Xiao Goes Back to China

I heard about printers in China refusing to print books that might not pass a government censor, even if the books were intended to be sold and distributed in the US. So we decided to try it out for Xiao's second book, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life. This is what I heard back:

"I sent the files to my friend working in Shanghai Press and Publication Bureau yesterday. We got his opinion today. He said we cannot print this book. We will be economically punished if we print this book. I'm sorry we cannot help you this time. I'm afraid this book can only be printed in the states."

Xiao recently ventured back to China for his son's wedding and I asked him how it went. His response is below.

Generally speaking, the China trip was good (my son's wedding). But to me the most exciting thing was that I took the opportunity to see my two friends and former inmates who came to my home and had a long conversation with me there. I also received phone calls from other friends (also former inmates), who lived in other cities and couldn't come to see me. They were all glad that my books about the prison camps are being published in the U.S.

I was surprised that two versions of 1984 (translated by two translators) were published by big publishing houses in Beijing in the summer of 2010 alone. I found them in a book store in Shanghai, and the salesman told me that the books sold very well. I thought it was very interesting when I asked the salesman at Shanghai Book City why my books were not allowed to be published in China when 1984 (not one version, but two by two different publishers in Beijing) was already there. He shut me up by saying that 1984 is a parable but my stories are realistic.

I was not followed by the secret police there, and I heard many people say that they like the Communist regime.

========

I received two pictures from my brother today. My two former inmates, Wang and Zhou, both counterrevolutionaries like myself, came to see me at my mother's apartment before the New Year's Eve. Zhou, the man with a bald top is the character of He Zhen (The Visiting Suit) and Wang, an artist and calligrapher by profession, also appeared in the book. They had no trouble in meeting with me, but another former inmate, Fu, who is from a small town near Shanghai, was warned not to come to see me or talk to me on the phone. While the authorities didn't give me any trouble during my visit in China, they seemed well informed and to have effectively monitored those whom they thought might threaten the "security of the state."

Miscellany On Ice

I'm trying to catch up from a raunchy Sunday afternoon chock-full of awesome computer viruses and Disney Princesses on Ice.

Yesterday, Xiaoda Xiao's "searing" memoir-in-stories, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life got a pretty terrific review from The New York Times Book Review. They said, "[Xiao] recount[s] his struggle in sometimes unexpectedly lovely detail. Against great odds, in the grimmest of settings, he manages to find good in the darkness."

I was glad they seemed to focus on this point. Certainly, it's a bleak story, that of his imprisonment, but what is most striking to me about the work is Xiao and his fellow inmates' desire to survive with their dignities and passion intact.

This past weekend, Grace Krilanovich was interviewed by Jonathan Bastion of Aspen Public Radio as part of the program 'Page by Page's' special segment on "Young Fiction Masters." Grace was spotlighted alongside Adam Levin, author of The Instructions. Check it out!

And, last but not least, the blog Three Guys One Book spotlighted Emily Pullen as part of their Why We Love What We Do feature, allowing Emily to dish on her favorite parts of bookselling and working at Skylight. It's clear that Emily's exceptionally passionate about BOOKS and reading, and we feel really lucky to have her as part of our team.

Also, through Emily, we'll be sharing a booth with Skylight Books at this spring's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which we're genuinely excited about. More on that to come.

This is Mail Worth Rifling Through

Pics above from Bookshop Santa Cruz, Grace Krilanovich's hometown, where the book was a staff favorite for the year. For those who missed it, Grace had a great big essay on the LA Times website yesterday, talking about her experience publishing The Orange Eats Creeps and it's path toward her being selected as one of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35.

W Magazine took '5 Minutes' with Xiaoda Xiao to discuss his new memoir-in-stories, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life. This is an intense, incredibly ambitious book -- tell your friends and friends' friends about it!

The Fanzine, a great site that regularly features the work of some talented writers like Kevin Sampsell, Dennis Cooper, Trinie Dalton et al, ran an excerpt from Barbara Browning's forthcoming novel, The Correspondence Artist, called 'La Rire de la Meduse.' It's a long-ish excerpt, which is the nice thing about the web and a place like The Fanzine, that they can publish longer pieces and disregard word and page counts.

So that's a truck-load of reading material that'll hopefully keep you busy for a while.

Charge, Angry Youth

Heard this first at The Rumpus -- it's pretty incredible:

According to the BBC, a 46-year old female human rights activist was jailed in China over a message she posted to her Twitter-feed. The tweet was apparently mocking Chinese protestors of Japan who were smashing Japanese products in the streets over a debate concerning uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. The tweet encouraged protestors to attack the Japanese pavilion at the Shanghai Expo instead, with the attached message to "charge, angry youth."

The activist, Cheng Jianping, was sentenced to a year in a labor camp. Obviously, this underlines the absurd, on-going, and general absolute fucked-up-ness of the Chinese government.

I wanted to say again that we are making a section from Xiaoda Xiao's forthcoming The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life (Dec.) downloadable for free in Chinese. By doing so, we hoped his tale would be available to members of the population still affected by the extreme policies and daily hardships that Xiao describes who are only receiving and exposed to heavily censored news and stories.

Visiting Suit + The Nervous Breakdown Book Club

The popular literature and culture site, The Nervous Breakdown, has selected The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life by Xiaoda Xiao as their December book club selection.

The Visiting Suit is in good company. Launched this fall, the book is following previous selections Room by Emma Donoghue, Exley by Brock Clarke, and Half a Life by Darin Strauss.

Discussions will take place on The Nervous Breakdown's blog, The Feed, on the book club's Facebook page, and at the end of each month through an online, moderated, video interview with the author.

So be sure to check it out and take part in the conversation.

Visiting Suit Free E-Book!

We're making the first two stories from acclaimed writer and Chinese dissident Xiaoda Xiao’s forthcoming collection, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life, available for free as an electronic download in Chinese.

The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life is a memoir-in-stories about the author’s five years spent in a labor prison as a counter-revolutionary.

The recent recognition of the struggle of Chinese writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo by the Nobel Committee, as well as the Chinese government’s attempts to mute the story, underlines the fact that the oppression and suppression of the Chinese population is on-going, and that Xiao’s writing of his prison experience from over a quarter-century ago is as timely as ever.

In 1971, at the age of twenty, Xiaoda Xiao was arrested for accidentally tearing a poster of Chairman Mao. Without a trial, he was declared a counter-revolutionary and sentenced to five years in a labor prison, in his case a stone quarry on West Hill Island in Taihu Lake.

By making Xiao’s work downloadable for free in Chinese, his tale will be made available to members of the population still affected by the extreme policies and daily hardships that Xiao describes who are only receiving and exposed to heavily censored news and stories.

Stories from The Visiting Suit have appeared in Guernica Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Atlantic Monthly, DoubleTake, Confrontation, and Antaeus. Xiao’s writing has been compared to Solzhenitsyn by the Los Angeles Times and Kafka by the Washington Post, and he has been called “a masterful storyteller” by Bookforum. The Visiting Suit has been chosen as one of the most anticipated and interesting titles of Fall 2010 by Gawker and The Huffington Post.

A limited quantity of 500 free downloads will be permitted in PDF format exclusively through WeightlessBooks (weightlessbooks.com).

We'd love it if you'd help us spread the word . . .

Xiaoda Xiao's Second Book Coming Soon

Xiao's second book, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life, a memoir-in-stories of his five years spent in one of Mao's labor prisons, is currently at the printer and we just received color proofs in the mail. We're real excited with how it turned out. The cover painting is one of Xiao's works, titled 'The Barter Market.' There are also two other original paintings by Xiao that appear in the book in black and white: 'He Beings to Talk' and 'Release.'

The Visiting Suit has been chosen as one of this fall's most anticipated and interesting titles by Gawker and The Huffington Post.

Stories from the book have appeared in Guernica Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Atlantic Monthly, DoubleTake, Confrontation, and Antaeus.

If you are affiliated with a media review outlet and would like to receive an advance reading copy of The Visiting Suit, contact Brian Obenauf at brian [at] twodollarradio.com. We can now provide either a galley or digital copy of the book.

An Interview with Xiaoda Xiao

In late-May, while in NYC for Book Expo America, we made the trek up to Amherst, MA, to meet Xiaoda Xiao and shoot this video interview with him.

Xiao's book, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life (November), was recently spotlighted by both Gawker and The Huffington Post as one of this fall's most interesting/anticipated titles.

Xiao was also at this past weekend's Brooklyn Book Festival, reading as part of PEN's 50th Anniversary of their 'Freedom to Write' program. (We'll have pictures posted later this week.)

We'll See You Sunday!

If you're not in Brighton on Sunday (9/12), be sure to swing by the Brooklyn Book Festival anytime from 10AM - 6PM. It's always so much fun.

We'll have a booth where we'll be hawking our books at stupendous, once-a-year discounts: any book for $10; any 2 books for $15.

We'll also have tee shirts and catalogs, as well as some select titles from featherproof books and Chin Music Press.

This year, we'll be sharing a booth with our friends at The Brooklyn Rail, who are celebrating their 10th anniversary with a print anthology available for sale at the festival.

Xiaoda Xiao will also be reading as part of PEN's 50th Anniversary of their 'Freedom to Write' program, at 10AM on the International Stage.

And, lastly, you can read an excerpt called 'The Spring Festival' from Xiao's forthcoming The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life (11/2010) -- which was recently mentioned by The Huffington Post as one of the most anticipated books for the rest of 2010 -- in the September issue of The Brooklyn Rail.

Hope to see you there.

He Begins to Talk

More paintings from Xiaoda Xiao coinciding with The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life.
The Visiting Suit - The Barter's Market (above); He Begins to Talk (below).

"Never Forget - Struggle!"

Two new paintings by Xiaoda Xiao:

From the story, 'Release,' from The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life:

"A large portrait of Chairman Mao at the entrance of the street drew my attention. It was on a cement board about five feet high. The background was peeling away and I saw a rip as big as half of my palm on Mao’s chin. Beneath the portrait a quotation was printed in red: “Never forget – struggle!” But the other part of the slogan was hidden by a woman’s pink underwear
and blue skirt, which hung on a long piece of bamboo pole sticking out of a nearby window. All I could see was “Revolution is not a dinner party!”"

The Visiting Suit - Arrest

Here is the first chapter from Xiao's memoir-in-stories, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life. And below are two more paintings from his series that coincide with the book: 'Arrest,' which is from the first chapter of the book; and 'In the Women Inmate's Farm,' which is from a story where the male inmates were sent to assist the female inmates, who worked in the fields, during the busy harvest season.



We are currently printing galleys for Xiao's The Visiting Suit. If you would like to receive one, please write to brian[at]twodollarradio.com.

More Visiting Suit Paintings

Here are two more paintings by Xiaoda Xiao that collaborate with his forthcoming book, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life.

Top is a painting from the story "The Devil's Trill," in which Xiao's mother brings him his violin and the only place he is allowed to play is in the lavatory, earning himself the nickname "lavatory violinist."

The bottom painting is from the story "In the Prison Hospital."

The Visiting Suit Painting Series

In addition to being a tremendously talented writer and violinist, Xiaoda Xiao is also a wonderful painter. His new book, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life, chronicles Xiao's arrest at twenty years old for tearing a poster featuring 'The Great Leader's Image,' to his release from labor prison five years later.

Xiao is at work on a series of paintings depicting scenes from The Visiting Suit. Three of the paintings are completed: "The Visiting Suit" (title story, painting also featured on the cover to the book); "A Thorough Materialist Has Nothing to Fear"; and "The Devil's Trill."

The plan is to celebrate the release of The Visiting Suit with a gallery showing of Xiao's artwork in November. More details to come.

Xiao's Solo

The day after Book Expo America, I drove with a filmmaker friend and Brian up to Amherst, MA, to meet Xiaoda Xiao (author of The Cave Man) and to shoot an interview with him which we hope will help promote Xiao's memoir, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life.

Xiao is an incredible human being: a beautiful painter, a warm person, and an incredible violinist.

I shot some behind-the-scenes footage with my handheld camera of Xiao playing. Not captured in the frame were my goosebumps.

An excerpt from The Visiting Suit appears in the new issue of Guernica Magazine.

Forthcoming: The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life (11/2010)

“A masterful storyteller.” —Bookforum

“Xiaoda Xiao has made a stark and unforgettable contribution to the literature of imprisonment and survival.” —Scott Spencer

“When it comes to prison literature, China remains a great enigma. Whereas the Soviet Union gave us Alexander Solzhenitsyn, China has, of yet, produced no such comparable international voice in the modern age. Xiaoda Xiao’s The Cave Man is . . . a small start . . . a compelling look at Mao’s forced labor prisons.”
—Los Angeles Times

When Xiaoda Xiao was twenty years old, he tore a poster of Chairman Mao while inebriated. Several months later, Xiao was arrested in order to fulfill an absurd quota, and, without trial, declared a counterrevolutionary. He was sent to a labor prison on an island in Taihu Lake, where he worked in a stone quarry.

The Visiting Suit chronicles Xiao’s arrest through his release from the labor prison five years later.

The book, told in stories—which have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, DoubleTake, Confrontation, and Antaeus—focus equally on Xiao’s fellow inmates (a local theatre director, a veterinarian, a university professor), and capture their mutual everyday struggle to survive their sentences with dignity intact.

The cruelties inflicted upon the Chinese population by the government are ongoing, and The Visiting Suit provides a unique and important glimpse behind the curtain.

Xiaoda Xiao is the author of The Cave Man, a novel.

==========

If you are affiliated with a media review outlet and would like to receive an advance reader's copy of The Visiting Suit, please contract Brian Obenauf at brian [at] twodollarradio.com.