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The True Story of Yu Fen
The True Story of Yu Fen
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"The True Story of Yu Fen" is a novella by Erik Wennermark about a young girl involved with the Falun Gong movement in China. It purports to tell her "True Story" through a variety of different pieces and perspectives, including that of a naïve newspaper reporter, his "news" articles, and a repurposed folk tale. One section, originally published in Upstreet, was twice nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize.
"The True Story of Yu Fen" is a work of importance in our particular time, as it deals with China's ascension, the decline of the United States, and, through a variety of voices and styles, the increasing fragmentation and subjective character of media. While studying for his MFA at the University of Alabama, Erik worked under Kate Bernheimer who said his Falun Gong writing, "sensitively treated a political issue with poetic language and empathetic character development. [It] is wild, new, and brave."
Falun Gong was founded in 1992 by the charismatic Master Li Hongzhi and grew rapidly throughout the 1990s until it could claim as many as 70 million practitioners in China. With this great popularity came great scrutiny however, and in 1999 the Chinese Communist Party banned Falun Gong. Notice of Falun Gong came to the West in early 2001 when several members lit themselves on fire during a demonstration in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The ritual self-immolation has been disputed by the group as an elaborate fabrication concocted by the Chinese Communist Party to discredit its members. This event is central to the story.
"The True Story of Yu Fen" is a work of importance in our particular time, as it deals with China's ascension, the decline of the United States, and, through a variety of voices and styles, the increasing fragmentation and subjective character of media. While studying for his MFA at the University of Alabama, Erik worked under Kate Bernheimer who said his Falun Gong writing, "sensitively treated a political issue with poetic language and empathetic character development. [It] is wild, new, and brave."
Falun Gong was founded in 1992 by the charismatic Master Li Hongzhi and grew rapidly throughout the 1990s until it could claim as many as 70 million practitioners in China. With this great popularity came great scrutiny however, and in 1999 the Chinese Communist Party banned Falun Gong. Notice of Falun Gong came to the West in early 2001 when several members lit themselves on fire during a demonstration in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The ritual self-immolation has been disputed by the group as an elaborate fabrication concocted by the Chinese Communist Party to discredit its members. This event is central to the story.
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