I have something a bit different to say here, today. You may consider it off-topic, but at the same time it doesn't quite feel right making a new thread to say this (or posting it elsewhere).
If you'll be so kind as to hear me out, I'd like to take a few minutes to talk to all of you about one of my favorite authors, my favorite stories, and a small incident that made me very happy for a brief moment, and then very sad.
I would like to talk about
Hong Xiao.
Hong Xiao could be called China's first feminist author, and was active in the interwar period (before
things got bad). In China, she's moderately well-known and respected, but is virtually unknown elsewhere. Very little of her work has been translated into English, and she doesn't exactly have an extensive library of work in the first place, having died at a very young age.
I believe she was exceptionally skilled when it comes to writing short stories. To my knowledge, only two of her short story collections have been translated into English:
The Dyer's Daughter and
The Field of Life and Death: Tales of Hulan River. It is the former I'd like to talk about today.
Specifically the titular short story in the collection,
The Dyer's Daughter, which is one of my all-time favorites. It's a brief, somewhat melancholy tale, focusing on the clumsiness of childhood -- of cruelty, kindness, regret. It is
exquisite. And beautifully translated. Personally, I'd rank it as one my all-time favorite short stories; much like Hermann Hesse's
Strange News From Another Star, it's one I frequently find myself returning to, loving just as much on each subsequent reread.
For a very long time, had only
one review/rating on Amazon --
mine. It's a very clumsily-written review, so please don't read it. Regardless, it was kind of a lonely position for me, since I adore the book so much.
And, today, I discovered that -- finally! -- it had accrued a second review/rating! How exciting for me! Or not: as it turns out, Amazon let's people rate products
without writing reviews, and whoever this person was -- this abominable, tasteless, barely-sentient sack-of-mud -- they chose to give it a single star.
And, I mean, obviously everyone's entitled to their own opinions, and tastes will vary, and I absolutely would never expect everyone else -- or even anyone else, necessarily -- to share in my own high opinions here. But there is absolutely no world where a single-star is
even close to being adequate,
in any context.So I find myself in a bit of a weird position here. Basically, I'd like to implore y'all to maybe take a look at the book's summary on Amazon, and/or read a little about Hong Xiao on her Wikipedia page (linked above), and if any of it seems interesting to you, please consider reading
The Dyer's Daughter. At least the titular story, if not the whole collection. And if you read it and happen to like it, I sure would be happy to see someone else give it a review on Amazon,
/hint /hint.
....
...Feels kind of weird to say all that, almost like I'm shilling for a specific author, and I suppose I kind of am? But in fairness, Hong Xiao's been dead for 80 years, so I'm not shilling for anyone's benefit here but my own.