Spirit of ‘89
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The number of students massacred at Tiananmen Square in ‘89 remains unknown. The Chinese government’s figures were clearly low, and sources typically report hundreds. This is what makes the iconic photo of a man peaceably standing before a column of tanks so memorable. Here, certainly, was one — one man who refused to step aside.
Jazzy Activism
The Spirit of ‘89 Event, co-hosted by the PEN Freedom to Write Project and the ACLU, was a welcome respite from the more formal panels of the other events. It was set in Joe’s Pub in an atmosphere of jazzy spotlights and sashaying cocktail waitresses. Instead of a panel format, a solo mic dominated the stage and individual writers were given a direct spotlight.
Unfortunately, one of the most prominent Chinese writers to participate at the Tiananmen protests did not come to stage. For Liu Xiabao remains in prison.
Readings of Writings
A constellation of accomplished poets, novelists, and activists came to the stage instead. Three pieces stood out for me in particular. Phillipino writer José Dalisay once again stole the stage with his sonorous, almost Shakespearean presentation. Dalisay read a section from ‘Man of Earth‘, by the Phillipino poet Amador Daguio. The poems contained some of the most powerful and beautiful anti-imperial language that I have ever heard. The American invasion of the Phillipines around the turn of the century – what Dalisay likes to call the ‘first Vietnam – was compared to an eagle with ‘talons of gold’ which could tear open ‘little brown bodies’ because gold was the ‘heaviest metal’. And Americans were a gilded invader. Definitely a warning against the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Grapes of Wrath
I was also struck by a passionate reading from Open Society Institute attorney Ann Beeson, who selected a passage from John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath.’ The passage depicted Steinbeck’s sweeping analyses of poverty creation in the central valley of California and impediments to social change. It was a sobering reminder that the idea of revolution is not a new one, and some of the world’s greatest minds have addressed it in art. The fiction that matters has often come before.
Author Suketu Mehta read a passage from Ghandi’s ‘The Story of My Experiments with Truth.’ “Bravery on the battlefield,” Ghandi wrote to a British officer in 1920, “is just impossible to us. Bravery of the soul remains open to us.” Ghandi then prophesied the defeat of the British Empire.
Someone with the Spirit
Several other writers made memorable presentations, some authors presenting original material, while others read from works of friends or ‘The Greats’. It struck me that it requires incredible humility to use the stage to read someone else’s work, and not your own. Such a stage as Joe’s Pub for such an important event is not easy to come by. At the same time, I deeply enjoyed the Korean author’s Hwang Sok-Yong’s reading from his new work ‘The Old Garden‘. While in exile, Sok-Yong was in Beijing for the massacre at Tiananmen Square and also witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall. The spirit of ‘89 surely charges through him. He saw both the destruction and creation of freedom.
