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Title: WAITING - Politics as Personal
Review: This novel provides an excellent fictional counterpoint to Nien Cheng's autobiographical Life and Death in Shanghai. Ha Jin's characters' internalization of political rhetoric and submission to the whims of the dictatorship under which they live becomes understandable when viewed in the glare of Mrs. Chen's ordeal. China was and continues to be a place that expects total fealty to the State and to its normative values, stripping the wayward as well as the loyal of their humanity. This novel illuminates the slow erosion of the human spirit that accompanied the characters' acceptance of their fate as opposed to the physical punishment meted out to Mrs. Chen and others who strove to maintain individuality under the weight of their society's crushing demand for conformity.
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