马玲 小说家 2024届

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马玲

小说家 2024届


将思辨和现实主义叙事模式相结合，凸显当代社会超现实的一面。

地点
伊利诺伊州芝加哥市
年龄
获奖时41岁
关注领域
小说和非小说写作
网站
lingma.tumblr.com

关于凌的作品
凌马是一位小说家，她将思辨和现实主义叙事模式相结合，反思全球化资本主义时代构建我们生活的体系。她的许多角色都在工作、人际关系、文化期望以及双重移民身份中游走，这些身份以各种方式束缚和解放他们。马经常将虚构故事设定在人们熟悉的环境和场景中——公司办公室、一夜qing、购物中心——然后用奇幻的情节转折给读者带来惊喜。这些转折以一种冷幽默的方式，凸显了当代社会超现实的一面，以及我们在面对失落和分离时对日常和消费品的依恋。

马晓云末日小说《断绝 》（2018）的主人公是二十多岁的华裔美国女性坎迪斯·陈，她是毁灭性真菌病原体的少数幸存者之一。这种被称为“神热”的病原体被认为起源于中国深圳的制造业中心，感染者会进入类似僵尸的状态，无休止地重复日常生活中的琐碎任务，直到消瘦而死。当坎迪斯讲述她逃离纽约市并加入幸存者团体时，她回想起自己生命中的早期篇章：在中国福建的童年；移民美国后母亲对家乡的思念；以及她作为圣经制作协调员从事出版工作的节奏。马晓丽同时尝试了多种体裁的创作——僵尸末日、移民叙事、办公室讽刺以及对资本主义的批判——创作出一部令人动容且不安的小说。

《极乐蒙太奇 》（2022）中收集的离奇故事也模糊了体裁的界限，探索了角色试图理解他人并被他人理解的过程。几个故事以错过顿悟或奇怪的失踪而令人难忘地结束。例如，《G》的叙述者在童年好友（同时也是竞争对手）给她服用了过量的药物后，就永远消失了。《北京烤鸭》以女儿讲述母亲移民美国的经历为中心。通过复杂的嵌套故事结构，马晓丽对挪用他人记忆、表现负担以及我们渴望故事传达道德或教训的欲望进行了深刻的思考。马凌通过其层次丰富的虚构作品，为读者提供了关于当代生活中疏离感的惊人视角，以及我们在延续疏离感方面所扮演的角色。

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个人简介
马凌（Ling Ma）于2005年获得芝加哥大学学士学位，2015年获得康奈尔大学硕士学位。她曾在两所学校任教，并将于2025年重返芝加哥大学，担任英语语言文学系副教授。除了小说和短篇小说集外，她的作品还发表在《纽约客》（The New Yorker）、《大西洋》（The Atlantic）、《格兰塔》（Granta）、《弗吉尼亚季刊》（Virginia Quarterly Review）和《耶鲁评论》（The Yale Review）等刊物上。
发布于2024年10月1日

马凌的照片
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Ling Ma
Fiction Writer Class of 2024
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Portrait of Ling Ma
Mixing speculative and realist modes of storytelling to throw into relief the surreal aspects of our contemporary condition.

location iconLocation
Chicago, Illinois
age iconAge
41 at time of award
area of focus iconArea of Focus
Fiction and Nonfiction Writing
website iconWebsite(s)
lingma.tumblr.com
About Ling's Work
Ling Ma is a fiction writer mixing speculative and realist modes of storytelling to reflect on the systems that structure our lives in a globalized, capitalist era. Many of her characters navigate jobs, relationships, cultural expectations, and hyphenated, immigrant identities that both trap and liberate them in various ways. Ma often grounds her fictions in familiar settings and scenarios—corporate offices, a one-night stand, a shopping mall—and then surprises readers with fantastical plot turns. Delivered with a deadpan sense of humor, these turns throw into relief the surreal aspects of our contemporary condition and our attachments to routines and consumer goods in the face of loss and disconnection.

The protagonist of Ma’s apocalyptic novel Severance (2018) is Candace Chen, a twenty-something Chinese American woman who is one of few survivors of a devastating fungal pathogen. Those infected with “Shen Fever,” which is believed to have originated in the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, China, enter a zombie-like state, endlessly repeating a mundane task from their daily lives until they waste away. As Candace narrates her escape from New York City and initiation into a group of fellow survivors, she flashes backwards in time to earlier chapters in her life: her childhood in Fujian, China; her mother’s homesickness upon immigrating to the United States; and the rhythms of her publishing job as a book production coordinator in Bible manufacturing. Ma experiments with the conventions of several genres at once—zombie apocalypse, immigrant narrative, office satire, and critique of capitalism—to create a deeply affecting and unsettling novel.

The uncanny stories collected in Bliss Montage (2022) also blur genre distinctions and explore characters’ attempts to understand and be understood by others. Several stories end hauntingly with a missed epiphany or strange disappearance. The narrator of “G,” for example, becomes permanently invisible after her childhood friend (and rival) gives her a too-potent dose of a drug. “Peking Duck” centers on a daughter’s account of her mother’s experience as an immigrant to the United States. Through a complex framing device of nested stories, Ma presents a powerful meditation on the appropriation of others’ memories, the burden of representation, and our desire for stories to dispense a moral or a lesson. With her richly layered works of fiction, Ma provides readers with startling vantage points on the alienating aspects of contemporary life and the roles we play in perpetuating them.


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Biography
Ling Ma received an AB (2005) from the University of Chicago and an MFA (2015) from Cornell University. She has taught at both institutions and will rejoin the University of Chicago in 2025 as an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature. In addition to her novel and short story collection, her writing has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Yale Review.





Published on October 1, 2024

Photos of Ling Ma
High-resolution photos of MacArthur Fellows are available for download, including use by media, in accordance with this copyright policy. Please credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.