Hope in Hardship: How an Illiterate Woman ‘Wrote’ Her Memoir

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A survivor of human trafficking from southwestern China shares how she became an “authentic voice” in literature using her phone’s voice-to-text function. Editor’s note: Ad Bel grew up in an impoverished village in China’s southwestern Guizhou province in the 1960s. Legally named Li Yuchun, she goes by her ethnic Miao name, which means “Thorns by the Roadside.” After a lifetime of struggles, including having to escape the clutches of human traffickers, in 2022, she overcame her illiteracy to publish an autobiography, “Ad Bel,” saying she hopes it will help her two daughters avoid similar hardships. Ad Bel was born in 1968 in Gulu Village, in Guizhou province’s Leishan County. After her mother passed away when she was 8, her father remarried a woman who already had four children. Food was scarce, and Ad Bel longed to attend school, to learn how to read and write, and gain the opportunity to do something other than physical labor. To cover her tuition at the local pri ………………………………