Irvine, CA — Immigrant and survivor Anna Wang offers a unique glimpse into the Tiananmen Square incident and the China surrounding it in her powerful new book Inconvenient Memories: A Personal Account of the Tiananmen Square Incident and the China Before and After. From her childhood account of living in an oppressed government system to the activities during her college-age years that led to the protests in the Square and beyond, Wang’s revealing personal account is both gripping and terrifying. It’s a story that will never be allowed to be told in her home country.

Having experienced students’ protests while studying at Peking University, Wang naturally felt for the cause of the students. Meanwhile, as an employee of a foreign enterprise, she observed the protests with mixed feelings.

“When the protests started, I was sent to the square on a daily basis to take photos for my Japanese boss to analyze for evidence of turning tides in the economy,” says Wang, who worked for Canon. “That’s why after almost thirty years I can still recall the details graphically.”

“A deeply intimate and revealing portrait of ‘real life’ inside China before and after the climactic Tiananmen Square Incident. Writer Anna Wang confronts her own country’s history with eyes wide open. Breathtaking!”
John J. Kelly
Detroit Free Press

“I felt sympathy for the students’ fight for democracy and freedom, but when I crossed Tiananmen Square, hearing them sing “The Internationale will be the human race,” I became wary of them. What if the students succeeded and they took everything I owned and would own in the future? As the very few who worked for foreign enterprises at the time, I cared about the market economy, private property, and anything like that.”

Then the massacre occurred and Wang lived through the terrifying time when tanks were in the streets and people were dying. Every relationship around her was challenged.

“Not only is this book extraordinarily entertaining and well written, it is likely to become a significant source of China’s history and development as personally witnessed by an insightful participant. Highly Recommended on many levels.”
Grady Harp
Amazon Top 50 Hall of Fame Reviewer

After the massacre,while Wang’s best friend fled to the West, she decided to stay in China, believing her Japanese boss’ prediction that economic development would eventually bring democracy to China. Marching into the twenty-first century, as China joined the tide of globalization, Wang became a member of the middle class as she wished for in the 1980s, but she was disappointed to see that democracy didn’t come to China despite its thriving economy. “After the Tiananmen Massacre, no one had the guts to protest anymore. Pressure groups will never emerge,” she says. Wang moved to New Zealand to have a second child, then to Canada and America.

“The events of the June Fourth massacre in Beijing in 1989 were so extreme that descriptions of it tend to be emotional. Anna Wang’s story of her decision to stay in China, hoping that economic development would bring democracy (while many of her friends were emigrating) helps us to understand what an ordinary Chinese citizen’s life felt beneath all the sturm und drang of the times. The color of her descriptions brings to life a period of Chinese history that large forces seem to have pressed colorless.”
Perry Link
University of California, Riverside

Wang writes with a personal voice, bringing you into the crowded apartment that houses her and her grandmother, a fearful woman. As a child her grandma had her feet freed halfway through China’s brutal tradition of foot binding and as a result was partially crippled. Wang’s grandmother was also a terse woman who summed up her entire life with only one sentence. Quite the opposite, Wang, a writer at heart, yearned for her voice to be heard and swore in her childhood that “I shall become hundreds and thousands of words.”

 “A remarkable and intense memoir! Wang also raises the question: ‘Does citizenship in counties such as Canada and the USA further immigrants feeling of belonging to the host nation or will there always be a deep yearning for their motherland?’”
Norm Goldman
Publisher & Editor

Wang’s story of the massacre stands out from others because of her station in life, and her freedom to write what she knows from a democratic country. “Living in China as an emerging middle class during the protests gives me a unique perspective,” she says. “One I haven’t seen in previous accounts. The Tiananmen Massacre wasn’t quite as simple as good vs. evil, democracy vs. dictatorship. It wasn’t just about the people standing up to an inhumane regime. The lines that divided the two sides were blurrier than most could or would have even known.” 

As an immigrant, Wang wants to use her bookto establish that “Chinese people are not the same entity as China’s fascist regime. We need to fight for China to become a country that accepts universal human values. Telling my truth of what happened thirty years ago is part of this effort.”

Inconvenient Memories is a powerful and deeply personal story of human rights, the cry for freedom, and the mix of guilt and joy that comes from immigration. This book accounts the infamous Tiananmen Square Incident from an unprecedented perspective.

Inconvenient Memories: A Personal Account of the Tiananmen Square Incident and the China Before and After,2019, Purple Pegasus Publishing, ISBN# 978-0-9966405-7-2, hardcover, 329 pages, US$29.95, CAD36.50, ebook $9.99, available on Amazon.

Media Contact: For a review copy of inconvenient Memories or to arrange an interview with Anna Wang, contact Scott Lorenz of Westwind Communications Book Marketingatscottlorenz@westwindcos.com or by phone at 734-667-2090.

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