In Search of My Homeland — A Memoir of a Chinese Labor Camp, by Er Tai Gao (ECCO/HarperCollins, 2009)

Excerpts from the notebooks of the noted writer, artist and dissident, Gao Ertai. Written originally in microcharacters on small pieces of scrap paper, sewn inside his prison clothes and smuggled out past the guards at the risk of his life, these notebooks provide an accurate, ground zero and intimate account of the labor camps and the political machinations that led to them, as China spiraled down into a dystopia. Gao Ertai’s words, still repressed and censored, are given here as free and open as he wrote them.

Stagnant Water & Other Poems by Wen Yiduo (BrightCity Books, 2014)

The selected poems of one of the most directly passionate, subtle, politically acute and lyrical poets of the twentieth century. Deeply engaged in the events of his time, Wen Yiduo was assassinated in 1947 after giving a political speech to students. His works, written in Chinese, remain largely unknown to the general English language reader. This is the first book length translation to appear in English in the past seventy years. The calligraphy is by the gifted artist and poet, Huang Xiang. Introduction by Christopher Merrill.

Selected Poems by Ai Qing (Crown, 2021)

A timeless, visionary collection of poems from one of China’s most acclaimed poets—now available in English for the first time in a generation and featuring a foreword by his son, contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei.

Robert Dorsett studied Chinese at the Yale-in-China Program in Hong Kong. He received his M.D. degree from the State University of New York. After a year of psychiatric residency, he completed his training in pediatrics at Cornell University. Robert also has an M.F.A. degree from New York University.