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May 2023
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![]() ![]() Armed with curiosity and just a dash of hurt ethnic pride I took to the place us amateur scholars go to for research: Google. Even more depressing is the fact how easily I was ready to accept this lack of representation in the book world as something normal. ![]() Saying that, “Well, nobody knows about us, and that’s just the way it is” is throwing in the towel before the fight even starts. This lack of interest in Central Asian culture and literature comes from the lack of representation, and not the other way around. There are cultural trends and movements that the rest of the world isn’t aware of. Yet, as far as regions go, Central Asia has so much going on. That’s over four million square kilometers of a whole big nothing. ![]() When it comes to cultural awareness Central Asia is but a blank space on the map for most people outside the “region”. The first answer that came to mind, an almost intuitive response was “Well, because nobody knows about Central Asia”. ![]() And as I was writing this very apologetic response, I had to ask myself why authors from Central Asia are so underrepresented on the literary market. I had to be honest with them and tell them that I know very little about contemporary authors from Kazakhstan and Central Asia. They had read my review of The Silent Steppe by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov and were asking me for recommendations. A couple of weeks ago, I got a message on Goodreads from a Kazakh-American who was looking for Kazakh and Central Asian authors. ![]()
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