Chinese Amnesia and The Gift of Memory Examining History and Remembrance in Madeleine Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing.

This article offers an analysis of Madeleine Thien’s 2016 novel DoNot Say We Have Nothing to stage critical questions about the politics ofnarrating Chinese modern history and the figure of the refugee asnecessitated by the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Tracing the origins of theconcept of “Chinese amnesia,” this article describes China’s erasure of theMassacre and contests the ways in which this discourse bolsters an orientalistnarrative during “the rise of China”. By focusing on how the novel refuses toreify the binary of oppres- sion in China and freedom in the US or Canada,this article argues that memory is yet another dimension to the liberalpromise of rescue.