I have straightened up the grammatical style of the original translation that had attempted to portray the “untranslatable” style of the Chinese text and the author’s insistence upon “maintaining the awkwardness of her writing instead of smoothing it out for English readers.”
Although I can appreciate that desire, I chose instead to alter some of the
sentence constructions that might come across as more a result of poor proofreading than of
conscious choice by the translator. I’m going to hope this won’t be a problem,
and I apologize in advance if anyone is offended by my editing choices. But then again, if you want to see what has been "changed" you ought to visit your favorite bookseller and get yourself a copy of this novel.
In another blog I have offered there merest handful
of thoughts about this novel and how it displays the phenomenon of Silence as a
response to Historical Trauma.
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Excerpts:
And in the daytime? In the daytime this village was
women’s territory. They survived their husbands, their children lived in
cities, their long lives were bitter rather than sweet. They farmed small
parcels of land to support themselves, and visiting each other was the only
entertainment for them. …In the chaos of diseases and poverty, their lives
proceeded without missing a beat.
The day Ahmam was born, Mom had to cut the umbilical
cord herself. …Maybe in the full moon night of Ahmam’s birth, her mother’s
shouts out of the tearing pain had provided their neighbors with the best
materials for their dreams. And as the life in this village had finally
stabilized, all the men raced to their graves like the fastest one was the
winner. Ahmam’s Dad died at fifty-four, compared to other men in this village,
he had a relatively long life....
When Granduncle San was executed, Ahmam’s mother had
just married her father. She was shocked by the incident and for a long time
had not recovered from the horror. It was a deep scar for the whole village. At
this time many of them were killed or disappeared after secret arrests…. Ahmam
had only discovered the whole thing in recent years because no one in her
village wanted to talk about it. But Ahmam always knew there must be something
happening to Grandaunt San: her life story couldn’t be as plain as that of an
ordinary countryside woman.…
“At that time, the lives of others could be traded
for your own. Survival was the only thing anybody fought for. Every survivor deserves
respect. Jinju, whether we are suffering or not depends on how we look at
ourselves. No matter what happened, I am grateful.” Grandaunt San peeled a
tangerine carefully while speaking.….
“In this village, women of my generation were mostly
widows. When our husbands died we couldn’t raise enough money to bury their
bodies. Even our tears were exhausted. Your uncle has had a long life because
he only had to sell his farm to support his family. People in this village were
either murdered by the government, died of hard work or were killed in
merciless natural disasters. Your Dad, though, he died because of his
unrestrained drinking, so compared to the situations of others I guess we
really don’t have much to complain about.”
Looking around this bleak village of women, each
woman was an island wafting in the waves. Over the past millions of years,
these islands had nourished insects, reptiles and the female mammals living in
them.
All of a sudden, Ahmam felt herself finally see the
light through the thick fog that had blinded her before, she read her name to
the earth: “Chun-Mam!”
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