Ying Chen

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Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Ying is the family name here, Chen is the first name.

Ying Chen ( Chinese  应 晨 ; born February 20, 1961 in Shanghai , People's Republic of China ) is a Canadian writer of Chinese origin. She writes her works in French, so far only one has been published in her mother tongue, Chinese.

Life

Ying studied languages ​​and French literature at Fudan University in Shanghai. In addition to French and Mandarin, she speaks English, Russian, Japanese and Italian. From 1983 to 1989 she worked as a translator at the Institute of Astronautical Research in Shanghai. In 1989 she moved to Montréal and studied at McGill University . In 1991 she received her degree in creative writing . Her first novel was published in 1992. Before leaving China, Ying did not write in Chinese. To date, she has not published any texts in China or written in Chinese, but she has translated her third novel, L'Ingratitude , into Chinese herself. By 2003, Ying, mother of two children lived with her family in Magog ( Quebec ). Her current residence is in Vancouver .

writing style

Her works belong to the genre of migrant literature in Québec . Her writing style differs from other authors in the region, such as Michel Tremblay or Réjean Ducharne, who represent Quebec French . She in turn has a lively fascination with the classical French language. Her book Les Lettres chinoises illustrates this through the use of the vocabulary and syntax of simple and correct French ( français soutenu ).

About the role of memories and water in her novel La mémoire de l'eau , Ying Chen herself says: “The image of water is in almost all of my books, sometimes it is a spring, other times a stream - it can be a pond or be the sea. Their common characteristics are impregnability and strength. Everything is stored in writing, so to speak. ”She favors the letter form as the writing style. Ying is convinced that this writing style makes it possible to communicate very openly, directly and spontaneously. In her first six novels, her focus was on China, Québec, immigration or events that had a major impact on the author's life. However, these are not autobiographies : "It is true that I am not writing autobiographical literature in the narrow sense of the word to escape reality through the use of metaphors , dramatization and dynamics of language to create a truer reality." In the latest novel, its style and focus has changed, the space-time division is blurred and the protagonists are losing their materiality.

The choice of French language

Ying Chen would like to address the French rather than the Chinese readership in order to bring their native China closer to Westerners. (“The apparait naturel d'écrire dans une langue étrangère pour thunder un poids à la notion fondamentale d'étranger, comme pour interroger l'importance et de la signification des mots différents entre deux langues”). Your relationship to the French language is special, as the language is an expression and an explanation of how difficult it is to be Chinese today - a back and forth between the traditional and the modern.

Works (content)

In her first novel, La mémoire de l'eau , she tells the modern history of the 20th century in China from the perspective of women of different generations.

Her second work Les lettres chinoises , the epistolary novel that consists of 57 letters between the main characters Sassa and Yuan, two lovers and Sassa and Da Li, two friends. A central theme of the novel is the juxtaposition of Chinese tradition and North American modernity and life in exile.

Her third work, L'ingratitude, is written in the form of a journal at the beginning and becomes a monologue at the end . The novel is a revolt against tradition, against the status of mother and parents and the homeland. For this book she received the Prix ​​Québec-Paris , and La Presse magazine also awarded her the title Personnalité de la semaine .

Her fourth work, Immobile, describes the time and memories that are omnipresent.

Her sixth novel Querelle d´un squelette avec son double is a dialogue between a living phantom and a dead person, who are probably related to each other or even one and the same person. Several topics are covered, such as identity, social justice, doubts about eternity and the struggle for life. Ying wanted to use it to write a kind of theatrical novel.

Her seventh novel Quatres milles marches, un rêve chinois deals with a large number of personal texts by the author and his lifestyle. It is a kind of notebook (carnet d'écriture).

Nominations

  • 1995 Prix ​​Fémina : L'ingratitude
  • 1996 Prix du Gouverneur général: L'ingratitude

Awards

  • 1995 Prix Québec-Paris: L'ingratitude
  • 1996 Prix des Libraires du Québec: L'ingratitude
  • 1999 Prix Alfred Desrochers: L'immobile

Works

  • 1992: La mémoire de l'eau , Leméac
  • 1992: Les lettres chinoises , Leméac
  • 1995: L'ingratitude , Leméac; Actes Sud, 1995
    • Excerpt, trans. Uli Aumüller : The ingratitude. In: America writing differently. Quebec literature. Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2000, pp. 32-44
  • 1998: L'immobile , Boréal
  • 2002: Le champ dans la mer , Boréal; Seuil, 2002
  • 2003: Querelle d'un squelette avec son double , Boréal; Seuil, 2003
  • 2004: Quatre milles marches: Un rêve chinois , Boréal; Seuil, 2004
  • 2006: Le mangeur , Boréal; Seuil, 2006
  • 2008: Un enfant à ma porte , Boréal; Seuil, 2009
  • 2010: Espèce , Boréal; Seuil, 2010

literature

  • Brigitte Aubonnet: Ying, Chen . Online in Encres Vagabondes , July 2011
  • Francine Bordeleau: Ying Chen: la dame de Shanghai . In. Lettres québécoises: la revue de l'actualité littéraire , No. 89, 1998, pp. 9-10 online
  • Virginie Guibert: Biography sommaire: Ying Chen . In Littérature du Québec Catherine Pont-Humbert , Editions Nathan, Paris, 1998 online
  • Marie Claire Huot: Un itinéraire d'affiliations: l'écrivaine francophone, Ying Chen . In: Culture française d'Amérique , 2002, pp. 71-89
  • Christine Lorre: Ying Chen's 'Poetic Rebellion'. Relocating the Dialogue, In Search of Narrative Renewal. In: Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography , eds. Eleanor Ty, Christl Verduyn. Wilfrid Laurier University Press , Waterloo ON 2008, pp. 267-295
  • Johanne Paquette, Gabrielle Cauchy: Trois questions à Ying Chen In Boreal , Éditions du Boréal, Montréal 8 September 2010 online
  • Éric Paquin: Ying Chen, Madame et son fantôme . In Querelle d'un squelette avec son double de Ying Chen . Édítions du Boréal, Montréal 2003, p. 162 online
  • Georges Survenant (ie Hans-Jürgen Greif ): No Lotus in Quebec: Ying Chen, in: Documents - Documents. Journal for the German-French dialogue. Vol. 52, no. 4. Europa-Union , Bonn 1996, pp. 305-308
  • Marie Carrière, Curtis Gillespie, Jason Purcell Eds .: Ten Canadian Writers in Context. Robert Kroetsch Series. University of Alberta Press, Edmonton 2016, therein chap. to Ying: p: 1 - 18, by Julie Rodgers (with extracts from Le mangeur , P. 10 - 14, and L'ingratitude , P. 14 - 18) In Google books visible

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guibert, Virginie: Biography sommaire: Ying Chen . In Littérature du Québec Catherine Pont-Humbert , Editions Nathan, Paris, 1998. (available online) .
  2. ↑ Aubonnet, Brigitte: Ying, Chen . In Encres Vagabondes , July 2011. (available online) .: "L'image de l'eau est présente dans presque tous mes livres, elle est quelquefois une source, d'autre fois un courant, elle peut être un étang ou un océan . Leurs traits communs sont insaisissabilité et force. Tout est mémoire dans l'écriture, si l'on peut dire. "
  3. ↑ Paquin, Eric: Ying Chen, Madame et son fantôme . In Querelle d'un squelette avec son double de Ying Chen , Édítions du Boréal, Montréal, 2003, p. 162. https://voir.ca/publishing/article.aspx?zone=1§ion=10&article=26384 (Link not available ): "Il est vrai que je n´écrit pas une littérature autobiographique au sens strict, par pudeur, et aussi par besoin de sortir de la réalité brute en recourant à la Métaphore, à la dramatisation et au dynamisme du langage, afin d ' atteindre une réalité plus vraie ".
personal data
SURNAME Ying, Chen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 应 晨 (Chinese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION chinese writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Shanghai