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War Trash
by Ha Jin · 2004
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Set in 1951–53, War Trash takes the form of the memoir of Yu Yuan, a young Chinese army officer, one of a corps of “volunteers” sent by Mao to help shore up the Communist side in Korea. When Yu is captured, his command of English thrusts him into the role of unofficial interpreter in the psychological warfare that defines the POW camp. Taking us behind the barbed wire, Ha Jin draws on true historical accounts to render the complex world the prisoners inhabit—a world of strict surveillance and complete allegiance to authority. Under the rules of war and the constraints of captivity, every human instinct is called into question, to the point that what it means to be human comes to occupy the foremost position in every prisoner’s mind.…
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"War Trash is about a young Chinese army officer sent by Mao to help the Communist side in Korea. When the Americans capture Yu, his knowledge of English means that he becomes the unofficial interpreter in the POW camp. All he wants to do is return to his fiancée and widowed mother, but he’s trapped by politics. It’s written by a young Chinese author who came to the United States. He wrote this book in his second language and still won lots of awards for it, which is very impressive. I think this is a really good book to show the West more about what is going on in China. People think that it’s all about economic growth but there is so much more to our history than that."
"Ha Jin’s novel is obviously based on either his experience or his father’s experience of the Korean War. There are some very stark and striking descriptions. He didn’t have access to South Korea, but he has this wonderful ability to treat everybody fairly and to listen to the songs of women guerrillas that were captured by South Korean prison camps and enjoy listening to them. He does the same thing with North Korean and Chinese soldiers and the civilians who were caught up in the battle. I just thought that it was a very clear-eyed, true account. It rings very true when you know what is in the archives, even though he didn’t do archive research at all. It was based on a very truthful account of soldiers – particularly Chinese – coming to Korea and fighting there for two and a half years."