Thank you to Net Galley and Hachette for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. The author bravely shares her story of being Uyghur and growing up in an Autonomous Region of China. Until she graduated from college, she didn't realize how the Chinese government was targeting her people by discriminating, in many ways discouraging their culture and language, creating a police state and committing genocide. When the author lived in the US and worked for Radio Free Asia, 24 members of her family were taken to jail when the author spoke out about the medical treatment which most likely included sterilizing Uyghur women. This was an education as I didn't know much about the Uyghur people. China has done so many awful things during the Cultural Revolution that unfortunately the author's story doesn't surprise me. It's hard to know as Americans how we can help these types of ethnic groups where there are human rights violations. The writing is very basic and I believe English is probably the newest of the 3+ languages she knows. Still quite an impressive feat considering this.

"If you're alive, everything is possible. Everything."

Friends and GoodReads strangers, I love a memoir. I have read many of them in my 28 years. Without a doubt, this one stands with the best (I'm looking at you, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings). Echoing the poignancy of Maya Angelou, Gulchehra Hoja carves her own place as a voice the world needs to hear right now. The consequences of ignorance will quite literally be fatal.

From the opening pages, it's not a surprise that Gulchehra Hoja is a storyteller by trade, though her career has mainly been in children's media and investigative journalism. Through every page, she uplifts the personal history of her own family with glaring honesty and raw emotion. Yet, she simultaneously reminds the reader that her experience, as as Uyghur woman seeking democratic rights under an authoritarian regime, is a relatively lucky one. Human rights groups estimate that more than 1 million Uyghurs are unlawfully imprisoned across China, and millions of others live in a police state in fear for their lives.

I want to thank to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for my honest review, but more importantly, I want to thank Gulchehra Hoja for her courage and candor in sharing this book with the world. I hope A Stone is Most Precious Where it Belongs soon becomes required reading around the world.

This is a must-read memoir about the ongoing struggle by the Uyghurs in East Turkestan, which is considered the Xinjiang “Autonomous” Region of China. The quotation marks for Autonomous are mine - ironic since there’s nothing autonomous about the region. The Uyghurs are an ethnic Turkic group in central and east Asia. From a cultural, religious, and language perspective, they are very different from the Han Chinese, the majority of the Chinese population. They are ethnically related to the Turks and share similarities in terms of culture, language and religion. The book is Gulchehra Hoja’s account of her life to date. She grew up in the city of Urumchi, the region’s capital. Her family was fairly prominent in the community - her father was an archaeologist and her mother was a pharmacologist who provided medical care in the absence of doctors. Her grandfather was a famous Uyghur musician, who worked at the Uyghur Arts Center, which had previously housed the U.S. consulate. Early on she was exposed to the political wheels, cautioned about speaking out against the Chinese government, and being aware of what it meant to be Uyghur. Wholesale re-education of the Uyghurs was rampant and the migration of Han Chinese to the Uyghur region was encouraged and facilitated - all to infiltrate and dominate the local population. The author and her family’s life were heavily impacted by her brother’s stealing money and apparently gold, along with other young men, from the police chief’s house. Her brother was caught, tortured and imprisoned. I felt the author in some respects glossed over the actual incident. Her brother confessed to stealing money but was it for drugs? Did he and the other young men steal the gold? There’s mention of young people and drugs but it wasn’t clear to me if that was the case with her brother, or the reference was too subtle. I felt the author glossed over her brother’s culpability a bit. The memoir maps the author’s life from childhood to adulthood in Urumchi to her move to Germany and then on to the U.S. With a bit of luck through her connections, she landed a job as a journalist with Radio Free Asia in 2001 and was based in Washington D.C. At that time she knew no English and through sheer hard work and perseverance learned the language. She began reporting and exposing the plight of the Uyghurs and the ongoing persecution of this group by the Chinese government. Today, she is a well-known award-winning journalist covering ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghurs by the Chinese government. The book is informative and interesting, depicting what it means to be Uyghur, as well as the plight of the Uyghurs and their fight against persecution, re-education, and so much more. I highly recommend this book. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This was such a powerful, devastating, and touching memoir from Gulchehra Hoja. The book traces the increase in repression and crimes against the Uyghur people by the Chinese state as the author grows up, but it does more than just recount the steps toward genocide and finding her courage to speak out--it also does an excellent job at conveying the tension and guilt between being brave and speaking out to make a difference and putting your loved ones at risk, often against their will, because of your own choices.

I learned a lot about Uyghur history and culture through this book. I appreciated that it did more than just cover the plight of her people: it also emphasized their unique gifts and rich history.

A great balance of serious, heartbreaking topics and moments of love, hope, and laughter--such an excellent and important memoir that I hope people will pick up.

Poignant memoir about Gulchehra Hoja growing up in East Turkestan and how the Chinese government has been trying to eradicate the Uyghurs with their rule. She came from a nice middle class family with a strong sense family, culture, and community and through out the book we get her insight to show us how the Chinese has been chipping away their existence. She became a succesfull tv star but gave up everything to become a journalist and expose everything China was doing to her people. It's a heart breaking story, eye opening to an area I knew nothing about prior to this story.

***Thank you to Netgalley and Hachette Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a beautifully written book that is so important for our times. The Uyghur genocide is absolutely horrific, and this book shows what kind of culture is being lost with it.

Really appreciated Gulchehra's courageous and heartbreaking story and her journey as a journalist and eventually becoming an enemy of the state to the Chinese government. She also does a great job of educating the reader about the intricacies of Uyghur culture and history. A timely book as we should all learn more about the devastating Uyghur genocide. I wish the book would have included a little more information on the camps and what's happening in Uyghur region at the moment.

This memoir is just so important. The plight of the Uyghur people is heartbreaking. I hope everyone will do their part and read memoirs such as this one, by the courageous and fearless Gulchehra Hoja.

Gulchehra did an excellent job at describing life in East Turkestan (or Xinjiang Province). What I didn't know is how beautiful that culture is! The contrast of life pre-Han movement into the region and post, is something that is hard to bear, and I just don't know how these families lived through this period. Having a culture wiped out, a beautiful one at that.

Through quick decisions, Gulchehra moved away and eventually landed in the US, quickly becoming labelled as a terrorist by the Chinese Government. With this, the horrifying realization she'd never be able to see her family again. She had a vision, to help her people, and she stayed true to it. She is a hero, and I hope she will become a household name. Please read this book.

THIS IS A MUST-READ!!!

The memoir of an Uyghur woman who loves her people, her culture, and her home, and who becomes an enemy of China's CCP as their approach to controlling the East Turkestan region and people grows more imposing, more restrictive, more violent. Born and raised to a proud Uyghur family, Gulchehra recounts the history and culture of her people as she learned it and engaged in it firsthand - the music, the dancing, the fables, the histories. As China tightens its hold on the region in her adolescence and adulthood, she experiences the effects of those policies - her brother is targeted, her job is controlled, her opportunities limited. By a stroke of luck, Gulchehra finds herself in Europe during another crackdown on the Uyghur people and becomes determined to join the growing group of people trying to bring awareness to the genocide of her people. In doing so, she becomes an enemy of the Chinese state, and despite her family (still home in occupied East Turkestan) coming under fire for her work, she remains one of the loudest voices in the ongoing fight for justice.

"Women rock the cradle with one hand, and rock the world with the other." This Uyghur saying is especially true for Gulchehra - she has had a personal life that alone would be enough to write a memoir on, but in combination with her passion to celebrate and sustain the Uyghur culture, and to educate others on this topic she prizes above all others, this memoir quickly became one of my favorite books of the year and one of my favorite memoirs of all time.

Her writing is propulsive and her anecdotes are so entertaining! I was on the edge of my seat to find out if she would make the dance troupe, get a role, overcome her heartache. In short, she has led a fascinating life to the backdrop of one of humanity's worst and most-neglected ongoing human rights abuses. Her audience will be captivated by her personal triumphs and trials, as well as the control and violence the Uyghur people are increasingly subjected to - and especially by those parts of the story where these two topics overlap (her schooling, her movie audition, her brother's story, her TV show). Her writing brings to life her culture, art, music, history, and community - I found myself googling Uyghur cultural touch points. I also found that though the topic is undeniably tragic, the story does not feel bogged down in tragedy, it's actually quite buoyant.

Although I am not a woman of any faith, I found her writing about her journey to embracing Islam very moving. Parts of the story about her first hijab, her prayers in moments of loneliness, the support she and her husband received from their imams in desperate times, made me absolutely bawl my eyes out.

I was reminded in this story of so many others stories of fascism and resistance, across the world. I hope this story sheds greater light on the genocide and apartheid happening in East Turkestan right now.