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produced a number of propaganda pieces that

dealt with various mundane issues of the prole-

tariat, such as the joys of electricity, the advantages

of running hot water, and the necessity of five-year

plans. But his political verse alternated through the

1920s with much more personal love poems.

Mayakovsky received numerous awards from

the Soviet government. Yet, he wrote two plays, The

Bedbug (1928) and The Bathhouse (1930), that sat-

irized Soviet bureaucracy and were suppressed by

the authorities. His most successful play, Moscow on

Fire (1930), appeared just a few days after his death,

and recounted the events of the revolution of 1905.

In 1930, Mayakovsky shot and killed himself in

his Moscow apartment. He seems to have been

motivated by disappointment in love as well as by

anxiety about the reception of his work. After his

death, his body was placed on display for three

days, and more than 150,000 mourners came to

say their farewells. Stalin eulogized him, and gen-

erations of Soviet students memorized his poems.

Today, critical opinion his works remains mixed, as

it was during his lifetime. Mayakovsky completely

broke away from literary tradition, establishing his

own unique style for poetry and drama; at the

same time, he attacked and denounced a number

of writers and poets who did not adhere to the

principles of SOCIALIST REALISM.

Other Works by Vladimir Mayakovsky

The Bedbug and Selected Poetry. Translated by Max

Hayward. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1975.

For the Voice. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000.

Listen! Early Poems. Translated by Maria Enzberger.

San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1991.

Mayakovsky: Plays. Translated by Guy Daniels.

Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1995.

Works about Vladimir Mayakovsky

Bowra, C. M. “The Futurism of Vladimir Maya-

kovsky.” In The Creative Experiment. New York:

Grove Press, 1958.

Terras, Victor. Vladimir Mayakovsky. Boston: Twayne,

1983.

Mazumdar, Anita

See DESAI, ANITA.

Meeks, Brian (1953– ) nonfiction writer,

poet, fiction writer

Born in Montreal, Canada, to a Trinidadian

mother and Jamaican father, Meeks grew up in Ja-

maica. There he attended Jamaica College before

doing undergraduate work at the University of the

West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad, during the

politically turbulent early 1970s. After earning a

doctorate from the University of the West Indies,

Mona, Meeks acted as a media and political educa-

tion consultant for the People’s Revolutionary

Government of Grenada. He also edited The Free

West Indian during the early 1980s. Musicians Bob

Marley, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis signifi-

cantly influenced Meeks’s work. In the acknowl-

edgments to Radical Caribbean: From Black Power

to Abu Bakr (1996), Meeks thanked Gordon

Rohlehr and Kamau BRATHWAITE for teaching him

“the importance of rigorous study and apprecia-

tion of popular culture as both central cause and

effect of the political process.”

Themes of human agency, revolution, and rad-

ical Caribbean activism reappear in Meeks’s intel-

lectual works. Caribbean Revolutions and

Revolutionary Theory: an Assessment of Cuba,

Nicaragua and Grenada (1993) traces revolution-

ary concepts from the French Revolution to recon-

sider revolutionary meaning. In Radical

Caribbean: From Black Power to Abu Bakr, Meeks

maps two decades of radical movements in the

Caribbean to examine why revolutions occur. An

International Affairs reviewer wrote, “In the case

of Grenada [Meeks’s] account of the tragic fall of

the revolution goes beyond anything which has

been written before.”

Before returning to the University of the West

Indies, Mona, where he is currently a senior lec-

turer in comparative politics and political theory

and head of the Department of Government,

Meeks taught at James Madison College, Michigan

State University. In addition, Meeks has written

288 Mazumdar, Anita

poetry, which has been published in many an-

thologies. His recent and consistent intellectual

contributions foreground significant revolution-

ary issues, making him one of the most influential

contemporary Caribbean political theorists.

Other Works by Brian Meeks

Narratives of Resistance: Jamaica, Trinidad, the

Caribbean. Kingston, Jamaica: University of West

Indies Press, 2000.

“NUFF at the Cusp of an Idea: Grassroots Guerrillas

and the Politics of the 1970s in Trinidad and To-

bago.” Social Identities 5, no. 4 (1999).

“The Political Moment in Jamaica: The Dimensions

of Hegemonic Dissolution.” In Manning Marable,

ed., Dispatches from the Ebony Tower. New York:

Columbia University Press, 2000.

A Work about Brian Meeks

Allahar, Anton, ed. Caribbean Charisma: Reflections

on Leadership, Legitimacy, and Populist Politics.

Boulder, Colo.: L. Rienner Publishers, 2001.

Mehta, Gita (1943– ) novelist

Gita Mehta was born in Delhi, India. Her parents

were deeply involved in India’s political struggle

for independence against the British. Her father,

Biju Patnaik, is one of India’s most famous free-

dom fighters who went on to become the political

leader of the state of Orissa, India. Mehta was sent

to boarding school at an early age, as both her par-

ents were constantly in and out of jail due to their

political activities.

Mehta was educated in India and England, and

her novels reflect her preoccupation with the on-

going relationship between Western and Eastern

cultures. She explores this theme in her nonfiction

book Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East

(1979) in which she looks into the fascination that

Eastern cultures hold for “hippies” from the West.

As the title suggests, the novel is based on global

economy and explores the commodification of

one culture by the other.

Her first fictional work, Raj: A Novel (1989), is a

historical novel about a young girl from a noble

family who comes of age during the British Raj.

Through her experiences, it becomes obvious that

the roots of British and Indian culture cannot be

easily untangled in colonial India, especially

among the privileged classes who have benefited

from British education. What develops alongside

the maturity of the heroine is India’s own birthing

process into independence from the British.

Mehta’s latest work, Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses

of Modern India (1997), further explores aspects

of India’s change after its independence.

In addition to writing novels, Mehta is a jour-

nalist and documentary filmmaker. She has di-

rected four films on the Bangladesh war and one

on the Indo–Pakistan war for the BBC and NBC.

Another Work by Gita Mehta

A River Sutra. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

A Work about Gita Mehta

Byer, Kathleen Collins. “The Lama and the

Vanaprasthi: Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and Gita

Mehta’s A River Sutra.” In A. L. McLeod, ed., The

Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Essays in Criti-

cism. New Delhi: Sterling, 2000.

Memmi, Albert (1920– ) novelist

Albert Memmi was born in the Jewish quarter of

Tunis, Tunisia. His father was a Jewish-Italian

skilled saddler, and his mother was a Berber (a

member of the non-Arab minority of North

Africa). When Memmi was four years old, he went

to rabbinical school and studied there for three

years. In 1927, he attended the school of the Al-

liance Israélite Universelle in the rue Malta Srira

in Tunis. Memmi would often help his father in his

workshop where he listened to stories told by an

old family friend. While attending school, Memmi

was actively involved with local Jewish youth

groups; this strongly influenced his perceptions,

which would later surface in his writings, especially

those relating to colonial issues. Memmi graduated

Memmi, Albert 289

from the Lycée Carnot in 1939 and was awarded

the honor prize in philosophy. From 1941 to 1942,

he studied philosophy at the University of Algiers.

After the invasion of France by Nazi Germany

when anti-Semitic laws were implemented by the

collaborationist Vichy government of France,

Memmi was expelled from the university and sent

to a forced labor camp until 1945. After World War

II, he moved to Paris and continued his studies at

the Sorbonne. After Tunisia gained full independ-

ence, Memmi settled in Paris, where he took on

various professorial positions. He retired from

teaching in 1987.

Memmi’s works were heavily influenced by the

political and social situations that shaped his life,

and his dual position as a member of the French

educated elite as an impoverished and marginalized

Jew also influenced his writings. In his first novel,

La Statue de sel (The Pillar of Salt, 1953), Memmi’s

main protagonist, Mordecai, pours out his despair

and sorrow. He is plagued by poverty and solitude,

living as an estranged “outsider” who tries to make

sense of his existence in a foreign land. Memmi’s

political views, his sociological training, and his

own experiences, especially during World War II,

allow him to discuss and explore the complexity of

colonialism, particularly in his 1957 work, The Col-

onizer and the Colonized, in which he examines the

social and psychological foundations of the views

held by the colonizer and the colonized. To

Memmi, the two groups constitute a framework in

which neither group can exist without the other:

The colonizer and the colonized are interdepend-

ent, but each group is a complex organization.

Memmi’s works clearly show his genius as one

of the leading intellectuals in postcolonial theory

and thinking. He wrote all of his works in French,

but many have been translated and published in

English.

Other Works by Albert Memmi

Dependence: A Sketch for a Portrait of the Dependent.

Translated by Philip A. Facey. Boston: Beacon,

1984.

Desert. Pueblo, Colo.: Passeggiata Press, 1992.

Jews and Arabs. Translated by Eleanor Levieux.

Chicago: J. P. O’Hara, 1975.

The Liberation of the Jew. Translated by Judy Hyun.

New York: Viking Press, 1966.

Racism. Translated by Kwame Anthony Appiah. Min-

neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

The Scorpion. Translated by Eleanor Levieux. New

York: Orion, 1971.

A Work about Albert Memmi

Roumani, Judith. Albert Memmi. Philadelphia: Tem-

ple University Press, 1987.

Menchú, Rigoberta (1959– ) memoirist

Rigoberta Menchú was born in the village of Us-

panadan in the western highlands of Guatemala

to Vicente Menchú, a Quiche Maya Indian and an

organizer of the Committee of Peasant Unity, and

Juana Menchú Tum, also a Quiche Indian. She

began to work at age five to help her mother pick

coffee beans. At age nine, she was helping her fa-

ther hoe and plant maize, and at 12, she joined in

the communal work of her people by participat-

ing in the harvesting of maize. By then, her eldest

and youngest brothers had died, the former from

having breathed in the fumes of pesticide that had

been sprayed at the farm where he worked, and the

latter from malnutrition.

At age 13, Menchú, who was eager to learn to

read and speak Spanish, the language of her op-

pressors, decided to accept a position as a maid in

the distant capital. The exploitation she experi-

enced as a maid, as well as her father’s imprison-

ment at this time for his efforts at organizing

against the landowners who were intent on depriv-

ing the Quiche Indians of their land, contributed

to her later transformation into a leader of her

people. Menchú’s political activism began when

she was still a teenager, involving herself in social

reform through the Catholic church, the women’s

rights movement, and a local guerrilla organiza-

tion. In 1979, she joined the Committee of Peas-

ant Unity (CUC), as her father had recently done.

Yet, it was not until the Guatemalan army brutally

290 Menchú, Rigoberta

killed her father, her brother, and her mother in

separate incidents in 1980 and 1981 that she be-

came prominent in the CUC. Aware of the hor-

rendous torture each of her family members

received before being burned to death, Menchú

was forced to go into hiding in 1981, first in

Guatemala then in Mexico.

Since then, Menchú has dedicated her life to re-

sisting oppression in Guatemala and fighting for the

rights of all its Indian peasant groups. She was one

of the founders of the United Representation of the

Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG) in 1982, and the

following year, she recounted the story of her life

and the ways of her people to the anthropologist,

Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, who proceeded to tran-

scribe the tapes and edit them into the internation-

ally known book, I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983), which

was translated into English by Ann Wright and pub-

lished in 1984. However, an unexpected controversy

erupted in 1999 after anthropologist David Stoll

raised questions concerning the authenticity of

Menchú’s autobiography in Rigoberta Menchú and

the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. In response to

Stoll’s book, Arturo Arias edited The Rigoberta

Menchú Controversy (2001), a compilation of the

various newspaper reports, articles, and letters—

including one by Stoll—written in response to this

ongoing controversy.

After the publication of her autobiography,

Menchú continued her activism, becoming a mem-

ber of the National Committee of the CUC in 1986

and, in 1987, participating as the narrator of When

the Mountains Tremble, a film protesting the suf-

fering of the Maya people. Menchú was awarded

the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and, in 1996, became

a Goodwill Ambassador for UNESCO.

Another Work by Rigoberta Menchú

Crossing Borders. Translated by Ann Wright. New

York: Verso, 1998.

A Work about Rigoberta Menchú

Schulze, Julie. Rigoberta Menchú Tum: Champion of

Human Rights. New York: John Gordon Burke,

1997.

Michaux, Henri (1899–1984) poet

An accomplished painter and poet, Henri Michaux

was born on May 24 to a bourgeois family in

Namur, Belgium. As a student, he was indifferent

at best and held himself apart from his peers. He

found comfort in art, languages, and literature, all

of which helped him through World War II and

the German occupation of Belgium.

Although Michaux attempted to write poetry

while he was still in school, he concentrated mostly

on reading everything from the works of the saints

to avant-garde poetry. He considered entering the

priesthood but instead followed the advice of his

father and embarked on the study of medicine.

Dissatisfied, he left to work as a sailor on a mer-

chant vessel, disembarking only two days before

the ship capsized. He returned to Belgium where,

after a series of miserable jobs, he discovered the

works of the Comte de LAUTREAMONT.

Inspired, Michaux moved to Paris, where he

began to paint and secured a job in a publishing

house while developing himself as a writer. After the

death of his parents in 1929, he traveled extensively

and became fascinated by Eastern religion. His writ-

ing career was firmly established due to favorable

criticism from André GIDE. Among his best-known

collections are My Properties (1929), a work that ex-

plores the imagination and consciousness, and

Plume (1930), a comic exploration of self-identity.

Michaux married during World War II but lost

his wife in a house fire. After this, he began to ex-

periment with drugs. He became a French citizen

in 1955, abandoned drugs, and began to focus his

writing on the themes of drug addiction, human

anguish, and despair; in Miserable Miracle (1956),

for example, he details the journeys of the imagi-

nation as it searches for self-knowledge while

under the influence of mescaline.

Michaux was admired by both the surrealists

and the U.S. beat poets. Toward the end of his life,

he turned more and more to Eastern meditation as

he focused on the study of the human spirit.

Michaux died on October 18, having contributed

greatly to both the origins of the surrealist move-

ment and U.S. beat literature.

Michaux, Henri 291

Another Work by Henri Michaux

Tent Posts. Translated by Lynn Hoggard. Los Angeles:

Sun and Moon Press, 1997.

A Work about Henri Michaux

Broome, Peter. Henri Michaux. London: Athlone

Press, 1977.

Mickiewicz, Adam (1798–1855) poet,

playwright

Adam Bernard Mickiewicz was born in Nowo-

gródek, Poland. Regarded as one of the greatest

Polish poets and activists for Polish independence,

much of his past remains a mystery, including the

possibility that he might have been of Jewish de-

scent on his mother’s side. Biographical data, par-

ticularly regarding his relationships with women

and his interest in mysticism, were kept quiet dur-

ing the years of Communist rule in Poland. Spiri-

tuality of any kind was looked on unfavorably, and

much of Mickiewicz’s history was deliberately hid-

den to maintain his flawless public image. After his

death, Mickiewicz’s son, W⁄ladys⁄law, destroyed

documents that might have negatively affected his

father’s public image. Mickiewicz’s actions and

writings, however, reveal not only a romantic

poet and great artist but also a political activist.

Mickiewicz’s major poetic and dramatic works

were written during a three-year period before his

attention shifted to political writing.

Mickiewicz received a government-sponsored

education in Polish literature and history. He made

friends with many fellow students who were mem-

bers of secret youth organizations. On graduating,

he took a high-school teaching position in Kovno

to repay his government scholarship, but when au-

thorities discovered secret student organizations at

the school, an investigation resulted in a six-month

prison term and a five-year exile in Russia.

Mickiewicz’s banishment had a positive influ-

ence on his career as a writer and activist. He be-

friended Russian poet Aleksandr PUSHKIN and

traveled to Germany where he attended Hegel’s

lectures and met GOETHE. Hearing news of the No-

vember uprising in 1830, he attempted unsuccess-

fully to return to Poland. When the uprising failed,

Mickiewicz, along with many other Polish artists,

moved to France.

In Paris, he began to focus on political journal-

ism, appealing to Polish emigrants to unite in the

common cause. In 1839, he took a position as lec-

turer on Roman literature at the University of Lau-

sanne and, in 1840, on Slavonic literatures at the

Collège de France. He was suspended from his post

in 1844 for his antichurch attitude and mystic or

supernaturally oriented ideas.

Mickiewicz’s poetry was first collected in two

volumes called Vilna (1822–23) and reflected his

love of Polish folklore and tradition, particularly

folk songs and legends. This love is evident in

his plays The Forefathers Eve (1823) and Grazyna

(1825). Mickiewicz’s poetic novel Konrad Wallen-

rod (1828) is based on the history of the Teutonic

knights. His work always contains a sense of patri-

otism and a desire for Poland to one day regain its

independence.

Mickiewicz was also a poet of prophecy, a trend

held in high regard in Poland throughout the 18th

and 19th centuries. He linked his patriotism and

nationalism to mysticism and spirituality. Influ-

enced by Andrzej Towianski, a known mystic,

Mickiewicz came to believe that Israel was a fellow

sufferer of Poland and that Poland was the “Christ”

of all nations. He believed that the kingdom of

God would prevail in the middle of the 19th cen-

tury and that the chosen nations would be the

Poles, French, and Jews. This commitment to Ju-

daism is often linked to his mother’s ancestry and

is evident as well in his positive representation of

Jewish characters such as Jankiel, the patriotic Jew

in Pan Tadeusz (1834). Written while he was in

exile, this epic poem, his last strictly poetic work,

attempts to recapture the Poland of his childhood

as an idealized place and time. After the publica-

tion of this work, Mickiewicz made what he re-

ferred to as a “moral decision” to commit himself

to prophecy and political activism, viewing the

writing of poetry as trivial in light of Poland’s

tragic political situation.

292 Mickiewicz, Adam

More than just a poet and playwright,

Mickiewicz was a spiritual leader to the Polish na-

tion. His writings provided hope to not only the

people of his native Poland as they struggled under

Russian, Prussian, and Austrian rule but also to his

many fellow exiles in the emigré circles in Paris.

Other Works by Adam Mickiewicz

Forefathers. Translated by Count Potoki of Montalk.

London: Polish Cultural Foundation, 1968.

The Great Improvisation. Translated by Louise Varèse.

New York: Voyages, 1956.

Olzer, Krystyna, ed. Treasury of Love Poems by Adam

Mickiewicz. New York: Hipprocrene Books, 1998.

Works about Adam Mickiewicz

Gardner, Maria. Adam Mickiewicz, the National Poet

of Poland. New York: Arno Press, 1971.

Welsh, David J. Adam Mickiewicz. Boston: Twayne,

1970.

Midang

See SO CHONG-JU.

Milosz, Czeslaw (1911–2005) poet, novelist

Czeslaw Milosz was born on June 30 in Seteksniai,

Lithuania. Recipient of the Nobel Prize in litera-

ture in 1980, he is considered one of the leading

figures of contemporary Polish poetry, though his

works, like many of his contemporaries’, were once

banned in his native land.

Milosz received his early education in Roman

Catholic schools. In 1917, at the start of the October

Revolution, he left war-torn Russia to live with his

grandparents in Szetejnie. He earned a law degree

from King Stefan Batory University, where he be-

came politically active, cofounding a leftist literary

group called Zagary. On graduation, he began

working for a Polish radio station but was ultimately

fired from his position for associating with Jews.

Milosz’s greatest early influence was his uncle,

Oscar Milosz, a noted French Lithuanian meta-

physical poet. He published his first collection of

poetry, Poemat O Czasie (Poem in Frozen Time,

1933) at age 22. A second volume followed shortly

thereafter, and in 1934 he received an award from

the Union of Polish Writers for his poetry. World

War II intervened and Milosz served as a radio op-

erator. He returned home only to be captured in

the Russian occupation of his city. He managed to

escape to Poland where he joined the resistance in

Warsaw.

Although he was ultimately exiled from Poland,

Milosz became well known as a poet in literary cir-

cles but suffering greatly, however, from govern-

ment censorship. He assembled an anthology of

English and American poetry that he was not al-

lowed to publish; in addition, so many changes

were made to a screenplay he cowrote that he re-

fused to allow his name to appear in the credits. In

1945, he joined the Polish diplomatic service, serv-

ing in New York and Washington. A year later, his

works were banned in Poland, and the government

withheld his passport in 1950 as a result of his left-

ist views and his critical stance against the Com-

munist regime in Poland.

Milosz was allowed to leave Poland in 1951 to

seek political asylum in Paris. He obtained refuge

at “Kultura,” a haven for exiled political writers and

artists, with other influential Polish émigrés. Alone

and financially destitute, he wrote The Captive

Mind (1953), in which he harshly criticized Stalin-

ism and “The vulnerability of the twentieth cen-

tury mind . . . and its readiness to accept

totalitarian terror for the sake of a hypothetical

future” (Milosz). Although officially banned in

Poland and viewed with much negativity by

French left-wing intellectuals, the book was as-

toundingly successful. It was printed by Kultura’s

underground publishing house, and copies were

shipped secretly to Poland.

For five years after the publication of The Cap-

tive Mind, Milosz did not produce any works. His

exile left him feeling alone. He wrote his second

novel Issa Valley (1955), which tells of childhood

in Lithuania, as a means of reconnecting to his past.

He was finally able to reunite with his family and, in

1960, moved once again, this time to the United

Milosz, Czeslaw 293

States, where he took a post in Slavic languages and

literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1981, Milosz returned home for the first time

since 1951. Martial law was declared, however, in

December of that same year, and his works were

once again banned in Poland. After winning the

Nobel Prize, his recognition grew to the point that

his poem You Who Wronged a Simple Man was

used on Solidarity flyers and also inscribed on a

monument to Gdansk shipyard workers who had

been killed during the 1970 protests. Milosz con-

tinues to write and lecture in California and is still

active in his support for the future of Solidarity in

his native land.

Other Works by Czeslaw Milosz

Milosz’s ABCs. Translated by Madeline G. Levine.

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001.

Road-side Dog. Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and

Robert Haas. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,

1998.

The History of Polish Literature. Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1983.

A Work about Czeslaw Milosz

Nathan, Leonard, and Arthur Quinn. The Poet’s Work:

An Introduction to Czeslaw Milosz. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Miron, Gaston (1928–1996) poet

Gaston Miron was born in Sainte-Agathe-des-

Monts, Québec. He is one of most famous con-

temporary Québecois poets and has played a

significant role in fostering Québecois writing. He

cofounded Hexagon, which he directed from 1953

to 1983, and he has lectured on Québecois writing

and has read his work throughout Europe and

North America.

Miron’s poems are rich in rhythms, melodies,

and evocative words; yet at the same time, they

convey an impassioned militant independence. In

1954, he began his major poetic cycle with “Ago-

nique Life,” “Walk with Love,” and “Bateche.”

Fragments of these works were eventually pub-

lished in the early 1960s, and in the 1970s, uni-

versity presses continued to publish collections of

the cycle. Miron’s work is today regularly

reprinted, translated, and anthologized, reaching

a wide and diverse audience. For his work as an

editor and essayist, in addition to his work as a

poet, he received numerous awards, including the

Academy of Letters of Quebec Medal (which rec-

ognized Miron’s role in celebrating Québecois

culture). In 1995, he received an honorary doc-

torate from the University of Montreal. Miron is

considered one of the most significant poets of

Quebec.

Another Work by Gaston Miron

The March to Love: Selected Poems, Gaston Miron.

Edited and translated by Douglas J. Jones. Pitts-

burgh, Pa.: International Poetry Forum, 1986.

Mishima Yukio (Hiraoka Kimitake)

(1925–1970) novelist, short-story writer,

playwright

Mishima Yukio was born in Tokyo to Hiraoka

Azusa and Shizue Hashi. Shortly after his birth,

Mishima’s paternal grandmother, Natsuko, took

him to raise. In accordance with his grandmother’s

wishes, he attended the elitist Gakushu¯in, a school

founded to educate the imperial family. Mishima

was a good student and displayed a talent for writ-

ing even while he was young.

While still at Gakushu¯in, he published his first

prose work, A Forest in Full Bloom (1941), a his-

torical novel. Mishima disclaimed this story as

imitative of Austrian poet Rainer Maria

RILKE,but

critics received it favorably. Having made a liter-

ary entrance, Mishima widened his literary

circles, becoming associated with the Japanese ro-

mantics.

As World War II raged, Mishima prepared him-

self to go to war. However, when he went for his

final physical, he was misdiagnosed with tubercu-

losis. As a result, he sat out the war, working in a

navy library, and was accepted to Tokyo Imperial

University in 1944.

294 Miron, Gaston

After World War II, the romantics were out of

favor in a world dominated by the struggle to re-

cover from the war. Mishima’s work was regarded

as too introspective, so he had difficulty publishing

his stories. However, in 1946 he met KAWABATA Ya -

sunari, who helped him publish two stories. The

first of these—“The Middle Ages” (1946)—was a

portrayal of the grief the historical figure Ashik-

aga Yoshimasa felt over the death of his son,

Shogun Ashikaga Yoshihisa. The second story—

“Cigarettes” (1946)—was based on Mishima’s ex-

periences at Gakushu¯in. The protagonist becomes

a target of members of a rugby club when he re-

veals that he has joined the literary club. Shortly

thereafter, Mishima received his degree from

Tokyo Imperial University and went to work for

the finance ministry. After less than a year, he left

the ministry and joined a group of leftist writers,

who helped him once again to publish his work.

In 1948, he published his first novel, Thieves, a

story of love among a group of upper-class youth.

The novel was not well received but demonstrated

the development of a romantic style that reached

its fulfillment in Mishima’s next novel.

Confessions of a Mask (1949) established Mishi-

ma as a writer of merit. The story is about a man

who struggles with a growing awareness of his ho-

mosexuality and attempts to throw off the mask

of heterosexuality. In this novel, Mishima tackles

for the first time the issue of false appearances, a

theme that recurs in his later works.

Although Confessions of a Mask launched

Mishima’s career, the stories that followed were not

of the same caliber. Two years passed before he

published his next major work, Forbidden Colors,

a novel that describes the homosexual subculture

of Tokyo in the immediate postwar period.

In 1956, Mishima published his best-received

work, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. The

story centers on a temple acolyte who is handi-

capped by a stutter. Frustrated by the inaccessi-

bility of beauty, he decides to destroy the temple,

a symbol of beauty, and burns it to the ground.

This novel won Mishima the Yomiuri Prize for

literature.

Mishima married Yo¯ko Sugiyama, the daughter

of a well-known painter, in 1958 and settled into a

comfortable life. During this period his national-

istic beliefs began to resurface, and he wrote “Pa-

triotism” (1956), a short story based on an

attempted coup d’état by imperial army officers in

1936.“Patriotism”was the first in a series of stories

that deal with characters who either betray or up-

hold ideals.

These nationalistic stories helped build to the

climax of Mishima’s life—his ritualistic suicide

within the compound of Japan’s Self-Defense

Forces in Tokyo in protest of the demilitarization

of Japan. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and

three members of the militaristic group he organ-

ized, the Shield Society, took Gen. Kanetoshi

Mashita hostage. After a publicized speech from a

rooftop in which Mishima called for a return of the

emperor to power, he retired into the building and

committed seppuku (a ritualistic suicide using a

sword).

Other Works by Yukio Mishima

After the Banquet. Translated by Donald Keene.

New York: Knopf, 1963.

Madame de Sade. Translated by Donald Keene.

New York: Grove Press, 1967.

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea.

Translated by John Nathan. New York: Knopf,

1965.

Works about Yukio Mishima

Nathan, John. Mishima: A Biography. Cambridge,

Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2000.

Scott-Stokes, Henry. The Life and Death of Yukio

Mishima. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,

1974.

Yourcenar, Marguerite. Mishima: A Vision of the Void.

Translated by Alberto Manguel. New York: Farrar,

Straus & Giroux, 1986.

Miss Lou

See BENNETT, LOUISE.

Miss Lou 295

Mistral, Gabriela (Lucila Godoy

Alcayaga)

(1889–1957) poet, essayist

Gabriela Mistral was born in a rural community in

northern Chile to Jerónimo Godoy Villanueva

(former schoolteacher, guitar player, and song-

writer) and Petronila Alcayaga Rojas. As a child

Mistral was falsely accused by her schoolmaster,

also her godmother, of stealing paper from a sup-

ply cabinet. After the incident, she never returned

to the local school and received most of her early

education from her mother and an older sister. By

age 15, she had completed her teacher training and

had begun to teach reading and writing to Indian

children and adults in remote villages.

In 1914, Mistral began to publish poems in var-

ious journals in Chile and overseas. It was at this

time that she adopted her pseudonym as a tribute

to two writers she admired: the Italian Gabriele

D’ANNUNZIO and the Frenchman Frédéric Mistral.

As she devoted much of her energies to her career

as a school administrator, which she considered her

real vocation, it was not until 1922 that she pub-

lished a larger selection of her poems under the title

Desolation. Her first book drew immediate praise

from critics, other writers, and audiences. In it, the

poet addressed many of the themes that would pre-

occupy her throughout her life: maternal affection,

the joys and trials of love, the suffering of the poor.

Her second book, Tenderness (1925), includes

much of the children’s verse that originally ap-

peared in Desolation and that Mistral strove to de-

velop as a genre in its own right. Felling (1938)

represented a break from the style of her earlier

works: While the poetry remains essentially simple,

the stanzaic structure of poems in this and the last

book Mistral published, Wine Press (1954), tends to

be more variable and complex. It is the simplicity,

emotive force, and subtle profundity of Mistral’s

poetry that make it so moving and unique. The

poem “Mourning” from Wine Press begins, “In one

single night there burst from my breast / the tree of

mourning; it heightened and grew.”

Later in life Mistral received international

recognition as a poet, an educator, and an ambas-

sador, and in 1945, she was awarded the Nobel

Prize in literature. She is considered one of the

most important figures in early 20th-century

Chilean and Latin-American poetry, and her influ-

ence has proven extensive. Both as an educator and

as a poet, she made poetry accessible to all classes

of society and, in this way, has contributed directly

and indirectly to much of the great poetry that has

appeared in Chile and other Hispanic countries in

the last several decades.

Other Works by Gabriela Mistral

Agosin, Marjorie, ed. A Gabriela Mistral Reader.

Translated by Maria Jacketti. Fredonia, N.Y.:

White Pine Press, 1992.

Selected Poems. Translated and edited by Doris

Dana. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Press, 1971.

Works about Gabriela Mistral

Arce de Vázquez, Margot. Gabriela Mistral: The Poet

and Her Work. Translated by Helene Masslo An-

derson. New York: New York University Press,

1964.

Fiol-Matta, Licia. A Queer Mother for the Nation: The

State and Gabriela Mistral. Minneapolis: Univer-

sity of Minnesota Press, 2002.

Mistry, Rohinton (1952– ) novelist

Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay, India, and

is of Parsi descent (a community exiled after the Is-

lamic conquest of Iran and one of the smallest ex-

isting ethnic minorities in India). After his studies

in mathematics and economics at Bombay Univer-

sity, Mistry left India and immigrated to Canada in

1975. He joined the University of Toronto, where

he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English

and philosophy. This blend of interests may ex-

plain the recurring commentary on class status

that is an important theme in his works, which are

strongly expressive of his upbringing in Bombay

and Zoroastrian beliefs.

Mistry’s future with writing was sealed after he

won first prize in a writing contest held at the Uni-

versity of Toronto. Following this success, Mistry

296 Mistral, Gabriela

wrote two collections of short stories, later com-

piled together in Swimming Lessons and Other Sto-

ries from Feroz Shah Baag (1987). These works

portray both the problems and tribulations of

being a Bombay Parsi. Most of the characters are

Bombay Parsis who are under pressure to find a

balance between their split identities as Zoroas-

trian Parsis and Indian Parsis.

Mistry’s first novel, Such a Long Journey (1991),

is a continuation of these issues, and it won the

Commonwealth Writers Prize. His novels are writ-

ten in English but are saturated with a multilingual

(English–Hindi–Parsi) colloquialism that is pecu-

liar to Bombay city-talk. Mistry’s characters are

harmonious hybrids out of the clash between his-

tories and communities. His second novel, A Fine

Balance (1995), for example, traces the lives of four

characters of different castes and religions who

must defy social, even individual, prejudices to

help each other survive the 1947 partition of India

and Pakistan.

Unlike other Indian authors living abroad who,

because of distance or exile from India, write about

problems surrounding migration or postcolonial

subjectivity (see POSTCOLONIALISM), Mistry’s works

are remarkably free of these perspectives. The

India of his books is equally recognizable to Indian

readers for its authenticity as it is rewarding to an

international audience that has little opportunity

to read Parsi authors in English.

Another Work by Rohinton Mistry

The Tales of Ferozsha Baag. London: Faber, 1992.

A Work about Rohinton Mistry

Dodiya, Jaydipsing, ed. The Fiction of Rohinton Mis-

try: Critical Studies. London: Sangam, 1998.

Mo Yan (Guan Moye) (1956– ) short-

story writer, novelist

Mo Yan was born on February 17 in Gaomi town-

ship in China’s Shandong province, a poor rural

community. He often went without food and

clothing in the harsh northern climate. Like most

young people of his generation, he joined the Peo-

ple’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1976, at age 20,

serving as a police commissar and a propaganda

officer. He also began writing, publishing his first

story, “Rain Falling Thick and Fast in the Spring

Night,” in 1981.

Mo Yan often describes his writing as an out-

growth of the extreme poverty and isolation of his

childhood, as well as of his family’s strong oral tra-

dition. He chose an ironic pen name that belied his

desire to express himself (Mo Yan means, “don’t

speak”). In 1986, he graduated from the PLA’s

Armed Forces Cultural Academy’s literature de-

partment and joined the Chinese Writers Associa-

tion. By then, he had completed his first book of

stories, The Crystal Carrot (1986). He also finished

Red Sorghum (1987), his best-known work, which

addresses the plight of China’s rural poor while de-

scribing an unusual love story set among the

sorghum fields of his hometown. Taking place

during the Japanese occupation of China, Red

Sorghum contains patriotic themes. Zhang Yimou’s

film version won the top prize at the Berlin Film

Festival in 1987.

Mo Yan’s second novel, The Garlic Ballads

(1987), addresses corrupt practices by Chinese of-

ficials. He writes in World Literature Today that it is

“a book about hunger, and it is a book about rage.”

His third novel, The Republic of Wine, is both an

examination of greed and a reflection upon Mo

Yan’s own struggles with alcoholism.

Mo Yan’s writings are vividly rendered and are

often exceedingly graphic in their portrayal of

human excess, desire, decadence, and waste. How-

ever, his compassion for the Chinese peasant is al-

ways present. Most criticisms of Mo Yan’s works

are aimed at the continuation of patriarchal

themes in his work.

Mo Yan remained an employee of the PLA until

1997 when he joined the editorial staff of the Bei-

jing Procuratorial Daily. His latest book of short

stories, Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh, was

published in English in 2001; the English transla-

tion of his novel Big Breasts and Wide Hips (2003)

is forthcoming. He lives in Beijing.

Mo Yan 297