“We must rescue the truth of Tiananmen from the distortions of Orientalism, and interrogate the protesters’ demands beyond mere slogans.”
Tough. When imposed or psychological self censoring construe to diminish memory & history, survivors’ rationale/capacity for expression pushed to the outer limit
"The class hierarchy that manifested during Tiananmen extends to its artistic remembrance...perhaps because only the relatively privileged can leave China and write from the safety of distance, where they must also speak in the language of Western liberalism to reach a broader audience."
My latest:
After 37 years, the Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown of 1989 have been preserved in novels as much as in memory. But does the Anglophone literary imagination get it right?
