How Beijing 1995 threw me off orbit--into another....

 The voices could not be silenced.

I traveled to Beijing as a business woman with an education in economics, who believed that economic freedom was the first of all freedoms. In New York, I had been a volunteer for the Small Business Administration’s women entrepreneurial programs and watched as, in the USA, financial independence gave a woman the courage to leave an abusive marriage and, through Credit Union that lent micro loans, I learned that in an African village, a woman could realize her vision of educating her daughters while her sons grew up no longer view a woman’s role as subservient to a man.

               In Beijing, I led entrepreneurial workshops and participated in economic panels. On my second day, though, I was shocked to my core by accounts of clitoridectomy of tens of millions of Muslim and African women, and Indian “burning of the brides” over family dowry disputes. In the coming days I learned of Chinese gendercide—singling out baby girls for death—and about the way our US justice system betrayed molested children by giving custody to their molesters. I learned of mass rape as a tool of war to break a nation’s spirit, and of how the Japanese Imperial Army captured thousands of girls during WWII as “comfort” sex slaves to its soldiers, yet steadfastly refused to acknowledge this war crime.

               My world was shaken of its illusion that financial independence was the first independence, because I had taken for granted the real first freedom—the freedom from violence against women.

               Back home in New York, I closed my five-city marketing firm, canceled the multi-phone lines, and donated my business suits to charity. In the new silence I let the voices of courageous girls and women fill my head, channel into the tips of my fingers, and come out in the form of novels as I set out on the lonely and treacherous journey alongside one protagonist at a time. The stories were all around me. I now knew that skeletons were hiding in all corners of our society—all over the globe—often in plain sight. In the years it took me to write each novel, I heard the voices of the women in Beijing. Each time I finished a novel, the next one presented itself, taking hold of my head and heart, and compelling me to tell the truth about women’s lives.  

               Each of my five novels to date has a social issue behind it, each has launched my activism in that area, and four out of these five novels has had its seeds planted in Beijing in 1995.

               The voices of Beijing can no longer silence—nor should they.

Talia Carner

New York, July 2020

Published by HarperCollins, Talia Carner is the New York-based award-winning author of five novels and numerous articles and essays. Her historical and psychological suspense novels bring to the forefront indignities and atrocities long ignored. She was the publisher of Savvy Woman magazine and a lecturer at international women’s economic forums. A committed supporter of global human rights, she has keynoted or co-paneled over 350 civic, educational and cultural events, educating her audiences about the social issues behind her books.  www.TaliaCarner.com