This wonderful photograph is of Huang Xiang’s house in Pittsburgh. Quoting Hryckowian‘s description of the image:
Huang Xiang is a poet from the Hunan Province of China. While he has been likened to Walt Whitman, the majority of his countrymen do not know his work, his poetry, or his plight. His work has been banned in China and he was imprisoned for 12 years of his life for simply trying to live a life of creativity. Fortunately, through the City of Asylum program, he and his family were brought to the United States and to Pittsburgh, where he has been living since 2004.
As you can see on the right (Huang Xiang: House Poem/Dream Nest, originally uploaded by simonk), the poet has quite literally covered his Pittsburgh home with his writing. To quote Hryckowian again:
…the entire house is covered in characters, poetry, words he would be tortured for in China, but he can share with the world and anyone who cares to pass by here. His words reach from his roof to the foundation, and defy anyone who would try to silence him.
Kind of makes me wish I could read Chinese.
I’d never heard of the City of Asylum program, but it sounds very cool. I wonder if we could ever pull together the resources for Morris to act as a host city? It wouldn’t be a trivial thing (a two year stay would easily cost over $100K), but I could imagine that there might be authors out there who would find time in a quiet rural community very useful.
The other rub, of course, is that much of America (and certainly lots of homogeneous, small town America) is all for free speech as long as you don’t say too many things we don’t want to hear. Bringing a powerful, outspoken writer with that kind of history into a small community could certainly have some unexpected consequences. But I suspect that could be a good thing, and likely a story worth telling.
