Page 10 - Tom Steyer Issue

刘厦 用生命写作,虔诚而勇敢
Liu Xia: Writing for Life with Faith and Fortitude
“We need to see both sides of life. If there is only emphasis on the good side, that is self-deceit. It is nec- essary to be aware of the bad side, but we need to keep hope in the worst times.” Liu Xia sees poetry as an alternative reality she can visit. “There all is very beau- tiful, very quiet, very nice.” She says in one of her lines: “This blade of grass dreams big, or it wouldn’t have so painstakingly grown since it knew it was only grass.”
A Chinese writer born with spinal muscular atrophy in Jinzhou Town, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province in 1985. Over the years she has had more than 300,000 words published in major Chinese literary periodicals, plus two anthologies of poetry and prose respectively entitled “The Time of Long Grass” and “Meeting Life”. Now she is a member of the Poetry Institute of China and the Writers’ Association of Hebei. She has been awarded several honorary titles, including “Top Ten Model Citizens with Disabilities in Shijiazhuang” and
“Model of Cultural Excellence of Shijiazhuang”.
Liu Xia
Since last winter Liu Xia has been living with her fami- ly in a rented apartment in the city, where the central heating system provides warmth and comfort. At night, she and her elder sister Liu Ning retreat to their bed- room to work at the computer. Illuminated by the moni- tor, Xia speaks into a microphone and the speech recog- nition software turns her speech into words. With great difficulty Ning uses the touchpad to correct the errors. Wind blows in from the window. When can I go back to my hometown for a visit, Xia now wonders. It looks as if the monitor light could shine on a distant past.
10 ABILITY
It was when Xia was still able to draw and doodle. Back then she lived in a house made of clay, a thud of light gray bricks lining along the exterior wall. Her grandfa- ther built it when her father was three years old. She was the last baby this humble abode had seen.
When summer came, Xia would have little poem reciting