Stick Out Your Tongue: Stories

by Ma Jian and Jian Ma

Book Overview

Tibet is a land lost in the glare of politics and romanticism, and Ma Jian set out to discover its truths. "Stick Out Your Tongue "is a revelation: a startlingly vivid portrait of Tibet, both enchanting and horrifying, beautiful and violent, seductive and perverse. In this profound work of fiction, a Chinese writer whose marriage has fallen apart travels to Tibet. As he wanders through the countryside, he witnesses the sky burial of a Tibetan woman...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374269882
• ISBN13: 9780374269883
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 93 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Worth Reading.

English translation, a very short book (<100 pg) with only 5 short stories, it has some most queer stories you do not expected from Tibet (quoted: stories with multi-generational incest, sexual abuse and ritual rape). And no wonder it is censored by the Chinese government (because it is queer and it is about Tibet). Feel really bad about Chinese censorship, and sooner or later China will have an army of ignorant people... (and yes, who give a damn about Tibet people's suffering and their want of independency, right? No we don't, because we don't even know who the hell Tibet people are.)

Dark, Lurid, and Engrossing

Ma Jian's "Stick Out Your Tongue" is a collection of short stories that center around a couple central themes; the harshness of life in rural Tibet, and often times "non-traditional" sexual practices. I doubt the stories in the book are meant to be at all expository, or shed much real knowledge about what life is like for real Tibetans, but it does provide a picture of Tibet that is very alive, and very hostile. I'm still not certain what the original intent of the work was. In some ways it merely seems to offer another stereotype of Tibetan society (an anti-romanticized one), and in other ways it seems simply like an attempt to bring the reader into a world that is just surreal, with Tibet being presented simply as a vehicle for that vision. The Afterword confused me as well. In it, Ma Jian briefly outlines the controversy surrounding the work, and also comments on his sadness in regard to the plight of Tibetans as outsiders in their own homeland. The last commentary is the most confusing, since it seems to suggest that this is somehow tied into the work. In actuality it is quite absent. There are no politics in this work, unless you draw the conclusion that the darker side that you witness in the book is there due to Chinese influence. This is a loose connection however, since there are no cues that point in that direction. Only the narrator is Han Chinese, and is mostly a peripheral character. The stories themselves center wholly on Tibetans engaging in relationships with other Tibetans. I think some other reviewers had it spot-on when they said these stories do more to humanize Tibetans than anything else. The idea that a monk would have to hire a guard to keep lusty monks away from his wife, or that a Tibetan would beat his cheating wife and steal the monestery's gold won't find much place in most Western visions of Tibet. Those are typically the actions of Chinese intruders, with Tibetans almost always playing the role of passive, saintly protagonist.

Stick out your tongue

This book is a gift so I did not read it, but the service was wonderful and I will buy again.

Darkly Magical

These short stories are so beautifully written that the dark subject matter is breathtaking. A little peek into a way of life that is so unlike life in America. I have recommended this book to several people. It is definitely worth reading again and again.