21st Century Literature discussion

Story: SWIMMER OF THE YANGTZE by Yiming Ma

Welcome to the first discussion in our new folder, Briefs, dedicated to exploring 21st century short stories. This story recently won the 2018 BAME Short Story Prize. You can read it using the link above and then join in the discussion here.

Feel free to comment on your overall reaction to the story, how the story handles traditional elements of the form (perspective, structure, climax/resolution, characterization, etc.), voice, context/history, or whatever moves you.
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RELATED MATERIAL
- Chairman Mao's Historic Swim

I liked this short story. On one level, it is a sad story of a disabled young boy. On another level, it might be seen as the story of the failure of the cultural revolution.

LindaJ^ wrote: "I liked this short story. On one level, it is a sad story of a disabled young boy. On another level, it might be seen as the story of the failure of the cultural revolution."

It does seem to operate on a few different levels. But the pathos is off the charts. I thought Ma did a fascinating job of kind of communicating the tenor of the times at the same time his story critiques it. It was kind of a subtle balancing act he pulled off rather well using a lot of tension with split loyalties (parent to child, individual to society, pride of place/country, etc.).

What I thought was ironic was how all the villagers turned into miniature capitalists with a boom economy based on the celebrity of the boy, who was held up as a hero of the regime.

I liked the story in general, though I'm not sure what the takeaway is. I don't know if that's all that important, that I know everything about it, but stories like this kind of leave me feeling like I missed something.

I’m glad you chose this story, else I’d have missed it. Of course, now I have this speck in my eye ...

Not to sound petty, but I really loved that the story was so short. :-) One of the things that holds me back from short stories is they are often a little too long for me to fit in in one sitting. This was perfect.

For me the takeaway was getting the feeling of what it was like to live in that place and time. It was sad, but very tightly written and descriptive. He got across the villagers' attitudes in both blatant and subtle ways.

I really enjoyed it--thanks for starting these briefs, and for choosing such a great story to begin with.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this story. It seems like it is meant as a fairly simple fable-like story that is meant to stand as a commentary on the nature of the Chinese government of the time, but it's not entirely clear to me what exactly it is saying.

What I did quite like about the story is how the narrator comes through as a distinctive character while still remaining in the background of the story. The narrator is identified as someone from that village, but never becomes the focus of the action and remains a storyteller at a distance. But the narrator does have a distinctive voice and perspective on the other characters and the action.

It surprises me that this story would be a prize winner, but at the same time there is a lot of good writing in it.

I definitely got a "betrayal of the Cultural Revolution to the people, and especially the youth" vibe. Boy gives his all and is unceremoniously discarded after serving his purpose for the glory the party and the revolution. The final scene was especially striking, with the boy gasping for air in the village the way he previously had in the river. And the boy is never given any voice, or even a name.

I got the feeling that if the boy hadn’t lost his arms, he’d have had a pretty rough life. Once he loses them and becomes a swimmer, he is suddenly a curiosity and a claim to fame for the town. A celebrity. I don’t think we get much of a sense of how it affects him personally, but the new-found success of his father’s business surely improves their quality of life.

As for the government scouting a sporting prospect, that seemed the same as other countries. We certainly target very young kids to send to competitions, and they drop out of public sight just as quickly when their talents are overshadowed. That didn’t seem specific to China (to me).

When he injures himself and becomes a washed-up has-been after one big outing, he mostly falls off the radar which affects his father’s business and their livelihood.

I, too, enjoyed the narrator, who seemed to want to tell us what HE thought of the situation more than he wanted to tell the boy’s story. He liked sharing this tale, but he made sure at the end that we knew he was the one who was owed respect by the boy - because he’s a boy and the narrator is his elder. The boy earned no respect, no thanks for his sacrifice, and very little afterthought, and is left gasping for air and life. Poor kid and poor dad, who must wonder why his tailoring skills are no longer good enough for everybody.

I think you make a good point, Patty, about how we don't know how the boy feels about any of this. It's really not his story, that's what makes the narration so interesting.

By seeing the boy's story through the eyes of the villager, we see how Chairman Mao was revered, and how the individual was not important. The story shows us the type of mentality that had to exist to allow this boy and his father to be celebrated one day and then left to suffer the next.

I see some discussion of the way the boy's fate symbolizes how people were treated in general under Mao during the Cultural Revolution, but it seems a very slight achievement. The idea that dictatorial governments might use individuals for PR and then cast them aside when they are no longer useful is not news and the boy's story is more just a simple example of that that a symbolic representation of it. In the end I don't feel like I learned anything about repressive governments I (and most people) didn't already know or that I saw it in any new light. I do feel like maybe the author was attempting something more than this. I'm just (still) not sure what that was.