Journalists estimate that between 1 and three million Uyghur persons are presently being held in detention camps by the Chinese authorities as an act of cultural genocide. That we within the U.S. find out about that is largely because of the brave reporting of Uyghur American journalists reminiscent of Gulchehra Hoja. In her gorgeous memoir, A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs: A Memoir of Uyghur Exile, Hope, and Survival, Hoja recounts her childhood and training in East Turkestan, in addition to her love for her household, language and tradition, valuable issues that she has needed to depart behind as an activist in exile within the U.S.
Located within the northwestern nook of mainland China, East Turkestan is the homeland of the primarily Muslim Uyghur, whose tradition is wealthy with ancestral traditions in music and dance. Coming of age in an informed and musical household, Hoja skilled as a dancer earlier than turning to performing. She produced and hosted the primary Uyghur language kids’s TV present, steadily changing into conscious of the rising censorship and management the Chinese authorities exerted over each Uyghur folks and the media. A journey to Europe in 2001, and a primary glimpse of an uncensored web, led Hoja to immigrate to the United States, the place her journalistic abilities shortly landed her a place at Radio Free Asia.
Hoja’s exile within the U.S. and persistence in reporting on the suppression of the Uyghur folks by the Chinese authorities has resulted in grave penalties for her household again residence. A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs dramatizes the violation of Uyghur human rights by grounding the political within the private. Family and friendship are as a lot a component of Hoja’s story because the bigger nationwide and political context, reminding readers that each lacking Uyghur is an individual with a narrative of their very own.
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