In a transparently obvious bid to shame me, this Chinese woman with cerebral palsy has nearly finished a fiction novel typing only with the toes of her left foot. In what could qualify as the understatement of this young year, her father is quoted as describing her as "incredibly determined."
Digging even deeper into her story, the Daily Mail reports that even in the enlightened Communist state she was not afforded the opportunity to attend school. She taught herself to read and write by watching subtitled television.
She was also, somehow, able to overcome the myriad micro-aggressions that debilitate so many otherwise healthy people here in the West. Perhaps the secret to that is contained somewhere within the 60,000 words she's written to date.
Congratulations Hu Huiyuan. I'll definitely check out the novel if it becomes available in English. (Old joke: what do you call someone who knows two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who knows one language? An American.)
Posted January 27 2015 by Tom Weiss
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Military veteran with multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. I've written non-fiction articles for professional journals. This is my first attempt at fiction.Contact me at [email protected]