How I Survived A Chinese Reeducation Camp

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How I Survived a Chinese "Reeducation" Camp

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

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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.

The Chief Witness

Author : Sayragul Sauytbay
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781922310538
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis The Chief Witness by : Sayragul Sauytbay

Download or read book The Chief Witness written by Sayragul Sauytbay and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A shocking depiction of one of the world's most ruthless regimes -- and the story of one woman's fight to survive. I will never forget the camp. I cannot forget the eyes of the prisoners, expecting me to do something for them. They are innocent. I have to tell their story, to tell about the darkness they are in. It is so easy to suffocate us with the demons of powerlessness, shame, and guilt. But we aren't the ones who should feel ashamed. Born in China's north-western province, Sayragul Sauytbay trained as a doctor before being appointed a senior civil servant. But her life was upended when the Chinese authorities incarcerated her. Her crime: being Kazakh, one of China's ethnic minorities. The north-western province borders the largest number of foreign nations and is the point in China that is the closest to Europe. In recent years it has become home to over 1,200 penal camps -- modern-day gulags that are estimated to house three million members of the Kazakh and Uyghur minorities. Imprisoned solely due to their ethnicity, inmates are subjected to relentless punishment and torture, including being beaten, raped, and used as subjects for medical experiments. The camps represent the greatest systematic incarceration of an entire people since the Third Reich. In prison, Sauytbay was put to work teaching Chinese language, culture, and politics, in the course of which she gained access to secret information that revealed Beijing's long-term plans to undermine not only its minorities, but democracies around the world. Upon her escape to Europe she was reunited with her family, but still lives under constant threat of reprisal. This rare testimony from the biggest surveillance state in the world reveals not only the full, frightening scope of China's tyrannical ambitions, but also the resilience and courage of its author.

In the Camps

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

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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.

"If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die"

Author : Geoffrey B. Robinson
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400831830
Total Pages : 341 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" by : Geoffrey B. Robinson

Download or read book "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" written by Geoffrey B. Robinson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-16 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting firsthand account of the violence in East Timor in 1999 This is a book about a terrible spate of mass violence. It is also about a rare success in bringing such violence to an end. "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" tells the story of East Timor, a half-island that suffered genocide after Indonesia invaded in 1975, and which was again laid to waste after the population voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999. Before international forces intervened, more than half the population had been displaced and 1,500 people killed. Geoffrey Robinson, an expert in Southeast Asian history, was in East Timor with the United Nations in 1999 and provides a gripping first-person account of the violence, as well as a rigorous assessment of the politics and history behind it. Robinson debunks claims that the militias committing the violence in East Timor acted spontaneously, attributing their actions instead to the calculation of Indonesian leaders, and to a "culture of terror" within the Indonesian army. He argues that major powers—notably the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom—were complicit in the genocide of the late 1970s and the violence of 1999. At the same time, Robinson stresses that armed intervention supported by those powers in late 1999 was vital in averting a second genocide. Advocating accountability, the book chronicles the failure to bring those responsible for the violence to justice. A riveting narrative filled with personal observations, documentary evidence, and eyewitness accounts, "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" engages essential questions about political violence, international humanitarian intervention, genocide, and transitional justice.

Chinese Lessons

Author : John Pomfret
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
ISBN 13 : 1429935189
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Chinese Lessons by : John Pomfret

Download or read book Chinese Lessons written by John Pomfret and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2006-08-08 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A highly personal, honest, funny and well-informed account of China's hyperactive effort to forget its past and reinvent its future."—The New York Times Book Review As one the first American students admitted to China after the communist revolution, John Pomfret was exposed to a country still emerging from the twin tragedies of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Crammed into a dorm room with seven Chinese men, Pomfret contended with all manner of cultural differences, from too-short beds and roommates intent on glimpsing a white man naked, to the need for cloak-and-dagger efforts to conceal his relationships with Chinese women. Amidst all that, he immersed himself in the remarkable lives of his classmates. Beginning with Pomfret's first day in China, Chinese Lessons takes us down the often torturous paths that brought together the Nanjing University History Class of 1982: Old Wu's father was killed during the Cultural Revolution for the crime of being an intellectual; Book Idiot Zhou labored in the fields for years rather than agree to a Party-arranged marriage; and Little Guan was forced to publicly denounce and humiliate her father. As Pomfret follows his classmates from childhood to adulthood, he examines the effect of China's transition from near-feudal communism to first-world capitalism. The result is an illuminating report from present-day China, and a moving portrait of its extraordinary people.

Prisoner of Mao

Author : Ruo-Wang Bao
Publisher : Penguin Group
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Prisoner of Mao by : Ruo-Wang Bao

Download or read book Prisoner of Mao written by Ruo-Wang Bao and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1973 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The War on the Uyghurs

Author : Sean R. Roberts
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691234493
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis The War on the Uyghurs by : Sean R. Roberts

Download or read book The War on the Uyghurs written by Sean R. Roberts and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How China is using the US-led war on terror to erase the cultural identity of its Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region Within weeks of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Chinese government warned that it faced a serious terrorist threat from its Uyghur ethnic minority, who are largely Muslim. In this explosive book, Sean Roberts reveals how China has been using the US-led global war on terror as international cover for its increasingly brutal suppression of the Uyghurs, and how the war's targeting of an undefined enemy has emboldened states around the globe to persecute ethnic minorities and severely repress domestic opposition in the name of combatting terrorism. Of the eleven million Uyghurs living in China today, more than one million are now being held in so-called reeducation camps, victims of what has become the largest program of mass detention and surveillance in the world. Roberts describes how the Chinese government successfully implicated the Uyghurs in the global terror war—despite a complete lack of evidence—and branded them as a dangerous terrorist threat with links to al-Qaeda. He argues that the reframing of Uyghur domestic dissent as international terrorism provided justification and inspiration for a systematic campaign to erase Uyghur identity, and that a nominal Uyghur militant threat only emerged after more than a decade of Chinese suppression in the name of counterterrorism—which has served to justify further state repression. A gripping and moving account of the humanitarian catastrophe that China does not want you to know about, The War on the Uyghurs draws on Roberts's own in-depth interviews with the Uyghurs, enabling their voices to be heard.

Terror Capitalism

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

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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.

The Artisans

Author : Shen Fuyu
Publisher : Astra Publishing House
ISBN 13 : 1662600755
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (626 download)

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Book Synopsis The Artisans by : Shen Fuyu

Download or read book The Artisans written by Shen Fuyu and published by Astra Publishing House. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evoking Studs Terkel, Shen Fuyu delivers a rollicking deep dive into working life in a small village in rural China, tracing the last 100 years of history. Born in Shen Village in Southeast China, Shen Fuyu grew up in a family of farmers. Years later, Shen, now a writer, returned to his hometown to capture the village’s rich history in the face of industrialization. Through his own childhood memories and those of his ancestors, Shen resurrects the working life of Shen Village through interlinked stories of fifteen artisans as their lives intersect over the course of a century. While Shen's view of his hometown and his heritage is tinged with nostalgia, he does not romanticize it. Nor does he sugarcoat the backbreaking difficulty of life in rural China, but he still captures its small satisfactions and joys of loving one’s work with a great deal of care. In an acerbic, earthy and unsparing style that swings from poignancy to comedy, sometimes within a single paragraph, Shen evokes the spirits of these workers--a bamboo-weaver and his beloved bull, a carpenter’s magical saw, the deserter who became the village lantern-maker and a rebellious woman who beats up her own kidnapper. A reflection on the vicissitudes of small-town life during the epic shift from agricultural to industrial civilization, The Artisans vividly details the hardships, friendships and communal mythmaking of a disappearing community.

Bitter Winds

Author : Hongda Harry Wu
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (939 download)

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Book Synopsis Bitter Winds by : Hongda Harry Wu

Download or read book Bitter Winds written by Hongda Harry Wu and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In April 1960, Chinese Communist authorities arrested Harry Wu, casting him into a prison labour camp. Though never formally charged or tried, he spent the next nineteen years in a hellish world of grinding labour, systematic starvation and torture. The book also chronicles the stories of other prisoner's who became the author's friends during their time of incarceration.

Proletarian China

Author : Ivan Franceschini
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1839766344
Total Pages : 1149 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (397 download)

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Book Synopsis Proletarian China by : Ivan Franceschini

Download or read book Proletarian China written by Ivan Franceschini and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 1149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2021, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated a century of existence. Since the Party's humble beginnings in the Marxist groups of the Republican era to its current global ambitions, one thing has not changed for China's leaders: their claim to represent the vanguard of the Chinese working class. Spanning from the night classes for workers organised by student activists in Beijing in the 1910s to the labour struggles during the 1920s and 1930s; from the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution to the social convulsions of the reform era to China's global push today, this book reconstructs the contentious history of labour in China from the early twentieth century to this day (and beyond). This will be achieved through a series of essays penned by scholars in the field of Chinese society, politics, and culture, each one of which will revolve around a specific historical event, in a mosaic of different voices, perspectives, and interpretations of what constituted the experience of being a worker in China in the past century. Contributors: Corey Byrnes, Craig A. Smith, Xu Guoqi, Zhou Ruixue, Lin Chun, Elizabeth J. Perry, Tony Saich, Wang Kan, Gail Hershatter, Apo Leong, S.A. Smith, Alexander F. Day, Yige Dong, Seung-Joon Lee, Lu Yan, Joshua Howard, Bo renlund Srensen, Brian DeMare, Emily Honig, Po-chien Chen, Yi-hung Liu, Jake Werner, Malcolm Thompson, Robert Cliver, Mark W. Frazier, John Williams, Christian Sorace, Zhu Ruiyi, Ivan Franceschini, Chen Feng, Ben Kindler, Jane Hayward, Tim Wright, Koji Hirata, Jacob Eyferth, Aminda Smith, Fabio Lanza, Ralph Litzinger, Jonathan Unger, Covell F. Meyskens, Maggie Clinton, Patricia M. Thornton, Ray Yep, Andrea Piazzaroli Longobardi, Joel Andreas, Matt Galway, Michel Bonnin, A.C. Baecker, Mary Ann O'Donnell, Tiantian Zheng, Jeanne L. Wilson, Ming-sho Ho, Yueran Zhang, Anita Chan, Sarah Biddulph, Jude Howell, William Hurst, Dorothy J. Solinger, Ching Kwan Lee, Chlo Froissart, Mary Gallagher, Eric Florence, Junxi Qian, Chris King-chi Chan, Elaine Sio-Ieng Hui, Jenny Chan, Eli Friedman, Aaron Halegua, Wanning Sun, Marc Blecher, Huang Yu, Manfred Elfstrom, Darren Byler, Carlos Rojas, Chen Qiufan.

Revolution and Counterrevolution in China

Author : Lin Chun
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1788735633
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (887 download)

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Book Synopsis Revolution and Counterrevolution in China by : Lin Chun

Download or read book Revolution and Counterrevolution in China written by Lin Chun and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of revolutionary China in the 20th century China under XI Jingping has been experiencing unprecedented change. From the Belt and Road initiative to its involvement in Great Power struggles with the West, China is facing the world once more in the hope of reclaiming a lost Chinese greatness. But is "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" just neoliberal capitalism under another name? And, if so, how can China reclaim the heritage of the Revolution in this its 70th anniversary? In this panoramic study of Chinese history in the twentieth century, Lin Chun argues that the paradoxes of contemporary Chinese society do not merely echo the tensions of modernity or capitalist development. Instead, they are a product of both the contradictions rooted in its revolutionary history, and the social and political consequences of its post-socialist transition. Revolution and Counterrevolution in China charts China's epic revolutionary trajectory in search of a socialist alternative to the global system, and asks whether market reform must repudiate and overturn the revolution and its legacy.

In Search of My Homeland

Author : Er Tai Gao
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 006195960X
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (619 download)

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Book Synopsis In Search of My Homeland by : Er Tai Gao

Download or read book In Search of My Homeland written by Er Tai Gao and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-20 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book description to come.

The Cowshed

Author : Ji Xianlin
Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1590179277
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cowshed by : Ji Xianlin

Download or read book The Cowshed written by Ji Xianlin and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chinese Cultural Revolution began in 1966 and led to a ten-year-long reign of Maoist terror throughout China, in which millions died or were sent to labor camps in the country or subjected to other forms of extreme discipline and humiliation. Ji Xianlin was one of them. The Cowshed is Ji’s harrowing account of his imprisonment in 1968 on the campus of Peking University and his subsequent disillusionment with the cult of Mao. As the campus spirals into a political frenzy, Ji, a professor of Eastern languages, is persecuted by lecturers and students from his own department. His home is raided, his most treasured possessions are destroyed, and Ji himself must endure hours of humiliation at brutal “struggle sessions.” He is forced to construct a cowshed (a makeshift prison for intellectuals who were labeled class enemies) in which he is then housed with other former colleagues. His eyewitness account of this excruciating experience is full of sharp irony, empathy, and remarkable insights into a central event in Chinese history. In contemporary China, the Cultural Revolution remains a delicate topic, little discussed, but if a Chinese citizen has read one book on the subject, it is likely to be Ji’s memoir. When The Cowshed was published in China in 1998, it quickly became a bestseller. The Cultural Revolution had nearly disappeared from the collective memory. Prominent intellectuals rarely spoke openly about the revolution, and books on the subject were almost nonexistent. By the time of Ji’s death in 2009, little had changed, and despite its popularity, The Cowshed remains one of the only testimonies of its kind. As Zha Jianying writes in the introduction, “The book has sold well and stayed in print. But authorities also quietly took steps to restrict public discussion of the memoir, as its subject continues to be treated as sensitive. The present English edition, skillfully translated by Chenxin Jiang, is hence a welcome, valuable addition to the small body of work in this genre. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of that period.”

No Wall Too High

Author : Xu Hongci
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1473528224
Total Pages : 391 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (735 download)

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Book Synopsis No Wall Too High by : Xu Hongci

Download or read book No Wall Too High written by Xu Hongci and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-02-02 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘One of the greatest escape stories I’ve ever read’ Mail on Sunday An ordinary man’s extraordinary escape from Mao’s brutal labour camps Xu Hongci was an ordinary medical student when he was incarcerated under Mao’s regime and forced to spend years of his youth in China’s most brutal labour camps. Three times he tried to escape. And three times he failed. But, determined, he eventually broke free, travelling the length of China, across the Gobi desert, and into Mongolia. It was one of the greatest prison breaks of all time, during one of the worst totalitarian tragedies of the 20th Century. This is the extraordinary memoir of his unrelenting struggle to retain dignity, integrity and freedom; but also the untold story of what life was like for ordinary people trapped in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

Because I Have To

Author : Jewher Ilham
Publisher : University of New Orleans Press
ISBN 13 : 9781608012275
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Because I Have To by : Jewher Ilham

Download or read book Because I Have To written by Jewher Ilham and published by University of New Orleans Press. This book was released on 2021-10-28 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Jewher Ilham's father, Ilham Tohti, an internationally known advocate for peaceful dialogue between his Uyghur people and Han Chinese, was detained at the Beijing airport in February 2013 on charges of "separatism," and later sentenced to life in prison, Jewher was forced to begin a new life apart from her family in a new country. There, she found her voice as an advocate for her father, and for Uyghur people being forced into concentration camps by the Chinese government. In Because I Have To: The Path To Survival, The Uyghur Struggle, Jewher shares an intimate account of how she maintained the strength and courage to fight for her father, the sometimes emotional toll it took on her, and the inspiration and loss of her mentor. With the inclusion of testimonials of Uyghur camp survivors and others affected by the crackdown on Uyghurs in China, Because I Have To: the path to survival, the Uyghur struggle tells the story of one person, and of an entire culture under threat.

From the Japanese

Author : Catherine Bergman
Publisher : McClelland & Stewart
ISBN 13 : 9780771012075
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (12 download)

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Book Synopsis From the Japanese by : Catherine Bergman

Download or read book From the Japanese written by Catherine Bergman and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2002-09-24 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nail that stands out will quickly be hammered down.” As journalist Catherine Bergman notes in her introduction to From the Japanese, “This saying is one of the first things that one discovers upon arriving in Japan. Everyone makes a point of telling you this, as if to suggest that, if you want to survive in this society, you will have to bow your head, accept the rules, and try, above all, not to stand out.” Yet during the five years that she lived in the Land of the Rising Sun as the wife of a Canadian diplomat, Bergman also encountered individuals who did not conform to the complex codes and laws governing Japanese society – those “nails” that do stick out. In this, her first book, Bergman records her observations of Japan and writes passionately about her interviews with intellectual gurus, rebels, politicians, artists, adolescents, and even about an audience with the Emperor. In doing so she hopes to challenge many of the common misconceptions and preconceived ideas held in the Western world about Japan and Japanese society – and, in fact, to reveal Japanese society by examining those who do not fit in. From the world of the geishas to the national soccer league, from sexual harassment suits to the politics of arranged marriages, from the collective memory of the war to the world of high fashion, modern journalism, and the Shinto religion, from an examination of the justice system to an evening spent watching fireflies – Bergman sees evidence of a haunting quest for a true national identity.