MCLC: Mueller says Mo Yan choice a 'catastrophe' (2)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Bill Goldman <billgoldman at mac.com<mailto:billgoldman at mac.com>>
Subject: Mueller says Mo Yan choice a 'catastrophe' (2)
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Perhaps a relatively small point, but to describe Mo Yan as "the first
Chinese writer to win the literature award" [i.e. the Nobel] is simply
false, since Gao Xingjian won it in 2000. I don't think that western media
ought to effectively kowtow to the Chinese government's campaign of
disinformation, i.e. in this case that Gao is not really Chinese. The only
sense in which that is true is that he lives in exile in Paris, having
been driven to leave China by the state's refusal to allow any of its
citizens to write freely.

I myself discovered, when teaching in a university if Beijing, that my MA
students of English Literature did not believe me when I told them of Gao,
nor had any of them heard of him. However, a few days later, one or more
of them said to me "You were right about Gao Xingjian winning the Nobel
Prize."

Bill



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