Original title: "Interviews with Chinese Women Writers": Seeking truth and beauty from her vision.
The work is filled with the warmth and sensibility of the two sides of the conversation, and the stories they write are in awe and compassion for all things in the world, and their own stories reflect unparalleled courage and resilience.
Dai Yaoqin. The best writer interviews are an extension of writing and reading. This is the recommendation written by writer Yan Xue for "Interviews with Chinese Women Writers".
Indeed, "Interviews with Chinese Women Writers" is a "benchmark" interview book, which accompanies readers to open up the literary world of 30 Chinese women writers, and meticulously creates an "extension of creation and reading". As a reader, a journalist and a researcher, Shu Jinyu sincerely communicates with the writers, completing the combing of the life experiences of six generations of female writers and the refinement of literary concepts. Reading it, I deeply feel that this interview is not only literary and nutritious, but also shows wonderful stories and abundant knowledge, which stimulates readers' interest and reflection on literature and art. It also has a nourishment for life, and "writing" and "reading" interact in a creative path built by dialogue, sublimating empathy.
This is also a very useful reference book for "creative writing". Interviews provide a kind of close-up observation of excellent writers, and readers can get close to the creator's heart under the guidance of questions, in the exchange of ideas between the two sides of the dialogue, understand her relationship with family, society and the world, and clarify each of his creative explorations or turns. At the same time, it also continues to expound the two traditional questions of "what to write" and "how to write", and further explores the depths of Suozhu to solve the two practical questions of "why do you start writing" and "why do you continue to write". The courage, determination and perseverance reflected in the continuous writing journey of these women writers can inspire many people who love literary creation, regardless of age, region or occupation, to express themselves and dare to pursue their dreams.
As representative writers of different generations, the interlocutors in the book all discuss some common topics of writing, which is not only the creative inspiration of their personal experience, but also the creative experience accumulated in their lives. I've distilled three key words that are closely related to "creative writing".
First, childhood reading. Women writers admit that childhood reading directly helped them in their subsequent literary journey, especially mentioning the key role of children's books and classical poetry, and they write fairy tales for children and adults with pure hearts and hearts. When she was a child, she read "Grimm's Fairy Tales", "Alice in Wonderland" and a library of children's books, and she emphasized that "poetry is my good friend and my lifelong companion", and thus established "sincerity" and "elegance" as her basic writing style. Ye Wenling reads voraciously in the reading room of the town, and at the age of 13 she is already a local writer. Chen Zufen bluntly said that "my world is a fairy tale world", she believes that "fairy tales teach you truth, goodness and beauty", and in any genre of writing, she tries her best to maintain a fairytale-like feeling and writing. Chen Ran was surrounded by reading throughout his student years; At the age of five, she came into contact with works such as "Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales"; Xu Xiaobin watched "Dream of Red Mansions" and "Strange Tales from Liaozhai", and chose to read Russian and Soviet literature in primary school; Ye Mi was also four or five years old when he read "The Stone Record" and "Pushkin's Anthology". In the interview, a periodical appeared - "Juvenile Literature and Art", which formed an indissoluble bond with many female writers. Ye Guangqin read "Juvenile Literature and Art" when she was a teenager, and 60 years later, she wrote children's literature with the literary concept of "not grasping, not being reserved, and not holding up". Zhang Kangkang, who was in the fifth grade of primary school, had published his works in Juvenile Literature and Art, while Wang Anyi was the editor of Juvenile Literature and Art. Reading and writing promote each other, building a closed loop of learning from input to output.
Second, land. The hometown and long-term residence of female writers imperceptibly intervene in their creation. It should be said that the region lays out the background board of literature. Ye Guangqin said, "Beijing has my roots", and the years of his temporary post in Shaanxi are the support for his writing. She believes that the understanding and communication between writers and the people is "too good to fertilize and cultivate the soil" for literary creation. Bi Shumin believes that she has benefited from the 11 years of **Ali's life, and the hard life has polished her psychological maturity and hardness, "I don't panic when I encounter something, and I am not afraid of death unforgettable." reverence for nature and no unrealistic illusions about human nature". Ma Lihua has been rooted in ** for 27 years, and the Tibetan area has made her deeply understand that "where happiness is, where is the homeland; Whoever is close is a brother". Wang Anyi has repeatedly said that there is a "tense" relationship with Shanghai, "all your experiences are in this place, and it is difficult to explain this relationship with love and dislove". Shanxi gradually woke up in Jiang Yun's heart, "I am a person, and everything related to me is largely shaped by it. It is hidden in my body and my destiny, and it will never be abandoned". Suzhou hovers under Fan Xiaoqing's pen; Wang Xufeng is dedicated to building "Hangzhou on paper", with West Lake as the central landmark, and is committed to deeply cultivating Chinese elegant culture. Chi Li said that her relationship with Wuhan is a "dog and kennel", no matter how far she runs, she will always come back. Chi Zijian has always cherished the black soil of Northeast China, and she emphasized that without her hometown, there would be no writing for her. One of Lin Bai's suggestive arguments is that she says the gravitational pull of local life in Guangxi is "a breath". Indeed, each region has a sense of "breath", and "breath" is gathered by history, tradition, language, and personal experience.
Third, there is history. The 30 female writers have a broad creative vision, with different themes and historical perspectives, taking into account the "depth of time" and "the extension of space". Family history writing is inseparable from character carving. He Jiesheng uses himself as the protagonist to reproduce the experience of teenagers; Shao Li writes about her parents' generation and family, from "judging the father" to "knowing the father", which makes her once again immersed in history, emotion and destiny. Huoda takes the path of history and literature, she believes that "the end of the historian is the starting point of the ** family", and the "play" of "joke" history is not a "game", but a "drama". Ling Li and Zhao Mei developed ancient Chinese history, and focused on showing "how profound and moving the millennium years that have been precipitated". The writing of local history is in line with the development history of modern China. Rural life cultivates an iron-clad outlook on life and the world; Yin Xueyun uses emotion as the starting point to write about the countryside and the grassroots; Ma Lihua tracks the changes and "reproduces" the beauty of the landscape, humanity and science in Tibet in a documentary style. Whether it is a "Dongba story" or an urban story, Lu Min first sets history as the background in the two themes of "Dunhou Countryside" and "Urban Dark Disease", and then uses a lengthened "close-up" lens to examine human nature. Ge Pingping and Qiao Ye used the "fieldwork" method to write Taihang to record the history and modernization process of the countryside. Xu Kun, Ye Mi, and Wei Wei depict the repeated ups and downs of the city and people in the tide of the times: Ye Mi follows social changes with the idea of "writing China in the south of the Yangtze River"; Wei Wei is based on the "migratory state" to create an "abstract hometown"; Xu Kun has always adhered to the principle of "passing with the times and establishing a biography for the people, and especially hopes that he can truly record the era in which I live".
Focusing on reading and writing, the vast history and the land beneath our feet, the warmth and sensibility of both sides of the dialogue permeate this "Interviews with Chinese Women Writers". It uses emotional healing to break the theory of hypocrisy**, from which we understand the writer, in fact, it is also to analyze life and reflect on ourselves.
As Zong Pu said, "I think life is like this, as you move forward, you will disappear, the old will disappear and there will be a new one." "The times are constantly sprouting new problems and throwing new propositions to writers, and literary writing is inevitably entangled in trekking, looking back, turning, retreating and climbing. The stories they write are filled with awe and compassion for all things in the world, and their own stories reflect the innocence and unparalleled courage and resilience of the people who have always sought truth and beauty.
Life and writing require such courage, perseverance, and optimism – "That's a new challenge, so let's meet it happily." ”
The author is a doctor of literature from Nanjing University and an associate professor in the Department of Chinese at Dalian University of Technology).
*: China Women's Daily).