MCLC: Jiang Qisheng's My Life in Prison

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: jim dew <jameserwindew at yahoo.com>
Subject: Jiang Qisheng's My Life in Prison
***********************************************************

Jiang Qisheng's _My Life in Prison_ is to be published by Rowman &
Littlefield in February. I am including a description of the work below.
You
can read an early review of it at: http://www.hrichina.org/crf/article/5718

My Life in Prison: Memoirs of a Chinese Political Dissident
By Jiang Qisheng
Translated by James E. Dew and edited by Naomi May
Foreword by Andrew J. Nathan and Introduction by Perry Link

Rowman & Littlefield, February 2012
Approx. 230pp
ISBN: 978-1-4422-1222-0

In May of 1999, writer and university lecturer Jiang Qisheng was arrested
for circulating a call for commemoration of the victims of the June 4th
crackdown ten years earlier. My Life in Prison is a touchingly humane and
perceptive account of daily life in the Beijing Detention Center, where the
author was held for two years while the courts deliberated on what charges
to bring against him, and then of the two months spent in the more brutal
Transfer Center after he was finally found guilty of "incitement to subvert
state power" and awaited final transfer to the Beijing Number Two Prison
where he served out the remainder of a four-year sentence.

The men who shared the crowded cell with the author ranged from drug
dealers and Falungong adherents to white-collar economic criminals and
murderers. Some of them, either deemed by prison authorities to be prone
to violence or as additional special punishment, spent their days and
nights in handcuffs and shackles. The author treats all of these men with
sympathy. They respect him because he is a teacher, older than they are,
and because he is in for "speaking the truth" rather than for "real
crime." The author, with great poignancy, shares their stories, as well as
his own, with readers of the book.

My Life in Prison is a somewhat abridged translation of《看守所雜記》by 江棋
生,
published in Hong Kong by Open Magazine Press (開放雜志社) in 2005 (ISBN:
962-7934-15-1). For Chinese language teachers or students who would like to
compare the translation to the original Chinese text, the latter is also
readily available on the web.

You can see the publisher's description at:

https://rowman.com/ISBN/978-1-4422-1222-0

If you would like to buy the book, go to the publisher's link, click "Add
To Cart," and on the order form at checkout, enter the promotional code
4W11MLIP to see the list price of $45 reduced to $29.95. I think this
discount is good only to Feb 1. Apparently a shipping an handling charge of
$5 will be added.

Jim Dew