Inconvenient Memories is a winner of
The Independent Press Award (2020) and The Wishin Shelf Book Awards (2019).
REVIEWS
“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 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
Inconvenient Memories is a memoir that’s rooted in a historic moment and that tackles questions about identity with political and literary acumen.
Foreword Reviews
In Wang’s account of the Tiananmen Square incident, there’s a raw honesty that you don’t always hear in similar stories. She speaks from the viewpoint of an average citizen, something not usually captured in a history book or documentary’s retelling.
Writer's Digest
“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
“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
“By just about any measure, author Anna Wang has crafted a remarkable and intense memoir that deftly blends her own personal life with pre and post events related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests led by students in Beijing, China. Wang also raises the question if citizenship in counties such as Canada and the USA further immigrants feeling of belonging to the host nation or will their always be a deep yearning for their motherland?”
Norm Goldman
Bookpleasures.com
“Wang brings us a powerful and deeply personal story of China, human rights, and the progression of a people.”
Pamela Gossiaux
Author and Speaker
"Anna Wang’s memoir artfully braids the personal and the political. A moving recollection of personal and national identity."
In writing this fascinatingly informative book, the author Anna Wang has fulfilled a promise she made to herself long after the terrible massacre at Tiananmen Square, Beijing, a promise to tell her story about the events at that time....I would highly recommend this fascinating book to anyone interested in history, memoirs, and life in China through the 20th, and into the 21st century.
English Informer
"A thoughtful new coming-of-age memoir by a young Chinese woman who was present at the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989.
Lisa Hill
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Inconvenient Memories
Book Trailer:
I Shall Become Hundreds of Thousands of Words
Narrated by Lisa Cordileone
Excerpts
Chapter 13 of Inconvenient Memories was published by Cha, a literary webzine based in Hong Kong. Please click here to read.
Chapter 15 of Inconvenient Memories was published by the Los Angeles Review of Books, China Channel. Please click here to read.
On the Media
"I Witnessed Tiananmen Square and the Global Backlash. Coronavirus Makes Me Fear for China Even More." Newsweek, 3 June 2020. Please click here to read.
"1989 Protests: She was There in Tiananmen Square." Shaping Opinion, 20 Jan. 2020. Please click here to listen.
"I witnessed Tiananmen Square and I’m proud of Hong Kongers." Vancouver Sun, 10 Oct. 2019. Please click here to read.
"The Making of 'Inconvenient Memories.'” Ms. Magazine, 25 Sep. 2019. Please click here to read.