Xinjiang Year Zero

Download Xinjiang Year Zero PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : ANU Press
ISBN 13 : 1760464953
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (64 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Xinjiang Year Zero by : Darren Byler

Download or read book Xinjiang Year Zero written by Darren Byler and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 2017, the Chinese authorities have detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in ‘reeducation camps’ in China’s northwestern Xinjiang autonomous region. While the official reason for this mass detention was to prevent terrorism, the campaign has since become a wholesale attempt to remould the ways of life of these peoples—an experiment in social engineering aimed at erasing their cultures and traditions in order to transform them into ‘civilised’ citizens as construed by the Chinese state. Through a collection of essays penned by scholars who have conducted extensive research in the region, this volume sets itself three goals: first, to document the reality of the emerging surveillance state and coercive assimilation unfolding in Xinjiang in recent years and continuing today; second, to describe the workings and analyse the causes of these policies, highlighting how these developments insert themselves not only in domestic Chinese trends, but also in broader global dynamics; and, third, to propose action, to heed the progressive Left’s call since Marx to change the world and not just analyse it. ‘Xinjiang Year Zero provides an analysis of the processes of dispossession being experienced by Uyghurs and other indigenous peoples of China’s Uyghur region that is sorely needed today. Most politicians and their followers today, whether on the left or the right, view what is happening to the peoples of this region through a twentieth-century lens steeped in dichotomies that are obsolete in describing the nature of states today—those of capitalism vs socialism and democracy vs totalitarianism. The contributors to this volume explore what is happening in Xinjiang in the context of the twenty-first century’s racialised and populist-fuelled state power, global capitalist exploitation, and ubiquitous surveillance technology. At the same time, they invite the reader to reflect on how the processes of dispossession in the Uyghur region during the twenty-first century are repeating the colonial practices of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that have shaped our current global system of inequality and oppression. The result offers an analysis of what is happening in Xinjiang that emphasises its interconnectedness to what is happening around us everywhere in the world. If you believe that the repression in this region is a fabrication to ‘manufacture consent’ for a cold war between the “West” and China, you need to read this book. Afterwards, you will understand that if you want to stop a return to the twentieth-century geopolitical conflicts embodied in the idea of a cold war, you must establish solidarity with the Indigenous peoples of China’s northwest and call for the end to the global processes fuelling their dispossession both inside China and outside.’ — Sean R. Roberts, Director of International Development Studies, The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, and author of The War on the Uyghurs ‘Xinjiang Year Zero provides a highly readable and utterly necessary account of what is happening in Xinjiang and why. By showing how the mass detentions of Uyghurs and other Xinjiang Muslims are linked to both global capitalism and histories of settler colonialism, the edited book offers new ways of understanding the situation and thus working toward change. A must-read not only for those interested in contemporary China, but also for anyone who cares about digital surveillance and dispossession around the globe.’ — Emily T. Yeh, University of Colorado Boulder, author of Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development ‘The crisis in Xinjiang has engendered its own crisis of interpretation and action at a time of growing geopolitical rivalry: how to condemn the atrocities without supporting hawkish voices, particularly among US politicians, who seek to Cold War-ise the US relationship with “Communist China”? How to critique China for colonialism, racism, assimilationism, extra-legal internment, and coerced labour when many Western nations are built on a history of those same things? Xinjiang Year Zero not only provides non-specialists a thorough, readable, up-to-date account of events in Xinjiang. This much-needed book also offers a broader framing of the crisis, drawing comparisons to settler colonialism elsewhere and revealing direct connections to global capitalism and to the rise of technological surveillance everywhere.’ — James A. Millward, Georgetown University, author of Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang

The Backstreets

Download The Backstreets PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 023155477X
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Backstreets by : Perhat Tursun

Download or read book The Backstreets written by Perhat Tursun and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Backstreets is an astonishing novel by a preeminent contemporary Uyghur author who was disappeared by the Chinese state. It follows an unnamed Uyghur man who comes to the impenetrable Chinese capital of Xinjiang after finding a temporary job in a government office. Seeking to escape the pain and poverty of the countryside, he finds only cold stares and rejection. He wanders the streets, accompanied by the bitter fog of winter pollution, reciting a monologue of numbers and odors, lust and loathing, memories and madness. Perhat Tursun’s novel is a work of untrammeled literary creativity. His evocative prose recalls a vast array of canonical world writers—contemporary Chinese authors such as Mo Yan; the modernist images and rhythms of Camus, Dostoevsky, and Kafka; the serious yet absurdist dissection of the logic of racism in Ellison’s Invisible Man—while drawing deeply on Uyghur literary traditions and Sufi poetics and combining all these disparate influences into a style that is distinctly Perhat Tursun’s own. The Backstreets is a stark fable about urban isolation and social violence, dehumanization and the racialization of ethnicity. Yet its protagonist’s vivid recollections of maternal tenderness and first love reveal how memory and imagination offer profound forms of resilience. A translator’s introduction situates the novel in the political atmosphere that led to the disappearance of both the author and his work.

The Xinjiang Problem

Download The Xinjiang Problem PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780974329208
Total Pages : 82 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (292 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Xinjiang Problem by : Graham E. Fuller

Download or read book The Xinjiang Problem written by Graham E. Fuller and published by . This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Dog Days

Download Dog Days PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : ANU Press
ISBN 13 : 1760462934
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (64 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Dog Days by : Ivan Franceschini

Download or read book Dog Days written by Ivan Franceschini and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2019-04-05 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the Chinese zodiac, 2018 was the year of the ‘earthly dog’. In the middle of the long, hot, and feverish dog days of the summer of 2018, some workers at Shenzhen Jasic Technology took their chances and attempted to form an independent union. While this action was met by the harshest repression, it also led to extraordinary demonstrations of solidarity from small groups of radical students from all over the country, which in turn were immediately and severely suppressed. China’s year of the dog was also imbued with the spirit of another canine, Cerberus—the three-headed hound of Hades—with the ravenous advance of the surveillance state and the increasing securitisation of Chinese society, starting from the northwestern region of Xinjiang. This Yearbook traces these latest developments in Chinese society through a collection of 50 original essays on labour, civil society, and human rights in China and beyond, penned by leading scholars and practitioners from around the world.

Securing China's Northwest Frontier

Download Securing China's Northwest Frontier PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108488404
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Securing China's Northwest Frontier by : David Tobin

Download or read book Securing China's Northwest Frontier written by David Tobin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Tobin analyses how Chinese nation-building shapes identity and security dynamics between Han and Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

In the Camps

Download In the Camps PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Atlantic Books
ISBN 13 : 1838955933
Total Pages : 127 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (389 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis In the Camps by : Darren Byler

Download or read book In the Camps written by Darren Byler and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2022-02-03 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory account of what is really happening to China's Uyghurs 'Intimate, sombre, and damning... compelling.' Financial Times 'Chilling... Horrifying.' Spectator 'Invaluable.' Telegraph In China's vast northwestern region, more than a million and a half Muslims have vanished into internment camps and associated factories. Based on hours of interviews with camp survivors and workers, thousands of government documents, and over a decade of research, Darren Byler, one of the leading experts on Uyghur society uncovers their plight. Revealing a sprawling network of surveillance technology supplied by firms in both China and the West, Byler shows how the country has created an unprecedented system of Orwellian control. A definitive account of one of the world's gravest human rights violations, In the Camps is also a potent warning against the misuse of technology and big data.

Terror Capitalism

Download Terror Capitalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 1478022264
Total Pages : 158 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (78 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Terror Capitalism by : Darren Byler

Download or read book Terror Capitalism written by Darren Byler and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Terror Capitalism anthropologist Darren Byler theorizes the contemporary Chinese colonization of the Uyghur Muslim minority group in the northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang. He shows that the mass detention of over one million Uyghurs in “reeducation camps” is part of processes of resource extraction in Uyghur lands that have led to what he calls terror capitalism—a configuration of ethnoracialization, surveillance, and mass detention that in this case promotes settler colonialism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the regional capital Ürümchi, Byler shows how media infrastructures, the state’s enforcement of “Chinese” cultural values, and the influx of Han Chinese settlers contribute to Uyghur dispossession and their expulsion from the city. He particularly attends to the experiences of young Uyghur men—who are the primary target of state violence—and how they develop masculinities and homosocial friendships to protect themselves against gendered, ethnoracial, and economic violence. By tracing the political and economic stakes of Uyghur colonization, Byler demonstrates that state-directed capitalist dispossession is coconstructed with a colonial relation of domination.

How I Survived a Chinese "Reeducation" Camp

Download How I Survived a Chinese

Author :
Publisher : Seven Stories Press
ISBN 13 : 1644211491
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (442 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis How I Survived a Chinese "Reeducation" Camp by : Gulbahar Haitiwaji

Download or read book How I Survived a Chinese "Reeducation" Camp written by Gulbahar Haitiwaji and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first memoir about the "reeducation" camps by a Uyghur woman. “I have written what I lived. The atrocious reality.” — Gulbahar Haitiwaji to Paris Match Since 2017, more than one million Uyghurs have been deported from their homes in the Xinjiang region of China to “reeducation camps.” The brutal repression of the Uyghurs, a Turkish-speaking Muslim ethnic group, has been denounced as genocide, and reported widely in media around the world. The Xinjiang Papers, revealed by the New York Times in 2019, expose the brutal repression of the Uyghur ethnicity by means of forced mass detention­—the biggest since the time of Mao. Her name is Gulbahar Haitiwaji and she is the first Uyghur woman to write a memoir about the 'reeducation' camps. For three years Haitiwaji endured hundreds of hours of interrogations, torture, hunger, police violence, brainwashing, forced sterilization, freezing cold, and nights under blinding neon light in her prison cell. These camps are to China what the Gulags were to the USSR. The Chinese government denies that they are concentration camps, seeking to legitimize their existence in the name of the “total fight against Islamic terrorism, infiltration and separatism,” and calls them “schools.” But none of this is true. Gulbahar only escaped thanks to the relentless efforts of her daughter. Her courageous memoir is a terrifying portrait of the atrocities she endured in the Chinese gulag and how the treatment of the Uyghurs at the hands of the Chinese government is just the latest example of their oppression of independent minorities within Chinese borders. The Xinjiang region where the Uyghurs live is where the Chinese government wishes there to be a new “silk route,” connecting Asia to Europe, considered to be the most important political project of president Xi Jinping.

Afterlives of Chinese Communism

Download Afterlives of Chinese Communism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : ANU Press
ISBN 13 : 1760462497
Total Pages : 411 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (64 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Afterlives of Chinese Communism by : Christian Sorace

Download or read book Afterlives of Chinese Communism written by Christian Sorace and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afterlives of Chinese Communism comprises essays from over fifty world- renowned scholars in the China field, from various disciplines and continents. It provides an indispensable guide for understanding how the Mao era continues to shape Chinese politics today. Each chapter discusses a concept or practice from the Mao period, what it attempted to do, and what has become of it since. The authors respond to the legacy of Maoism from numerous perspectives to consider what lessons Chinese communism can offer today, and whether there is a future for the egalitarian politics that it once promised.

The Xinjiang Conflict

Download The Xinjiang Conflict PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : East-West Center
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 126 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Xinjiang Conflict by : Arienne M. Dwyer

Download or read book The Xinjiang Conflict written by Arienne M. Dwyer and published by East-West Center. This book was released on 2005 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meticulous renderings depict 9 dolls and 46 authentic costumes, including work clothes, winter wear, wedding outfits, more. Broad-brimmed, elaborately decorated hats and leg o' mutton sleeves for the women, derbies, walking canes, starched collars for the men. Descriptive notes.

China's Influence and American Interests

Download China's Influence and American Interests PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Hoover Press
ISBN 13 : 0817922865
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (179 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis China's Influence and American Interests by : Larry Diamond

Download or read book China's Influence and American Interests written by Larry Diamond and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Americans are generally aware of China's ambitions as a global economic and military superpower, few understand just how deeply and assertively that country has already sought to influence American society. As the authors of this volume write, it is time for a wake-up call. In documenting the extent of Beijing's expanding influence operations inside the United States, they aim to raise awareness of China's efforts to penetrate and sway a range of American institutions: state and local governments, academic institutions, think tanks, media, and businesses. And they highlight other aspects of the propagandistic “discourse war” waged by the Chinese government and Communist Party leaders that are less expected and more alarming, such as their view of Chinese Americans as members of a worldwide Chinese diaspora that owes undefined allegiance to the so-called Motherland.Featuring ideas and policy proposals from leading China specialists, China's Influence and American Interests argues that a successful future relationship requires a rebalancing toward greater transparency, reciprocity, and fairness. Throughout, the authors also strongly state the importance of avoiding casting aspersions on Chinese and on Chinese Americans, who constitute a vital portion of American society. But if the United States is to fare well in this increasingly adversarial relationship with China, Americans must have a far better sense of that country's ambitions and methods than they do now.

Crisis

Download Crisis PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : ANU Press
ISBN 13 : 1760464392
Total Pages : 398 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (64 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Crisis by : Jane Golley

Download or read book Crisis written by Jane Golley and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2021-04-21 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 2020 was marked by a series of rolling crises. The Australian wildfires at the start of the year were a catastrophic sign of the global climate crisis. Xi Jinping’s announcement in September that the People’s Republic of China would become carbon neutral by 2060 could help alleviate the crisis, but China has to fix its coal problem first. The big story was, of course, the global COVID-19 pandemic. Appearing to originate in a Wuhan wet market, by year’s end the pandemic had claimed nearly 2 million lives worldwide, put whole countries into lockdown, and sent economies around the world tumbling into recession. China itself successfully suppressed the disease at home and recorded positive economic growth for the year — proving, at least according to the Chinese Communist Party, the ‘superiority of the socialist system’. Not everyone was convinced, with persistent questions about the CCP’s initial cover up of the outbreak, and how the lack of transparency helped it become a pandemic in the first place. The China Story Yearbook 2020: Crisis surveys the multiple crises of the year of the Metal Rat, including the catastrophic mid-year floods that sparked fears about the stability of the Three Gorges Dam. It looks at how Chinese women fared through the pandemic, from the rise in domestic violence to portraits of female sacrifice on the medical front line to the trolling of a famous dancer for being childless. It also examines the downward-spiralling Sino-Australian relationship, the difficult ‘co-morbidities’ of China’s relations with the US, the end of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ in Hong Kong, the simmering border conflict with India, and the rise of pandemic-related anti-Chinese racism. The Yearbook also explores the responses to crisis of, among others, Daoists, Buddhists, and humourists — because when all else fails, there’s always philosophy, prayer, and laughter.

The Shortest History of China: From the Ancient Dynasties to a Modern Superpower - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History)

Download The Shortest History of China: From the Ancient Dynasties to a Modern Superpower - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History) PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : The Experiment, LLC
ISBN 13 : 1615198210
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (151 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Shortest History of China: From the Ancient Dynasties to a Modern Superpower - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History) by : Linda Jaivin

Download or read book The Shortest History of China: From the Ancient Dynasties to a Modern Superpower - A Retelling for Our Times (Shortest History) written by Linda Jaivin and published by The Experiment, LLC. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journey across epic China—through millennia of early innovation to modern dominance. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. As we enter the “Asian century,” China demands our attention for being an economic powerhouse, a beacon of rapid modernization, and an assertive geopolitical player. To understand the nation behind the headlines, we must take in its vibrant, tumultuous past—a story of “larger-than-life characters, philosophical arguments and political intrigues, military conflicts and social upheavals, artistic invention and technological innovation.” The Shortest History of China charts a path from China’s tribal origins through its storied imperial era and up to the modern Communist Party under Xi Jinping—including the rarely told story of women in China and the specters of corruption and disunity that continue to haunt the People’s Republic today. A master storyteller and exacting historian, Linda Jaivin distills this vast history into a short, riveting account that today’s globally minded readers will find indispensable.

Disenfranchised

Download Disenfranchised PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 0190052600
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (9 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Disenfranchised by : Joel Andreas

Download or read book Disenfranchised written by Joel Andreas and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades following World War II, factories in many countries not only provided secure employment and a range of economic entitlements, but also recognized workers as legitimate stakeholders, enabling them to claim rights to participate in decision making and hold factory leaders accountable. In recent decades, as employment has become more precarious, these attributes of industrial citizenship have been eroded and workers have increasingly been reduced to hired hands. As Joel Andreas shows in Disenfranchised, no country has experienced these changes as dramatically as China. Drawing on a decade of field research, including interviews with both factory workers and managers, Andreas traces the changing political status of workers inside Chinese factories from 1949 to the present, carefully analyzing how much power they have actually had to shape their working conditions.

China in Global Capitalism

Download China in Global Capitalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Haymarket Books
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (889 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis China in Global Capitalism by : Kevin Lin

Download or read book China in Global Capitalism written by Kevin Lin and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the rivalry between the US and China enters a dangerous new phase, reaffirming the politics of anti-imperialism is a task more important than ever. From trade wars and pandemic politics to rioting workers, intercontinental balloons, and battles over TikTok, the US media tends to present contemporary China—when it’s discussed at all—in sensationalist terms. This portrayal has only intensified as China’s relationship with the United States has grown increasingly hostile. Whether in the form of overtly racist rhetoric and aggressive trade actions, or the more buttoned down but equally antagonistic efforts to oppose Chinese interests abroad, the US has made clear that it has no interest in giving up its position as global hegemon. This seemingly endless cycle of nationalism, jingoism, and reactionary politics on both sides of the Pacific suggests a downward spiral that could plausibly result in catastrophic military confrontation. Against Imperialism forcefully makes the case that workers and socially marginalized people in both the US and China must oppose our rulers’ claims that they have our best interests in mind as they ratchet up their rivalry. Rather, if we’re to avert nuclear calamity, we must oppose imperialism in all its forms, and regardless of its source and rhetoric. Through snapshots of China’s growing social movements—from its labor struggles to feminist campaigns, and more—Lin, Liu, Friedman, and Smith provide some of the building blocks we’ll need to construct a movement that centers international solidarity across borders.

Eurasian Crossroads

Download Eurasian Crossroads PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780231139243
Total Pages : 472 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (392 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Eurasian Crossroads by : James A. Millward

Download or read book Eurasian Crossroads written by James A. Millward and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a comprehensive study of the central Asian region of Xinjiang's history and people from antiquity to the present. Discusses Xinjiang's rich environmental, cultural and ethno-political heritage.

Winter Pasture

Download Winter Pasture PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Thinkingdom
ISBN 13 : 1662600348
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (626 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Winter Pasture by : Li Juan

Download or read book Winter Pasture written by Li Juan and published by Thinkingdom. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of The Washington Post's Best Travel Books of 2021. "Winter Pasture is Li Juan's crowning achievement, shattering the boundaries between nature writing and personal memoir." —Smithsonian Magazine "Li Juan spent minus-20-degree nights with nomadic herders in the Chinese steppes. You’ll want to join her." —Laura Miller, Slate "Deeply moving...full of humor, introspection and glimpses into a vanishing lifestyle." —The New York Times Book Review Winner of the People's Literature Award, WINTER PASTURE has been a bestselling book in China for several years. Li Juan has been widely lauded in the international literary community for her unique contribution to the narrative non-fiction genre. WINTER PASTURE is her crowning achievement, shattering the boundaries between nature writing and personal memoir. Li Juan and her mother own a small convenience store in the Altai Mountains in Northwestern China, where she writes about her life among grasslands and snowy peaks. To her neighbors' surprise, Li decides to join a family of Kazakh herders as they take their 30 boisterous camels, 500 sheep and over 100 cattle and horses to pasture for the winter. The so-called "winter pasture" occurs in a remote region that stretches from the Ulungur River to the Heavenly Mountains. As she journeys across the vast, seemingly endless sand dunes, she helps herd sheep, rides horses, chases after camels, builds an underground home using manure, gathers snow for water, and more. With a keen eye for the understated elegance of the natural world, and a healthy dose of self-deprecating humor, Li vividly captures both the extraordinary hardships and the ordinary preoccupations of the day-to-day of the men and women struggling to get by in this desolate landscape. Her companions include Cuma, the often drunk but mostly responsible father; his teenage daughter, Kama, who feels the burden of the world on her shoulders and dreams of going to college; his reticent wife, a paragon of decorum against all odds, who is simply known as "sister-in-law." In bringing this faraway world to English language readers here for the first time, Li creates an intimate bond with the rugged people, the remote places and the nomadic lifestyle. In the signature style that made her an international sensation, Li Juan transcends the travel memoir genre to deliver an indelible and immersive reading experience on every page.