Last Letters to My First Love is Yuan Changming's fifth book published this year as well as his last Chinese work ever written. In this non-fiction or autobiographical book, Yuan employes montage and what he calls 'diary-letter' as his basic narrative framework to recall and re-enact his rich life experiences starting as a Chinese village boy, who worked in a 'labor camp' after high school during the 'Cultural Revolution' and served as a college administrator before coming to Canada for his doctorate and becoming a prolific English author of poetry. For anyone interested in the lives of contemporary Chinese intellectuals and immigrants, Last Letters to My First Love offers a highly relevant and representative read, which can be seen or even 'examined' as slices of a whole sociohistorical age.
