Ilham Tohti wrote these words in his 2011 article “My Ideals and the Career Path I Have Chosen,” one of eight essays reprinted in this book and presented in chronological order. This essay came two years before Ilham Tohti's arrest in 2013. At that time, he had already been restricted from going to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, his homeland. After a life dedicated to promoting Uyghur-Han relations and public understanding of Xinjiang, what awaited him was a life sentence on separatism charges as punishment for pursuing justice. The quote above best captures his positionality and motivations in his lifework and his strong identification with his people but also with China. What happened to him and Uyghurs, as well as to Kazakhs, Mongols, Tibetans, and many other minoritized people in China today, shows us the Chinese government's perpetual fear that ethnonational consciousness would contradict the very existence of the Chinese...

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