Yiming Ma is the author of the novel These Memories Do Not Belong to Us.
Even as I write this sentence, I notice myself self-censoring.
Events in the real world appear more dystopic than anything one could invent, Yiming Ma writes.Emma Norman/Supplied
It seems impossible not to agonize over every word for fear of misunderstanding or backlash. After all, this is one of the national papers I saw every day in the newsstands as a child new to Toronto, when the snow used to pile above my shoulders and I wondered whether I would ever feel like I belonged to this foreign country. Especially since my parents grew up during China’s Cultural Revolution, when it was even more dangerous to speak up than it is today.
The irony is that my debut novel, These Memories Do Not Belong to Us, is set in a world governed by the Qin empire, a reimagined China where citizens are implanted with devices called Mindbanks, capable of recording and surveilling their memories. When I first discussed the dystopian premise with my editors, I worried that Western media might misconstrue my book as a simplistic critique of my birth country.
On the contrary, I have long appreciated China’s economic ascent. During my lifetime, hundreds of millions of people were lifted out of poverty. One of my earliest memories in Shanghai is bathing in a large red bucket filled with water my grandparents had to boil in two immense kettles; to later gaze at the magnificence of the Pudong skyline always made ideological criticisms such as censorship pale in comparison.
When I started writing my novel more than five years ago, I intended its themes of survival and collective memory to be universal, a truth stemming from my time in each of the countries I have called home.
Still, I could never have imagined that in the year of its publication, the United States, Canada’s most important ally, would begin arresting migrants off the streets and deporting them to countries they’ve never been to. Nor that over the past two years more than 63,000 Palestinians would be killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, while the world’s governments endlessly debated a proper response to end the bloodshed.
Under such circumstances, how can anyone remain silent? Especially as a writer, when events in the real world appear more dystopic than anything one could invent?
The truth is that I never intended to become an author, much less write anything controversial. Before my novel, I spent a decade working in business and tech across Toronto, New York, London, Berlin and South Africa. Growing up, I was always reminded by my parents that we were not entitled to anything in a foreign land.
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I was taught not only to accept racism, but rather, to prepare for it. If the playing field wasn’t even at school, I simply needed to work harder. This mindset was what drove me to study capitalism, the dominant economic system of my adoptive country, eventually earning undergraduate and master’s degrees in business at Western and Stanford University, respectively.
Before starting my novel, I never truly imagined a world beyond its prevailing systems. Since writing it, I’ve also struggled with the prospect of speaking up against injustices – a responsibility I feel as a literary citizen that clashes with what my family always taught me, the explicit prioritization of survival above resistance. There’s a reason why most writers of colour seem to be second- or third-generation immigrants rather than the first wave: They feel more entitled to their voice and believe in the power of their words, unlike the lessons of silence my parents taught me.
The most insidious aspect of self-censorship is how it can masquerade as wisdom. We can tell ourselves that we’re being nuanced, sensitive to both sides of an argument. But personally, I suspect that many of us may be instead revising our words in fear – of misinterpretation and controversy, for which our courage will rarely be acknowledged.
I empathize with such instincts, having worked in the corporate world where it feels imperative to evaluate the risk-reward profile of every decision. Only after conversing with prominent social activists in recent years did I realize that their decisions are rarely guided by utilitarianism, but rather by their values.
While writing These Memories Do Not Belong to Us, I was forced to confront the chilling reality that under authoritarianism, regardless of surveillance technologies such as the Mindbanks I conceived of, it is always the citizens who police themselves most closely.
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In my fictional world, the ambiguity of what memories were legal to store in one’s memory device served to amplify the power of censorship, leading citizens to proactively delete or edit their pasts. Understandably, if you could imagine yourself in their shoes, how close to that red line would you really want to go? Especially if you belonged to a less powerful identity group, if you couldn’t afford to resist?
But as my narrator soon discovers, censorship follows no logical pattern. What seems safe today may be dangerous tomorrow. When the Jewish writer Isaac Babel was celebrated as a champion of Soviet literature in the 1920s for his revolutionary prose and wartime stories, few could have predicted that he would eventually become a target of Stalin and executed. Stories and beliefs once celebrated can later be persecuted, making the pursuit of complete safety through self-censorship impossible.
Recently, I’ve realized that the greatest respect I can demonstrate as a writer living in any Western democracy is to hold a mirror up to our countries when it comes to their own supposed ideals. That means holding our leaders accountable when Israel Tax Authority data suggest that Canadian bullets and other military hardware have continued to be imported into Israel as of this April, contradicting our government’s claim that it has not allowed arms shipments into the conflict since January, 2024.
Being an immigrant does not mean that I should stay quiet about the problems in my adopted home. Rather, I believe that authors have a duty to serve as custodians of collective memory, to preserve the tales that matter most – and not only the stories about our countries of origin that society often encourages us to tell.
These days, I’m learning to catch myself when I self-censor. In writing this essay, I’m also trying for the first time as an immigrant to trust our country: to believe it can accommodate the full range of concerns and criticisms necessary for societal progress, without feeling like I’m putting myself at risk by joining the conversation.
Because if even writers begin to self-censor, if literature retreats from bearing witness to the complexities of our moment, how can we ever find our way together to a better future?
