The Courage to Stand Alone: Letters from Prison and Other Writings

Written in a prison cell in China, this is the moving and forceful first book by the paramount leader and symbol of the ongoing struggle for democracy and human rights in China. Once an electrician at the Beijing Zoo, Wei Jingsheng emerged as an eloquent and utterly fearless fighter for individual rights in China during the Democracy Wall Movement in the late 1970s. Though he's spent all but six months of the last seventeen years in prison (now serving a lengthy second sentence), the spirit of his message has continued to inspire generations of Chinese democracy activists from the students in Tiananmen Square to the wary citizens of Hong Kong. From his solitary-confinement cell he's composed defiant letters to Deng Xiaoping and other Communist leaders, expressing with breathtaking boldness his views on economic reform, foreign investment and relations, Tibet, and other urgent (and often taboo) political topics and social concerns. The book also includes touching letters to his family and friends, an autobiographical essay, his trial defense statement, and the legendary 1979 wall poster that landed him in prison. With humor and irony that survives his debilitating treatment, Wei's eloquent letters tell the story of courage in the face of tyranny and inhumanity. A towering figure in twentieth-century China, Wei Jingsheng is the most important political prisoner in the world today. The publication of his book may be an opportunity to bring freedom of expression - a human right that knows no borders - to Wei and his fellow citizens. It is certainly a tribute to the durability of the human spirit.