I Am China by Xiaolu Guo
Iona Kirkpatrick is a translator of Chinese into English. She receives a bundle of papers smuggled out of China through a publisher. Affected by the emotional, intellectual, and physical turmoil revealed in the smuggled diaries and writings, Iona develops into a vulnerable emotional person. The papers shape I Am China, by contemporary Chinese author Xiaolu Guo.
Punk rocker, Kublai Jian, tried to lead an impossible life as a literary freedom fighter in authoritarian modern China. Deng Mu was his adoring fan who for a time pierced his fiery idealism.
Iona is plunged into the story of Jian and Mu. The notes and diaries are full of drama and emotions, but the order and narrative are missing. Each page is a random puzzle-piece in an important story. We are drawn into the mystery as Iona muses on possible connections.
Her internet searches are fruitless. Probably, she considers, because of censorship of Chinese sites. The publisher who gave her the bundle has no information; however, he is anxious to have the materials formed into a book, which could find an avid literary market.
Slowly, she begins to see that Kublai Jian was a political radical who used his platform as a punk rocker to call for widespread freedom. He and Mu fell in love and eventually had a son. But Mu was extremely unhappy because Jian would not give up his ideology of freedom to give his family a quiet, safe life. He saw everything as political, and she saw life as a compromise. Already fractured, their relationship shattered when Jian was arrested on stage during one of his raucous concerts. He disappeared, and predictably re-surfaced in a political prison labour camp. Then he disappeared again, this time unpredictably re-surfacing in another country altogether.
Mu finds her own voice and almost accidently became a slam poet. She and Jian despair of seeing each other ever again, but their love remained, torturing both of them with the need to record their lives. In her London flat, Iona buries herself in the unintended puzzle and absorbs these deep emotions, melting her self-defences, and opening her soul to a different way of living.
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