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    

Public Thoughts To be Read At The Passover Table

Passover 2013

By Talia Carner            
             

            This Passover, as we celebrate our ancestors’ freedom from slavery, we reconnect through our most important holiday with our centuries-long traditions. It is incumbent upon us to contemplate the broader concept of freedom and what it means to us as individuals, as members of our immediate communities, and as members of the community of Jews across the globe.             
            Throughout history, Passover has also been the time of increased blood libels and pogroms against Jews. While Jews celebrated freedom, they were being reminded that they were hated to the point of being killed by the dozens, thousands, and millions. As a new wave of anti-Semitism is sweeping over the globe, landing right in Manhattan's UN building, its Jew-hate festival has metastasized into leading universities, mainstream media, and civic organizations. The tale of the Haggadah we read at the Seder stands to remind us that hate comes knocking on our door first with words, then with economic and academic boycotts, then with biased UN resolutions, and, as in the past, it may end with guns, bombs and incinerators.            
            Passover also marks the Spring in our ancient agrarian society, a beginning of a cycle of life, with the blooming of trees and the planting of vegetables and flowers. The fresh start of spring also stands to remind us that our friends and fellow Jews are watching with angst the rise in anti-Semitism in countries from Venezuela to Spain. And while these past sixty-five years Israelis—civilians and soldiers—have helped every Jew everywhere walk tall and proud, their existential threat from Iran is real.     
            “Every Jew should consider himself as if he was freed from slavery,” says the Haggadah we’ll read tonight, retelling the story of Exodus. In today’s climate we should add that “Every Jew should consider himself as if he’s just escaped a terrorist bomb.” There but for the grace of God and twist of history, we would not have been spared the wrath and bombs of a Palestinians or extreme Muslim murderers taking shelter in our sacred freedom on these shores. Let’s give our prayers and charity to the over 6,000 injured Israelis forever coping with embedded nails, burned faces, or missing limbs. And as we do that, let us search within ourselves whether we have done all we could for them and for the Israeli soldiers who take the first bullet for us.
            The tradition of Passover also calls us to invite to the Seder table any Jew who does not have one. Let’s invite—at least in our thoughts—all our Jewish brethren in countries that do not offer the freedom and protection that the USA guarantees us. For them, we can raise our collective voice with indignation and outrage and use our collective power to fight tyranny and fanaticism that calls for our—and their—demise.

Therefore, as we move into the Spring, let us bless all the good things the world has given us. This Passover we are not alone at the Seder table. Neither should any Jew be.

Amen.

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Novelist Talia Carner lives in New York. Her latest novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN (HarperCollins, 2011) deals with the struggle between freedom and faith. (www.TaliaCarner.com)