She&: Banu's Redemption and select works from female Uyghur poets

by Modan Han

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.

At the same time, She&’s Premier Issue publishes works from young Uyghur female poets in exile in Uyghur, English and Chinese, as well as two works from poets now in Xinjiang, Don’t Hide Your Sorrow and The Cursed Woman.

She& was created 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.

271 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 24, 2021