{"id":64010,"date":"2022-11-27T03:05:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-27T03:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=64010"},"modified":"2022-11-27T03:07:11","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T03:07:11","slug":"the-white-mosque-a-silk-road-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=64010","title":{"rendered":"The White Mosque: A Silk Road Memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"

The White Mosque: A Silk Road Memoir<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Hurst Publishers<\/a>
\nOctober 2022
\n304 pages
\nHardback ISBN: 9781787388079<\/p>\n

Sofia Samatar<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of English
\nJames Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

A rich history of wanderers, exiles and intruders. A haunting personal journey through Central Asia<\/a>. An intimate reflection on mixed identity shaped by cultural crossings.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the late 1800s, a group of German-speaking Mennonites<\/a> fled Russia<\/a> for Muslim Central Asia, to await Christ\u2019s return<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over a century later, Sofia Samatar traces their gruelling journey across desert and mountains, and its improbable fruit: a small Christian settlement inside the Khanate of Khiva<\/a>. Named \u2018The White Mosque\u2019 after the Mennonites\u2019 whitewashed church, the village\u2014a community of peace, prophecy, music and martyrs\u2014lasted fifty years.<\/p>\n

Within this curious tale, Sofia discovers a tapestry of characters connected by the ancient Silk Road<\/a>: a fifteenth-century astronomer-king; an intrepid Swiss woman traveller; the first Uzbek photographer; a free spirit of the Harlem Renaissance<\/a>. Along the way, in a voice both warm and wise, she explores her own complex upbringing as an American Mennonite of colour, the daughter of a Swiss-American Christian and a Somali Muslim.<\/p>\n

On this pilgrimage to a lost village and a near-forgotten history, Samatar traces the porous borders of identity and narrative. When you leave your tribe, what remains? How do we enter the stories of others? And how, out of life\u2019s buried archives and startling connections, does a person construct a self?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rich history of wanderers, exiles and intruders. A haunting personal journey through Central Asia. An intimate reflection on mixed identity shaped by cultural crossings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,11,8,15,820],"tags":[33657,9554],"class_list":["post-64010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia","category-books","category-media-archive","category-novels","category-religion","tag-hurst-publishers","tag-sofia-samatar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64010"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64054,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64010\/revisions\/64054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}