Out Now: Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
IDW Publishing is proud to share the eye-opening story of Tiananmen 1989 by first-hand participant Lun Zhang, French journalist and Asia specialist Adrien Gombeaud, and artist Ameziane.
Thirty-one years ago, more than one million students stood at Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing, China, calling for democracy. As tens of thousands of students and concerned Chinese citizens took to the streets demanding political reforms, the world didn’t know what to expect…This infamous event, widely known as the June Fourth Incident, is explored in this new autobiographical graphic novel from Lun Zhang, who at the time was a young sociology teacher. Many voices and viewpoints are on display, from Western journalists to Chinese administrators, describing how the hope of a generation was shattered when authorities opened fire on protesters and bystanders. Tiananmen 1989 reveals the tragic moment when contemporary China took shape.
With the streets of the Oregon town where I live still raw from recent protests, I find this an eerie time to have this book, which I translated last November, be coming out. But as my editor Justin Eisinger rightly says, “In an era marked by vast protests against Chinese authority in Hong Kong and the ever-expanding digital surveillance state that threatens the privacy of individuals around the world, now is as important a time as ever to unlock the history of protest and civil unrest within the People’s Republic of China.
“The story that Zhang, Gombeaud, and Ameziane create brings this deep history and searing desire for change amongst the country’s youth into sharp focus, revealing a complex world of loyalties and ideologies, strained under the mighty weight of tradition.”
IDW has shown a truly international breadth of the vision in the last few years, an initiative I’m proud to have been a part of with books like Springtime in Chernobyl,and After the Spring.
““I am looking forward to the publication of this book, because it depicts such an important moment in history, which I personally witnessed. We put a lot of time into recording the details of what happened on Tiananmen Square in 1989. I believe to understand China today, you have to understand how the event has shaped China in the 30 years ensued.””
It was interesting to see artist “Amazing” Ameziane’s vibrant pop style brought to bear on such a serious topic, as my previous exposure to his work had been translating his raucous Cash Cowboys, a hardcore action series very much in the vein of Strike Back or The Losers.
This is the second major nonfiction graphic novel I’ve done on the subject of modern and contemporary China, the other being A Chinese Life, a memoir by editorial cartoonist Li Kunwu, written directly in French with the help of Philippe Ôtié.
