A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs: A Memoir of Uyghur Exile, Hope, and Survival

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. Agent: Max Edwards, Aevitas Creative Management. (Feb.)