War Trash by Ha Jin | Goodreads

War Trash by Ha Jin | Goodreads







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War Trash

by
Ha Jin
3.78 · Rating details · 3,114 ratings · 276 reviews
Ha Jin’s masterful new novel casts a searchlight into a forgotten corner of modern history, the experience of Chinese soldiers held in U.S. POW camps during the Korean War. In 1951 Yu Yuan, a scholarly and self-effacing clerical officer in Mao’s “volunteer” army, is taken prisoner south of the 38th Parallel. Because he speaks English, he soon becomes an intermediary between his compatriots and their American captors.With Yuan as guide, we are ushered into the secret world behind the barbed wire, a world where kindness alternates with blinding cruelty and one has infinitely more to fear from one’s fellow prisoners than from the guards. Vivid in its historical detail, profound in its imaginative empathy, War Trash is Ha Jin’s most ambitious book to date. (less)

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Paperback, 368 pages
Published May 10th 2005 by Vintage (first published January 1st 2004)
Original Title
War Trash
ISBN
1400075793 (ISBN13: 9781400075799)
Edition Language
English
setting
Korea


Literary Awards
Pulitzer Prize Nominee for Fiction (2005), PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (2005), Kiriyama Prize Nominee for Fiction (2005)


COMMUNITY REVIEWS
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3.78 ·
Rating details
· 3,114 ratings · 276 reviews




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May 17, 2018Pramodya rated it really liked it
An excellent book by Ha Jin.
It is set in the background of the Korean War where the Chinese red army soldiers of the new communist government were sent to into battle against the US and UN forces in the Korean Peninsula.

The story unfolds as a memoir written by a former nationalist who was forced to join the communist army of China and who was later captured by the US army in North Korea.
It lays out his experience as a Chinese POW who goes through many obstacles and personal problems while struggling with his own identity, his loyalties and emotions.

His role as an interpreter who excels in English gives him access to a more wide range relationship and insight into to his own comrades in the prison and the US soldiers who presides over them.

The writing is SUPERB. This is my first book by Ha Jin and I loved his ability to wove his fictional characters within factual historical events that occurred during the Korean War.
Overall an excellent read. (less)
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Mar 13, 2017Noah Appelbaum rated it it was amazing
Never before have I read fiction so meticulous as to send me verifying, multiple times, that it was not actually a memoir. A really incredible historic account of tragic, heartbreaking reality told through a tragic, heartbreaking story.
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Nov 13, 2018Nick rated it really liked it
This novel is Ha Jin's exploration of the fate of Chinese soldiers captured in Korea. As in much recent Chinese fiction, Mao's regime comes across as cruelly incompetent and callous, sending under-supplied and trained men across the border. As soldiers and as prisoners of war, they are pawns for the greater good of what was then a new regime, sent into war as a gesture to international communism and once in U.S. custody, used as bargaining chips. This is a story about how a nation betrays its own soldiers, of how a country's leadership uses ideology and language against its own people. "War Trash" does not have the mythic resonance of Orwell but that is not its aim. Ha Jin's aim is not allegory but reality, not to show how a regime uses language to extinguish independence and the ability to think, but to show how men are made to suffer for believing in it. (less)
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Jan 31, 2012Vasha7 rated it really liked it
This book is the "memoir" of the experiences of Yu Yuan, former student at the Huangpu Military Academy, during the Korean War, most of which he spends imprisoned by the Americans. Actually, you might say "during the Chinese civil war", because the effects of that conflict are everywhere. You might even say "during the Cold War". Yuan initially believes the reason he was given for his division being sent to Korea, to prevent the Americans from invading China; he has been told that the Chinese soldiers are heroes. But he soon begins to feel more like a pawn than a hero. He's seeing that his superiors are playing a political game, and national and global interests are being pursued in which individuals have no worth.

In part, this novel gives a view of the Cold War as seen very partially by its obscure narrator. But it is also a character study, as Yuan grows increasingly isolated. He often retreats into introspection, and reads when he can get printed material. He does not want to join any party or "side", and could not if he wanted to, having been involuntarily involved with both sides of the civil war, and thus not trusted by either. Yuan quietly resists being mere "war trash", used and thrown away. He can speak good English and can recognize individual Americans, addressing them by name. This ability saves him and others several times. He navigates through the dangers of being in the middle of the great conflict by negotiating with other people as individuals. But ultimately, this can't entirely save him, because these other people are just as manipulated as he is. (less)
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Sep 23, 2008Paul ZombieVintage rated it liked it
Shelves: have
This book is a ficitional account of a Chinese prisoner of the Korean War. Apparently things weren't all funny, serious, then funny/serious like the TV show MASH made them out to be. Yu Yuan, or whatever various false names he used throughout his inturnment was a Nationalist Chinese who was used like a pawn by the Communist regime that had taken over before the war. He was sent into Korea to keep the United States out of North Korea just so they would be that much further from mainland China.

At ...more
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Aug 12, 2012Michael Meeuwis rated it really liked it
How engaging should a novel about uniformly unpleasant experiences be? This novel is brief, and pretty much stripped down of psychology; instead, a series of things happen to the narrator, a PLA soldier during the Korean War who spends most of his time in Korean refugee camps divided between Communist and Chinese Nationalist soldiers and overseen by the American military. I found myself thinking of Defoe quite a bit: the narrator has also brief moments of agency, and is mostly just the victim of elaborately awful circumstances. (This lack of freedom within the narrative is literalized when he is forcibly tattooed with an anti-Communist slogan.) The narrative winds up being pretty relentlessly anti-Communist, I thought: over and over again, soldiers in the camps organize themselves into groups to persecute each other--and then, upon their eventual return to China, these groups are persecuted in return. In comparison to this, the novel is quite sympathetic to the American soldiers, whose political system--even as soldiers--allows them greater personal freedoms. As a whole, I found the novel, a series of events that happen to a mostly unreflective narrator, to be quite dry and distancing; on the other hand, that style is quite well-suited to the particularities of time and setting. (less)
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Sep 05, 2008Leah Shafer rated it really liked it
So thank your lucky stars you were not a member of the Chinese Army around the time of the Korean War. As Douglas MacArthur plotted to invade Mainland China, Mao sent thousands of bodies to defend. But it was more like a mow-down then starve-off.

This PEN/Faulkner award-winning novel is the fictional memoir of Yu Yuan, a POW at several camps and a frequent pawn between the pro-Nationalists and the Communists. It's a dense read with some serious history and military strategy. The scale of human suffering is so immense, it almost becomes routine. A few times, my eyes glazed over as I read about yet another camp riot or food strike. But Jin is a master storyteller--I just requested his other PEN/Faulkner winner, Waiting, because this book was so inspiring.

Bonus: My knowledge of the Korean War was increased by 3000%. And I learned that Jin is only the third author to win two PEN/Faulkner awards, the others being Phillip Roth and John Edgar Wideman. Impressive. He earned it with this novel. (less)
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Mar 07, 2016AJ (Andrea) Nolan rated it it was amazing
Shelves: 2016-books, author-of-color, award-wining, fiction
Fantastic book. Interesting topic of a Chinese POW in American POW camps, but Ha Jin's writing and character development really made it come alive. Yuan is such a complex character who represents the Everyman in that he isn't driven in the war by strong political agenda, he is just a soldier, but he also stands out with his intellect and love of English. Intriguing plot and setting development as well.
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Aug 21, 2015Stephanie rated it liked it
If you know nothing about the Korean War, you will learn quite a bit from the Chinese perspective. However, it is very difficult to connect with the narrator and I came away from the book feeling very detached.
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Jul 14, 2015Sean Owen rated it it was ok
"War Trash" is a strange kind of book. It's written as the memoir of a fictional Chinese POW during the Korean War. In keeping with the fictional memoir format the writing is simplistic and straight forward. The narrator catalogs chronologically his experiences from enlistment to capture and on to release. Jin adheres to the formula well and captures the voice of the character, but this doesn't necessarily make for all that interesting reading. The reader will walk away with a good understanding of life in these prison camps, but you won't necessarily have felt anything or reflect all that deeply on the experiences. The topic is interesting and Jin is a capable enough writer, but he's too constrained by the formula he's set out to follow to make this book work. (less)
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Dec 13, 2018D. Whittaker rated it really liked it
As a memoir it would have been interesting. As a work of fiction, it is remarkable. He had me believing it was a memoir, then little inconsistencies, disconnects would pop up. My greatest difficulty with this is how much is real and how much is not. I have the same problem with 19th Wife. I would like to know which is true and which is not. Maintaining a healthy skepticism this does provide insights into the Korean War I've not had. I recommend it, but feel free to question any 'truth' which doesn't ring true. (less)
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Nov 11, 2017Margaret Carmel rated it liked it
I learned a lot from this book, despite not enjoying it as immensely as it deserves.

War Trash is a historical fiction novel telling the story of a young Chinese soldier who is sent as a "volunteer" to fight on the North Korean side in the Korean War. He is taken captive and spends the majority of this book in various American POW camps.

What I found most interesting in this book is how Jin portrays the main character as a common man who doesn't have a zealous allegiance to either the Nationalis ...more
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Dec 24, 2014Earl Grey Tea rated it really liked it
Shelves: historical-fiction
I enjoyed reading one of Ha Jin's books when I was in high school and another later on in college. While I knew that this work would center around a part of life in China, I was surprised to learn that this book takes place during the Korean war. As an expat living in Korea, I always hear about this war from the view of the Americans, South Korea and the UN. Seeing the war from the point of view of a Chinese soldier made the book all that much more interesting.

Like the books that I've read before, Ha Jin's literary style is not obtuse at all, making the book an enjoyment, not a chore even though the store overall was quiet depressing. In addition to the other books that I read, the Chinese government isn't shown in a particularly pleasant light. After reading up on his Wikipedia page, I wasn't surprised that he emigrated to America after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

It is clear that he did plenty of research about Korea during the Korean war. A lot of he writes about Korea in this book reflects what I have experiences living here and what I have read in books about Korean history.

It's been awhile since I've read Waiting and the Crazed. I think I need to revisit the books and find more of his other work that I haven't read yet.(less)
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