Liao Yiwu

Nov 27, 2024 | chinabooksreview.com | Taili Ni |Liao Yiwu

Ed: Liao Yiwu is a Chinese writer best known for his collection of oral histories The Corpse Walker (Anchor, 2008). Below is an unpublished oral history, recorded by Liao in 2002 and translated by Michael Martin Day for China Books Review, in which a victim of the Strike Hard campaign of 1983 tells his story of imprisonment and escape. Also read our own profile of Liao’s life and work. I was imprisoned for four years for writing a poem [about the Tiananmen Square massacre].

Jun 26, 2024 | kirkusreviews.com | Liao Yiwu |Brittney Griner |Michelle Burford |Francoise Malby-anthony

A pertinent plea against tyranny and an emotional reflection on the need to write in order to remember. A Chinese dissident writer in exile remains hopeful that writing the truth, in spite of official oppression, can topple dictatorship. Imprisoned in 1990 for four years in China for performing two protest poems that “railed against and condemned the Tiananmen massacre,” Liao Yiwu has committed his life to fighting against the Chinese government’s widespread oppression.

Jun 24, 2024 | theguardian.com | Liao Yiwu |Daniel York Loh

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May 9, 2024 | theguardian.com | Liao Yiwu

Most of my manuscripts are locked up in the filing cabinets of the ministry of security, and the agents there study and ponder them repeatedly, more carefully than the creator himself. The guys working this racket have superb memories; a certain chief of the Chengdu public security bureau can still recite the poems I published in an underground magazine in the 1980s.