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Contributor

Joshua L. Freeman

Black and white portrait of Joshua Freeman
Contributor

Joshua L. Freeman

Joshua L. Freeman is a historian of modern China and a translator of Uyghur literature. He is an assistant research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, and is currently completing a monograph titled The Poetry of Power: Uyghur National Culture in Twentieth-Century China. His writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, and the Times Literary Supplement; his translations have appeared in the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the New Statesman. His translation of Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil’s memoir, Waiting to Be Arrested at Night, will be published in August 2023 by Penguin Press in the US and Jonathan Cape in the UK, and will be the basis for translations into twelve other languages. More of his translations can be found at his website.

Articles by Joshua L. Freeman

Portable radio
Photo by Thach Nguyen on Unsplash
The Radio
By Tahir Hamut Izgil
They were marching along a man with his hands tied behind his back and a tall paper hat on his head.
Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
black and white drawing of a boy with smoke coming up behind him floating over a red mound
Julia Griffin, "Smoke." Copyright Julia Griffin
Three Poems
By Imran Sada’i
I sit on the shores of emptiness / and watch my soul foaming red
Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
MultimediaMultilingual
Phone Call
By Tahir Hamut Izgil
On a mattress / amidst an armful of hair / a beautiful woman tosses and turns
Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
MultimediaMultilingual
Uyghur Modernist Poetry: Three Contemporary Writers
By Joshua L. Freeman
Modernist poetry burst onto the Uyghur literary scene thirty years ago.
Chronicle of an Execution
By Ghojimuhemmed Muhemmed
Water in the blood, bread in the flesh, vows in the bone
Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
Multilingual
Against Tradition
By Osmanjan Muhemmed Pas’an
I was eyemate to a blind one
Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
Multilingual
The Past
By Tahir Hamut Izgil
The world made no promises to anyone
Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
Multilingual
The Nights Passing Endlessly through Scheherazade’s Mouth
By Exmetjan Osman
I was more or less enjoying the daytime / I was watching grass sprout from cracks in the asphalt
Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
Multilingual