Waiting to Be Arrested at Night
A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide
1 of 1 copy available
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, awarded to the best first book of the year
Named one of the best books of the year by: THE NEW YORK TIMES • THE WASHINGTON POST • THE ECONOMIST • TIME
A poet's account of one of the world's most urgent humanitarian crises, and a harrowing tale of a family's escape from genocide
One by one, Tahir Hamut Izgil's friends disappeared. The Chinese government's brutal persecution of the Uyghur people had continued for years, but in 2017 it assumed a terrifying new scale. The Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority group in western China, were experiencing an echo of the worst horrors of the twentieth century, amplified by China's establishment of an all-seeing high-tech surveillance state. Over a million people have vanished into China’s internment camps for Muslim minorities.
Tahir, a prominent poet and intellectual, had been no stranger to persecution. After he attempted to travel abroad in 1996, police tortured him until he confessed to fabricated charges and sent him to a re-education through labor camp. But even having endured three years in the camp, he could never have predicted the Chinese government’s radical solution to the Uyghur question two decades later. Was the first sign when Tahir was interrogated for hours after a phone call with a fellow poet in the Netherlands? Or when his old friend was sentenced to life in prison simply for calling for Uyghurs' legal rights to be enforced? Perhaps it was when the police seized Uyghurs’ radios and installed jamming equipment to cut them off from the outside world.
Once Tahir noticed that the park near his home was nearly empty because so many neighbors had been arrested, he knew the police would be coming for him any day. One night, after Tahir’s daughters were asleep, he placed by his door a sturdy pair of shoes, a sweater, and a coat so that he could stay warm if the police came for him in the middle of the night. It was clear to Tahir and his wife that fleeing the country was the family's only hope.
Waiting to Be Arrested at Night is the story of the political, social, and cultural destruction of Tahir Hamut Izgil's homeland. Among leading Uyghur intellectuals and writers, he is the only one known to have escaped China since the mass internments began. His book is a call for the world to awaken to the unfolding catastrophe, and a tribute to his friends and fellow Uyghurs whose voices have been silenced.
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Creators
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Awards
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Release date
August 1, 2023 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593491805
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593491805
- File size: 1123 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from May 1, 2023
Poet and activist Izgil delivers an astonishing account of his experience surviving the Chinese government’s genocide of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province. After being imprisoned under false pretenses for carrying “sensitive documents” on a study abroad trip in 1996, Izgil found work as a filmmaker, started a family, and became accustomed to constant police harassment and surveillance. When police began the mass internment of Uyghurs in 2017, Izgil and his wife made plans to leave China—a lengthy, expensive, and dangerous process that would also mean permanently severing himself from his homeland. “While we know the joy of those lucky few who boarded Noah’s ark, we live with the coward’s shame hidden in that word ‘escape.’... We will see these dear ones only in our dreams,” he writes of being unable to contact his loved ones after fleeing to the United States, where he still lives. Interspersed throughout the narrative are flashes of Izgil’s stunning poetry, much of it themed around diasporic rootlessness. This is a spellbinding account of personal resilience and an eye-opening exposé on the humanitarian crisis in Xinjiang. Agent: Adam Eaglin, Cheney Agency. -
Starred review from May 1, 2023
A Uyghur poet recounts his family's decision to seek asylum in the U.S. In 2015, Izgil was an active member of a "tight-knit group" of Uyghur poets in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, where government oppression was intensifying. While producing a Uyghur TV series, Izgil was told he must not include the Muslim minority's traditional greeting assalamu alaikum and its response, wa alaikum assalamu, in any of the show's dialogue. While Izgil was confident enough to protest this rule, his ordeal was just beginning. He soon found himself driving a friend to a "study center" to drop off necessities for a relative whose crime against the Chinese government was simply that "he had received religious education for a period in his youth." Although the government framed these centers as sites for reeducation, in truth, the buildings were "outfitted with iron doors, window bars, and barbed wire," and those who entered were not allowed to leave. As the situation deteriorated and more and more of their Uyghur friends and neighbors disappeared, Izgil and his wife realized that the only way to protect their daughters from fear and suffering was to move to the U.S. "Even if our daughters graduated from China's top universities," writes the author, "as Uyghurs they would inevitably face constant discrimination in their careers and in daily life." Leaving China, however, was no easy task, logistically or emotionally. When they finally landed on American soil, Izgil remembers, "Even with a new world before us, my thoughts wandered constantly back toward home." The text is lyrical, heartfelt, and perfectly paced; the narrative unfolds with a slow, simmering burn. Never shying away from vulnerability, the author shines a much-needed light on the complex, contradictory emotions of trading a homeland for a lifetime of both safety and survivor's guilt. A profoundly moving memoir about China's oppression of the Uyghurs.COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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