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
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