First Impression Friday will be a meme where you talk about a book that you JUST STARTED! Maybe you’re only a chapter or two in, maybe a little farther. Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.

Synopsis:

Ha Jin’s masterful new novel casts a searchlight into a forgotten corner of modern history, the experience of Chinese soldiers held in U.S. POW camps during the Korean War. In 1951 Yu Yuan, a scholarly and self-effacing clerical officer in Mao’s “volunteer” army, is taken prisoner south of the Thirty-eighth Parallel. Because he speaks English, he soon becomes an intermediary between his compatriots and their American captors.

With Yuan as guide, we are ushered into the secret world behind the barbed wire, a world in which kindness alternates with blinding cruelty and one has infinitely more to fear from one’s fellow prisoners than from the guards. Vivid in its historical detail, profound in its imaginative empathy, war Trash is Ha Jin’s most ambitions book to date.

Happy Friday everyone! We have finally reached the end of the workweek, at least for those of us who follow the conventional workweek; the Middle East works from Sunday to Thursday. With the workweek coming to a close, I hope everyone is ending the workweek on a high note. I hope everyone was able to tick off their to-do list or at least were able to make a dent in them. But for those whose goal was just to make it through the week or just to survive and make it from one point to another, kudos to all of you as well. With the workweek done, it is time to shed those corporate attires and don more comfortable articles of clothing. It is now time to wind down and dive into the weekend. With this, I hope everyone gets to spend the weekend resting or pursuing their passions. It is also a time to complete household chores. Thankfully, with the incoming midterm elections, we get to have a longer weekend. Regardless of how you spend the weekend, I hope everyone is doing well in body, mind, and spirit.

Woah. On another note, I realized how we are nearly a third through the fifth month of the year. I know this has become cliché but how time flies! Time for sure takes its natural course sans any regard for anyone. With this, how has the year been so far? Has it been treating you well? I do hope that 2025 is going great for everyone. I hope it is going the way you wanted it to. I hope that you are headed to your destination. However, if you are still figuring it all out, it is still fine. There is no need to be in a rush because you will eventually achieve clarity. If your year is going otherwise, I hope you experience a reversal of fortune. I hope positive energies, blessings, and good news flow into your lives in the remaining months of the year. I hope you are get to achieve your goals this year. Speaking of goals, I have several, reading-wise. I am glad to say that I am making headways on these reading goals. My 2025 reading journey is in full swing.

I am currently amid a venture into Asian literature; this is after I spent the first quarter of the year reading works of East Asian literature. My venture into the more extensive world of Asian literature has, as always, fascinated me. It has transported me to various parts of the continent, from my local Philippines to India to Israel. Venturing into works of Asian writers has also not kept me from reading works of East Asian writers. This brings me to my current read, Ha Jin’s War Trash which I have listed as part of my 2025 Beat the Backlist Challenge; after purchasing the book during the 2018 Big Bad Wolf Sale Manila, the book was left to gather dust on my bookshelf, hence, its addition to my annual backlist reading challenge. I bought the book after I read Waiting, the first Ha Jin novel I read. Oh, I just learned today that Ha Jin is a pseudonym and that his birthname is Jin Xuefei (金雪飞). I have noted how Chinese writers often use pen names. Is it because of the censorship in China?

I finally get to read War Trash, making it my first Ha Jin novel in nearly a decade. At the heart of War Trash is Yu Yuan; he is also its primary narrator. His story takes the form of a memoir. In the prologue, we learn that he has settled in the United States. He has a family but he has a secret he keeps from them. On his navel is a tattoo which says FUCK…U…S. This seems to be an important thread in the story because of how Yu Yuan tried to conceal this tattoo from his family. It also makes one curious about its provenance and why the concerted effort to conceal it from his loved ones. Apart from this, one can get a sense from the prologue that his secrets go beyond the tattoo. There is also a question about where his loyalty lies. One can surmise that he is some sort of a secret operative. While these are hints, they don’t provide much concrete evidence. And as it often does, the answers to these questions lie in the past.

Ha Jin immediately transports the readers to where it all started. Yu Yuan’s story started in 1949. Before the Communists rose to power, he was a cadet at Huangpu Military Academy, an important part of the Kuomintang military system. When the Communists gained control of China, the Military Academy also changed loyalties. With this, Yu became part of the Chairman Mao’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). An academic, Yu was against Communism but he had no other recourse but to accept his reality. He was eventually sent to Korea as a lower-ranking officer in the 180th Division, leaving behind his mother and fiancée, Tao Julan. In the Korean Peninsula, he was chosen to be a part of his unit’s staff as a possible translator; to a limited extent, he knows English. There seems to be a lot to unpack yet. I just started reading the book, hence, I have not gone that far yet.

Nevertheless, I was already able to pick some germane details as some hints were dropped here and there. I am looking forward to how Ha Jin bridges the past with the present. I want to understand how the past has shaped Yu’s present. Somehow, the story does remind me of Nguyễn Thanh Việt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer, in the way both main characters and narrators navigated the slippery slope of communism and how they are both adjusting to their new realities. At least this is how War Trash is going to develop. This remains to be seen as I have about three hundred pages more to unravel. On top of this, I am looking forward to how Ha Jin will walk the readers through the horrors of war. How about you fellow reader? What book or books have you read over the weekend? I hope you get to enjoy whatever you are reading right now. Happy weekend!