During an interview with Lit Hub’s fiction/non/fiction podcast, Ha Jin (A Song Everlasting) talks about how artists can create work that lasts while also making a political or moral statement.
Jin says the art comes first. “We have to write a really good piece of literature that can last. Otherwise, how can we justify that, when we write about other people’s suffering and misery? If we don’t produce genuine art, then we just utilize the other’s suffering? Right?” Jin cites John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, noting Steinbeck didn’t experience the Dust Bowl migration, but wrote so powerfully about it that people turn to the book when they want to learn about that era. “It is his art that makes that experience live and last,” Jin says. “So I think that’s the reason you have to produce good work that can justify and last beyond the words.”
