the speech.[14]