Big Breasts & Wide Hips

to head up the church. This is Shangguan Jintong, the son of Shangguan Lu, a parishioner of very long standing.”

Actually, her introductions were unnecessary, because even before she spoke our names, God had already revealed our origins to one another. This bastard son of Pastor Malory and a Muslim woman, my half brother, wrapped his hairy arms around me and held me tight. With tears filling his eyes, he said:

“I have been waiting for you for a very long time, my brother!”

Mo Yan

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[1] An English translation appeared in 1993. Dates of subsequent translations appear after the original publishing date.

[2] This was the film that launched director Zhang Yimou’s international career.

[3] Sylvia Li-chun Lin, tr., “My Three American Books,” World Literature Today 74, no. 3 (summer 2000): 476. This issue of WLT includes several essays on novels by Mo Yan.

[4] M. Thomas Inge, “Mo Yan Through Western Eyes,” World Literature Today 74, no. 3 (summer 2000): 504.

[5] Rong Cai, The Subject in Crisis in Contemporary Chinese Literature (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), 159. Mo Yan further noted “that his purpose in creating the novel [was] to explore the essence of humanity, to glorify the mother, and to link maternity and earth in a symbolic representation.”

[6] David Der-wei Wang’s study deals superbly with this aspect of Mo Yan’s writing. See “The Literary World of Mo Yan,” WLT74, no. 3 (summer 2000): 487-94.

[7] Rong Gai, Subject in Crisis, 175.

[8] Li-Chun Lin, “My Three American Books,” 476. Mo Yan is also justifiably proud of his shorter fiction, a sampling of which has been published in English under the title Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh (New York: Arcade, 2001).

[9] We have collaborated on four novels, three from Taiwan and one, Alai’s Red Poppies, from China.