I Have Forsaken Heaven and Earth,
but Never Forsaken You
Frontenac House, 2023
The poetry weaves fantasy and history, contemporary China and the sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso's Tibet in seventy poems translated from MA Hui's Mandarin original. It is aesthetically appealing, painting "that woman covered with indelible hues of spring" and the breeze that embroiders the poet on the moonlit mirror of a lake. It enlightens with the ancient wisdom -- as A. F. Moritz's back cover endorsement says -- "where the two meet, separation disappears, and we are in the All, yet in our own bodies, our own beloved world."
About
Leilei Chen 莫譯 published the Mandarin versions of Margaret Laurence’s short stories, contemporary Canadian poetry and prose, and Oxford University Press's Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction in both simplified and traditional Chinese (2017, 2019). She translated contemporary Chinese poet MA Hui in I Have Forsaken Heaven and Earth, but Never Forsaken You (2023). She also translates contemporary Chinese ecological literature and women’s writings. She authors Re-orienting China: Travel Writing and Cross-cultural Understanding (2016). She lectures at the University of Alberta.
University of Regina Press, 2016
"AN INTRIGUING CONTRIBUTION."
The ongoing global migration of peoples raises urgent questions about home and abroad, and self and other. By approaching travel writing as a process that makes the foreign relatable, and home unfamiliar, Leilei Chen translates the New China for us, offering a fresh understanding of difference.
Postcolonial studies is in the process of exploring ways to get past the bianry opposition of self/other, and books like Re-Orienting China are an importa part of this project." Pamela McCallum, Cultural Memories and Imagined Futures
"Leilei Chen demonstrates an impressive familiarity with the recent travel writing done on China. Moreover, she brings an intimate awareness of the internal diversity within China which is too often downplayed or ignored by foreign observers."
Stephen Clark, Asian Crossings: Travel Writing on China, Japan and Southeast Asia
《民族主義——牛津通識讀本》
Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction
traditional-Chinese-English version
香港牛津大學出版社 （Oxford University Press, Hong Kong)
