Author Ha Jin on the Persistent Pain of the Tiananmen Massacre

Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview.

Author Ha Jin is the winner of the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. His literary accolades are all the more impressive given that Jin, who was born and raised in north China, writes exclusively in English.

Jin made this decision after the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. He watched in horror as the Chinese government sent in the People's Liberation Army to put down a peaceful democracy protest in which students, workers, and intellectuals all participated. At the time, Jin was in the United States studying American literature, planning to head home to China once he finished his dissertation. June 4, 1989 changed all that, however.

"I was in a shock — traumatized — because I had been in the Chinese Army," he says. "It was supposed to serve and protect the people [instead of firing on them], so that's why I decided to stay in the United States."

Here, Jin explains what Tiananmen Square means for China today, and for him personally. Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear the full conversation.