Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

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.