“Red Sorghum” by Nobel Prize novelist Mo Yan: Pen name may be name of alternate personality

"Mo Yan – ‘don't speak’ in Chinese – is his pen name. Mo Yan has explained on occasion that the name comes from a warning from his father and mother not to speak his mind while outside, because of China's revolutionary political situation from the 1950s, when he grew up” (1).

Comment: If Mo Yan was a young child when his parents warned him not to speak his mind in public, the surest way for him to obey would have been to create an alternate personality named “Don’t Speak” that took over and kept secrets when he was in public.

1. Wikipedia. “Mo Yan.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Yan

2. Mo Yan. Red Sorghum [1992]. Translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt. Arrow Books, 2003. 

Added March 31, 2023: I didn't have the patience to read most of this novel, much of which described the Chinese-Japanese fog of war. And there didn't seem to be enough of the kind of individual character development that would be of interest here.