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'This gripping memoir shows the courage and cost of telling a truer story' GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE DAY
'A memoir of an extraordinary life, which takes in the past 50 years of Xinjiang's history ... fascinating' THE TIMES
'Revelatory' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
A powerful and urgent memoir by Uyghur activist Gulchehra Hoja - a remarkable woman who went from being a beloved star on Chinese children's TV to a journalist whose reporting on the oppression of her people led to her entire extended family being imprisoned.
In 2018, twenty-four members of Gulchehra Hoja's family, including her elderly parents, were arrested by the Chinese state. Gulchehra had been forced to leave her family behind when she fled to a new life in the United States, and the arrests were an act of retaliation against her investigations for Radio Free Asia into the plight of the Uyghur people.
For the Uyghurs, this kind of oppression is not unusual. In her stunning memoir, Gulchehra shares her story: an account of life under Chinese rule in East Turkestan, and her journey to becoming a spokesperson against genocide.
The grandchild of a musician and the daughter of an archaeologist, Gulchehra grew up with Uyghur culture and history running through her veins. She showed her gifts early on as a dancer, actress and storyteller, and she became a major television star. But she began to understand what China was doing to her people, as well as her own complicity as a journalist. As her growing fame and political awakening coincided, she made it her mission to expose the crimes Beijing is committing against its own citizens.
Filled with the beauty of East Turkestan and its people, A Stone is Most Precious Where it Belongs is the story of a woman who has been willing to risk her own life to expose the truth.
'This revelatory memoir pulses with energy and beauty, making us care about what is being erased at mass scale by telling a deeply personal tale ... Her account is not just timely but timeless ... Hoja is a brave woman. The particulars of her story speak for the losses of a people' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
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Gulchehra Hoja is a Uyghur journalist based in Washington, DC and one of the world's most prominent voices fighting what the US government in January 2021 officially proclaimed the 'genocide and crimes against humanity' against the Uyghurs. Her reporting on the situation in Xinjiang - which led to the incarceration of her entire extended family - has been widely recognized in the US and Europe, and has led to honours such as the 2019 Magnitsky Human Rights Award; the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation in 2020; her recognition as one of the '500 most influential Muslims' in the world every year since 2016; and platforms at Tina Brown's Women in the World summit and the Oslo Freedom Forum. She has been profiled for the Washington Post and Financial Times, among many other publications. Working closely with larger publications such as the New York Times and Guardian, as well as directly with the State Department, she has also been central to bringing to light both the stories of escapees from East Turkestan's concentration camps, and exposing China's use of Uyghurs for forced labour in their cotton and wig-making industries. |
| Category: | Memoirs |
| ISBN: | 9780349015965 |
| Publisher: | Little, Brown Book Group |
| On sale: | March 2023 |
| Format: | Paperback |
| eBook ISBN |
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