She had traveled over the landscapes her parents had traversed when they were young. She wasn't simply more fluent in Chinese language and art.
"That hit home, and I realized that when I got home, I wanted to serve as a witness to these events.”īack In The US, With A Different AttitudeĪfter three years in China, Yang was ready to relate to her parents with much more intimacy.
“I was watching the government silencing and mentally abusing its own citizens," Yang says.
She was watching something eerily similar to her own personal experience with the ex-boyfriend. Yang wasn’t among the protesters, but the massacre proved to be an “a-ha” moment. Yang watched in horror as Chinese troops fired on unarmed protesters. Then, in 1989, the Tiananmen Square Massacre snapped her to attention. A panel from Belle Yang's graphic novel Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale. For three years, she toured the country and studied classical Chinese art. Yang is more frank in the autobiography on her web site, where she writes that she “raged” against the language, iconography, beliefs of her parents: “I wanted to run away from the Chinese universe I had been born into and launch into an American world view, free of the weight of memories.”īut after college, in her mid-20s, a relationship went sour, and her physically-abusive boyfriend became a violent stalker. “Growing up here,” she says, “I started to go my own way.” The Yang family, early upon their arrival in San Francisco in 1967, looking a little shell-shocked. The family arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area when she was just 7 years old, and like many children of immigrants, Yang was eager to put the old world behind her. It is as though we, the readers of English, can now miraculously read Chinese.Belle Yang wasn’t always graciously fascinated with her parents tales of days gone by. Online viewers are encouraged to submit their questions to Yang is an American writer who writes in English and thinks in Chinese. Please note: this event will also be a free live video webcast on from 6:30 to 8:00 pm ET. During this time she discovered her Chinese parents' and grandparents' lives, a story of bitter struggle and loss but also one she and her family had come to recognize as Xuan to, "Forget sorrow," which is Belle Yang's Chinese name.īelle Yang will be joined in a conversation by the artist, writer and designer Christine Norrie, whose work includes the graphic novel Cheat, the Oni Press series Hopeless Savages, and the teen drama Breaking Up.īook sale and signing to follow. The author started drawing her memoir during a fearful time in her life when she was forced to hide out in her parents' home to escape an abusive ex-boyfriend turned stalker. This is the New York launch of a remarkable debut graphic memoir by author Belle Yang ( Hannah is My Name, The Odyssey of a Manchurian, and Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father's Shoulders). Part of the Citi Series on Asia in America
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