Trying to Find Beauty Behind Bars

Liao Yiwu was a reluctant prisoner. He was not interested in politics as a young man, but his first political poem betrayed him. Liao Yiwu ended up in prison for four horrible years. Most of the book describes his experiences in prisons and a labor camp.

Having translated his work before, the translator has done a wonderful job making the book readable. Chapters are short and to the point, although the book is long and detailed. It is easy to pick the book up and put it down in short segments. The only difficulty in reading "For a Song and a Hundred Songs" is the disturbing nature of his descriptions of prison life.

Of great interest to me were the sociological dynamics of the prison. Prisoners were put in cells with nearly a dozen other men, ranging from murderers and thieves on death row to migrant workers. Inmates created their own hierarchies as part of a barbaric form of control that helped the prison authorities maintain the prison. Inmates regularly raped and tortured other inmates in their collective cells. Suffering from diseases and lice, as well as being psychologically and physically tormented, very few of Liao Yiwu's fellow prisoners were in good shape. Thus, the author of a poem spent two horrible years in limbo until his trial. The trial landed him in a forced labor camp for two more years. Compared with the prison, the labor camp was a resort.

Liao Yiwu describes several of the inmates in great deal. Some of those inmates were described even further in his book "The Corpse Walker," which I also recommend. There are many character studies of people stuck in China's underclass.

In addition, through the book, the reader gets a good sense of some of the mass political movements that occurred in China in the 1980s and early 1990s. ( )

It's rare that I dislike a book or an author, but I so disliked Liao Yiwu's chauvinistic attitude towards women and high self-regard for his art that I am ashamed to say that I could not dredge up the compassion for his story as a victim of the Chinese paranoia regarding Tiananmen. ( )