Timely, urgent, and wholly authentic, Running Away gathers a chorus of migrant voices to document a desperate journey toward freedom.
Vivid, honest, and boldly resilient, Ha Jin’s latest poetry collection, Running Away, adopts a chorus of narrative voices to tell stories of desperate migration. Poems appear as interviews and confessions, and as a catalogue of departures—journeys that feel “like coming back from death.” These poems survive. Often following the path of undocumented Chinese migrants trekking to the United States by way of South America, speakers navigate dangers and visceral fears, authoritarian governments and hope. They are pulled forward by the future and a desire for liberty in a new country—for “the land destined to become their home.” As poems shift in language and geography, as they cross borders and trek the Rio Grande, as they jump ship and flee countries, Ha Jin unambiguously celebrates departure and praises freedom. Running Away reaches for a future where every door is open to us.
ISBN: 9781556597343
Format: Paperback
“Still, What’s Hard Is to Depart”
My uncle used to say,
“Do not romanticize departures
unless you’re clear about how to arrive.”
Indeed I’m scrambling away like a bee
fleeing its hive in flames.
When you are a refugee
you cannot plan beyond this day.
Arrival is a bay wrapped in a fog far away,
to which we move to find out
what fate has in store for us.
So I must celebrate every departure.
