Mystical Forest: Collected Poems and Short Stories of Dungan Ethnographer Ali Dzhon

Asian American / Asian Research Institute (AAARI) - The City University of New York (CUNY)

Prof. Kenneth J. Yin will discuss his new book, Mystical Forest: Collected Poems and Short Stories of Dungan Ethnographer Ali Dzhon. Born in Shor-Tyube, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, in 1951, Dungan ethnographer and creative writer Ali Dzhon is widely regarded as the preeminent writer on the material and spiritual culture and history of the Dungan people, the Sinophone Muslims of Central Asia. Mystical Forest makes available for the first time in English a significant collection of Dzhons poems and short stories, which he penned in Russian over a span of more than half a century, from 1969 to 2021, bridging the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. In these rich literary works, Dzhon expresses his thoughts about the world around him, ponders the fate of his people and the meaning of life, and provides finely nuanced descriptions of his feelings about love, nature, and those around him.