She& issue on female Uyghur poets

She& premier issue: 《她&》:巴奴的救赎及维吾尔女性诗歌选 She&: Banu’s Redemption and select works from female Uyghur poets:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ML45Z5G/

Here’s some more detail concerning the first issue of She&:

She& was initiated by four women poets, writers, filmmakers and scholars—Han, Hakka and Uyghur, among other identities—to publish and discuss marginalized and censored works in Chinese, English and various indigenous languages concerning marginalised issues of race/ethnicity/nationality, gender, and politics, connecting She with She, and/or with He, They, Society and Nature. A comprehensive literary publication published by She& Press, a non-profit publisher registered in Canada, She& aims to publish at least two issues annually for readers globally on the Amazon Kindle e-book platform, with certain publications in print.

She&’s Premier Issue concerns the current situation of Uyghurs in East Turkistan, known in China as Xinjiang. With witness and survival of the Uyghur “concentration/re-education” camps as the theme, it features a novel and poems from female Uyghur writers which explore the ethnic, cultural and political identity crises in Uyghur communities. Throughout the editing process, as a publication, She& respects the differences of opinion among our authors—while the term Xinjiang is commonly used in academic research and media discussion, East Turkistan and Uyghuristan are also used to reflect the wishes and identity of Uyghur authors, with recognition the former term includes all Turkic communities in Xinjiang. The translation of names follows the authors’ distinguishing cultural norms, except in academic citations. Translation into English of works from female Uyghur poets was done by Joshua L. Freeman, historian of China and Inner Asia in the Department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University.

The first part of She&’s premier issue introduces exiled female Uyghur writer Modanhan’s semi-autobiographical novel Banu’s Redemption. In 124,000 characters, Banu’s Redemption tells the story, set against the backdrop of the current administration of Xinjiang, of protagonist Banu who, after being set up as a terrorist financing suspect, escapes the fate of being locked in a camp. This is the first Chinese-language work of literary witness to the Xinjiang re-education camps. German, English, and French (excerpt) editions are in translation at this time. From the perspective of China’s laojiao (‘re-education through labour’) literary tradition, scholars Jinyan Zeng and Xibai Xu explore this “minkaohan” and Uyghur intellectual, Banu, through her process of witnessing a re-education camp, and how, through female kinship and friendship, she reconstructs her ethnic Uyghur, national and gender identity. In the laojiao literary tradition of survival and witness, written as a work of realism, Banu’s Redemption creates a strong female consciousness through a complex minkaohan identity, and provides everyone with actionable ethics for both survival and redemption: resisting re-education through labour as a policy of dehumanization through parresia in the Foucauldian sense. In an interview with poet and filmmaker Tang Danhong, author Modanhan talks of her childhood, of thoughts that grew from her experiences, and why her emotions are in colours. “No matter how absurd and cruel reality is, we are destined to understand and befriend each other.”

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