Review: Among the Braves

The book covers the 2019 protests through four activists

There are many books written about the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, such as Antony Dapiran's City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong that documents practically every single incident that happened, to Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong,  Louisa Lim's memoir that is woven together with detailed history of Hong Kong.

One of the latest books is Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle and Exile in the Battle for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy by journalist couple Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin, the former with The Washington Post, the latter a contributing writer to The Atlantic.

Ho is a journalist turned activist, now in jail

It's complicated to explain how the protests exploded on the street in the summer of 2019 without a lot of history and context, and the authors do this through Reverend Chu Yiu-ming's life, how he came to Hong Kong from the mainland, became a pastor and was involved in Operation Yellow Bird, smuggling Chinese student activists in Tiananmen Square out of the country, and then in 2014 the Umbrella Movement, calling for universal suffrage.

He was prosecuted for his involvement in the 79-day occupation of parts of the city, and five years later the next generation takes up the mantle to continue the fight for democracy. 

The book follows four main characters and how they were involved in the 2019 protests: Chinese-American Samuel Chu Muk-man, a protester named Tommy, journalist turned politician Gwyneth Ho Kwai-lam, and UK-based activist Finn Lau Cho-dik.

Lau advocated online for laam chau

July 21 is the fifth anniversary of the horrific events that happened in Yuen Long, when triad members wearing white shirts attacked people in the MTR station with rods. It was a horrific scene watching the video clips posted on Twitter that night.

In particular it was Ho's live-streamed video that was shocking. She was the reporter who bravely recorded a middle-aged man assaulting her and she continued filming the incident live. Among the Braves reports how local residents in Yuen Long knew days in advance the attacks would happen, and so did the police, and yet nothing was done to stop or mitigate the attacks.

When Ho decided to run for the pro-democratic primaries in July 2020, she was mentally prepared to go to jail... where she has been since January 2021.

The book also has a harrowing account of Tommy, who decided to take the risk and flee to Taiwan... by boat and what happened after, and how surveyor Lau became an activist in the UK to raise awareness of what was happening in Hong Kong and proposing "laam chau", the concept of mutual destruction. That resulted in a HK$1 million bounty on his head.

Chu's activism was inspired by his father

Samuel Chu is also profiled in the book as an activist in the US who is... the son of Reverend Chu. Like his father he studied to become a pastor and was active in promoting several causes which gave him experience to set up the Hong Kong Democracy Council, which is he as since left.

Nevertheless Among the Braves follows these four along with then Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and the numerous missteps she made in handling the 2019 protests and how this resulted in Beijing taking control over the situation and the city.

It's quite impressive how Mahtani and McLaughlin were able to reconstruct these people's lives, in Ho's case with as many people they could talk to, as she was behind bars. Their back stories help explain their motivations for being involved in the 2019 protests and the authors are sympathetic towards the pro-democracy protesters.

McLaughlin and Mahtani

A minor quibble is how some shocking events that were part of the protests were mentioned in passing to avoid criticism if they didn't include them, such as the young man who was shot by a policeman and protesters setting a man on fire.

In any event Among the Braves is a page turner for sure; those who were in Hong Kong can relive the events in their minds, while hopefully it will enlighten others about what happened in 2019.