1st Edition
Uyghur Identity and Culture A Global Diaspora in a Time of Crisis
Uyghur Identity and Culture brings together the work of scholars, activists, and native Uyghurs to explore the history and growing challenges that the Uyghur diaspora face across the globe in response to shifting government policies forbidding many forms of cultural expression in their homeland.
The collection examines how and why the Uyghur diaspora, dispersed from their homeland to communities across Australia, Central Asia, Europe, Japan, Türkiye, and North America, now has the responsibility to preserve their language and cultural traditions so that these can be shared with future generations. The book critically investigates the government censorship of Uyghur literatures and Western media coverage of the Uyghurs, while centralizing real reflections of those who grew up in the Uyghur homeland. It considers the geographical and psychological pressures that the Uyghur diaspora endure and highlights the resilience and creativity of their relentless battle against cultural erosion.
Uyghur Identity and Culture is a key contribution to diaspora literature and calls to attention the urgent need for global action on the ongoing human rights violations against the Uyghur people. It is essential reading for those interested in the history and struggles of the Uyghur diaspora as well as anyone studying sociology, race, migration, culture, and human rights studies.
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Series Editor Preface
List of Abbreviations
1. Introduction: Maintaining Cultural Identity in a Changing Political Landscape
By Rebecca Clothey and Dilmurat Mahmut
Part I: Cultural Erosion and Identity
2. Promoting, Then Censoring Uyghurness in PRC Uyghur Language Cookbooks, 1984-2021
By David Dettman
3. Uyghur-Chinese Mandarin Code-Switching and Government Censorship in an Online Show: Anar Pishti
By Martin Shawn
4. Lost in Different Scripts
By Abduweli Ayup
Part II: Cultural Resilience and Identity
5. A Transnational Perspective on Uyghur Cultural Maintenance and Preservation
By Sean Roberts and Rebecca Clothey
6. Role of Teaching Uyghur Language in Shaping Cultural Identity of Children of Uyghur Diaspora
By Muyesser Abdulehed
7. “It is So Painful Not to Have a Country”: Challenges and Dilemmas of Uyghur immigrants in Canada
By Dilmurat Mahmut
8. Freire’s Critical Literacy as a Tool for Public Pedagogy in Uyghur Diaspora Cyberspace: A Case Study of Two Uyghur YouTubers
By Rose Diya
Part III: Politics and Identity
9. Survivor Guilt among Uyghurs in the Diaspora
By Mettursun Beydulla
10. Family or Freedom: The changing landscape of Uyghur diaspora activism
By Musapir and Rune Steenberg
11. Türkiye’s Official and Public Response to the Uyghur Issue
By Işık Kuşçu Bonnenfant
12. Conclusion: Ensuring the Resilience and Vitality of Uyghur Lifeways and Language in Diaspora
By Elise Anderson
Index
Biography
Rebecca Clothey is Professor and Head of Drexel University’s Department of Global Studies and Modern Languages. Her current research on maintenance and transmission of Uyghur culture spans several countries, including China, the United States, and Türkiye. She was a visiting scholar at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul in 2018-2019 and at Xinjiang Normal University in 2014. Dr. Clothey has been awarded two Fulbright Fellowships for her research, one to China and one to Uzbekistan, a Spencer Fellowship to study community-based schools in Argentina, and an NEH-ARIT Fellowship to study cultural transmission among the Uyghur diaspora in Türkiye.
Dilmurat Mahmut obtained a Ph.D. in Educational Studies from McGill University. He is a FRQSC postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University and a course lecturer at McGill University, Canada. His research interests include Muslim identity, education, violent extremism, and immigrant/refugee integration in the West. His publications include “Conflicting Perceptions of Education in Canada: The Perspectives of Well-educated Muslim Uyghur Immigrants” in Diaspora, Indigenous and Minority Education, 2021; “Lost in Translation: Exploring Uyghur Identity in Canada,” in Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 2021 (with Waite); Revisiting Muslim Identity and Islamophobia, 2018 (book chapter).
“Since 2014, PRC state violence conducted in the name of the ‘People’s War on Terror’ has caused accelerated numbers of Uyghurs to hemorrhage into every corner of the globe. This volume, edited by two established experts on Uyghur education, religion, culture and folklore, first outlines coercive practices of cultural erasure in the Uyghur homeland. It then proceeds to explore how Uyghurs in diaspora attempt in that context to maintain, preserve (but also adapt) their language and culture, across generations, in the face of ongoing anxiety, trauma and depression. Many contributors are themselves members of the Uyghur diaspora. In sharing their extensive fieldwork (in some cases, pseudonymously), they emerge sensitively as scholars, advocates and, above all, human beings.”
- Joanne Smith Finley, Reader in Chinese Studies, Newcastle University, UK
