JSC Jaipur Int'l Literary Festival: Chinese Writer Roll-call?
By Bruce Humes, published January 20, 2010, 5:26a.m.
Alerted by the Literary Saloon that "Asia's leading literary festival" is on in Jaipur Jan 21-25, I checked out the list of speakers.
Wow! Around 175 speakers, including many authors and some journalists, academics and even translators. Granted, the overwhelming majority are Indian or live there, but even so, their countries of origin make an interesting read: Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Burma, as one might expect, and the US and the UK are well represented too; but also France, Spain, Italy, Antigua, Congo, Nigeria and South Africa.
And---unless I missed it---not one speaker from anywhere in China.
Comments
May be China is not a literary country.
May be some one from Tibet, or Xinjiang or Taiwan is presenting.
That would be a good way to ensure the rest of the world have an open forum for literary discussion.
Or, may be China is not of this world. If we want to listen to them, we have to go to the moon.
Bill Rich, January 20, 11:17a.m.
Or, for those preferring destinations closer than the moon, the Paper Republic "Authors" section, where we have an outstanding list of writers from A to Z (literally: "A Lai" to "Zhu Wen") that includes alternative voices such as Tibetan writer/blogger/activist Woeser, London-based novelist Ma Jian, U.S.-based poet Bei Dao, a number of writers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and many, many independent writers from the mainland. Do we need to add more names to this list? Yes. Are Chinese writers still undervalued in the global literary scene? Yes, a resounding yes. Part of this is geopolitics, part is censorship, part is market forces, but there's still an awful lot of western cultural hubris at work. China - and by China, I mean every little piece of it: the diaspora, the dissidents, the mainland mainstream and the mainland counter-culture - every little piece of it matters, and it's still getting short-shrift among readers. We aim to change that.