Belle Yang's "My Name is Belle," a documentary just released, won CIEN Golden Eagle Award. Her next book Always Come Home to Me, will be released next month. Yang has since produced two volumes of a Chinese trilogy: Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father's Shoulders (1994) and The Odyssey of a Manchurian (1996). The third volume will be a graphic novel. She has also written two children's books: Chili-Chili-Chin-Chin (1999) and Hannah is My Name (2004).
This summer, "My Name is Belle," will appear on public television, and, from July 16 through December, an exhibit of her work will go on display at the American Immigration Law Center in Washington, D.C.
Yang was born in Taiwan 47 years ago and came to the United States with her family when she was 7. Her father was an artist. Her mother cleaned rooms in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel. An only child, she graduated in biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, but she followed her father's footsteps and enrolled in art school.
Yang' boy friend stalked her and broke into her house in rural California. The man hounded her, threatened her physically. Eventually, her parents sent her to China.
Yang lived in Beijing with her father's friends and visited her grandparents in the countryside. She was in Tiananmen Square with her artist friends when the 1989 massacre of students began. Back in America, tormented by nightmares about Tiananmen and renewed harassment from her old boyfriend, she decided to fight back. She wrote letters to authorities for assistance.. "That's how my writing began," she says. "I quickly found out that talking evaporates -- writing has the power to make things happen." And a writer was born. (Source: Marie Arana, The Washington Post, Jul 1, 2007).