Mission Statement
Hi, everyone! My name is Annoshae Mirza. I’m a senior in high school, currently based in Chicago and planning to move to California, and I LOVE Central Asia.
I’ve always loved books and languages. I spend a lot of my free time studying literature and linguistics. This passion developed from a Covid hobby: Russian on Duolingo. What started as a time-wasting activity quickly turned into a real passion. I taught myself Russian and the world was my oyster.
A few years ago, I spent an entire summer in Kyrgyzstan. I had received the NSLI-Y scholarship from the Department of State to study Russian. But I was far more interested in the country and native culture around me.
I was fascinated by the history, culture, and language, and wanted to spend more time studying it. When I came back to the United States, I was excited to dive into a research project. What I found was that the resources to learn about Central Asia were incredibly limited. I also found that many people in my country had little to no exposure to Central Asian culture.
My goal with this website is to open people up to the wonder of Central Asian literary culture, and hopefully inspire more people to study the region so that in the future we don’t lack resources to study this incredibly underrepresented area.
Hopefully I’ll be able to study Eastern Europe and Central Asia in college, but in the meantime I hope this project encourages other people to kindle a passion for Central Asia and its amazing literature.