A Stone Is Most Precious Where it Belongs
A Memoir of Uyghur Exile, Hope, and Survival
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 BY THE NEW YORKER
WOMEN'S NATIONAL BOOK ASSOCIATION 2023 Great Group Read
This extraordinary memoir shares an insight into the lives of the Uyghurs, a people and culture being systematically destroyed by China—and a woman who gave up everything to help her people.
In February 2018, twenty-four members of Gulchehra Hoja's family disappeared overnight. Her crime – and thus that of her family – was her award-winning investigations on the plight of her people, the Uyghurs, whose existence and culture is being systematically destroyed by the Chinese government.
A Stone is Most Precious Where it Belongs is Gulchehra’s stunning memoir, taking us into the everyday world of life under Chinese rule in East Turkestan (more formally known as the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China), from her idyllic childhood to its modern nightmare. The grandchild of a renowned musician and the daughter of an esteemed archaeologist, Gulchehra grew up with her people’s culture and history running through her veins. She showed her gifts early on as a dancer, actress, and storyteller, putting her on a path to success as a major television star. Slowly though, she began to understand what China was doing to her people, as well as her own complicity as a journalist. As her rising fame and growing political awakening coincided, she made it her mission to expose the crimes Beijing is committing in the far reaches of its nation, no matter the cost.
Reveling in the beauty of East Turkestan and its people – its music, its culture, its heritage, and above all its emphasis on community and family – this groundbreaking memoir gives us a glimpse beyond what the Chinese state wants us to see, showcasing a woman who was willing to risk not just her own life, but also that of everyone she loves, to expose her people’s story to the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Uyghur journalist Hoja debuts with an inspiring account of her path to prominence as a voice against the Chinese Communist Party's oppression of the Uyghur people. Hoja's childhood in Umruchi, East Turkestan, was steeped in Uyghur culture and history; her father, an archaeologist, ran the local Uyghur arts center. Following her graduation from Xinjiang Normal University, Hoja produced Uyghur children's programs for television that were heavily censored by the Chinese government. This precipitated her immigration to the U.S. to work for Radio Free Asia beginning in 2001, where she reported on the horrific events occurring in her homeland, though not without repercussions for her family, many of whom are still missing after being detained by the Chinese government. "In this Orwellian system of authoritarianism, with a complete lack of privacy and its swift, brutal racialized state violence, my beautiful homeland has been turned into an enormous open-air jail," she writes. Hoja masterfully weaves harrowing national history and her own experience, enhancing the reader's investment in both. It's a powerful take on what it means to survive, and inspiring and infuriating in equal measure.
