Annal:1999 Kiriyama Prize for Fiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Kiriyama Prize in the year 1999. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 1999 Kiriyama-Fiction winner
- Score: 10.49
Here are twelve moving short stories about Taiwan and its people by one of the island’s most popular writers, Cheng Ch’ing-wen. Focusing primarily on village life and the effects of modernization on Taiwan in the postwar years, Cheng is one of the most respected of the island’s “nativist” writers, yet this is his first book to be translated into English. This anthology represents the best of his fictional efforts across a forty-year span and encompasses his major themes: the tensions between men and women, parents and children, city and village, tradition and modernity. Taken individually, each story presents a moving portrait of paralysis, frustration, or self-realization. Together, they weave a complex tapestry of life in a rapidly changing country.
Cheng Ch’ing-wen’s stories tell of men grappling with their fears and frustrations, from “The River Suite,” in which a ferryman-championed throughout his small town for twice saving a drowning person-lacks the courage to confess his love to a young woman before she dies, to “Spring Rain,” in which a man struggles to…
Truong Tran, Chung Hoang Chuong
- 1999 Kiriyama-Fiction finalist
- Score: 6.49
This lavishly produced book contain poems by Truong Tran and black-and-white photographs of Vietnam by Chung Hoang Chuong. Tran’s work explores the duality of being Vietnamese American and the fragmentation of the self as a result of this dual existence. Chuong, the director of the Vietnamese American Studies Center at San Francisco State University, has added elegant photographs that still perfectly echo Tran’s concerns. “the other as perceived is language or the loss of other as/ place stranger country beloved the other when deciphered/ is but the self intently saying in loving you I lose myself.” A portion of the proceeds from the book will benefit Huong Viet Community Center.
- 1999 Kiriyama-Fiction finalist
- Score: 6.49
In response to her little brother Tetsu’s question, “What’s the scariest thing in the world?” Tomomi replies, “Monsters.”
Tomomi is afraid she is becoming a monster; she dreams it every night. It started after Tomomi, seeing how much her grandma was suffering, thought to herself that Grandma would be better off dead. Now Tomomi’s body is changing before her eyes—into a woman, or into a monster? Tomomi would prefer to stop growing and turn away from unpleasant things, but her parents are engaged in a battle with their next-door neighbor and the dispute has overflowed into Tomomi’s home, driving a wedge between her parents. Sustained by Tetsu’s determination, Grandpa’s wisdom, memories of Grandma’s love, and her own philosophical leanings, Tomomi finally understands that the scariest thing in the world is hate, and faces the fact that, like it or not, she is becoming an adult, with responsibilities and choices.
Kazumi Yumoto has created an exquisite portrait of a sensitive young woman struggling against her journey to adulthood even as she takes the first steps toward it.
