Growing up blind and poor in rural China, Chen Guangcheng had few prospects. Yet before he turned 40, Chen was one of China’s most famous human rights activists, known around the world after he became the subject of a dramatic standoff between the American and Chinese governments. Chen’s new autobiography, The Barefoot Lawyer: A Blind Man’s Fight for Justice and Freedom in China, recounts his 2012 journey from rural Shandong province to the U.S. embassy in Beijing — to him, the only “absolutely safe” place in China.

The title of Chen’s book alludes to the “barefoot doctors” that China’s Communist Party sent out into the countryside to deliver basic healthcare during the Cultural Revolution. The title is a not-so-subtle dig at the regime that has crushed efforts by self-taught lawyers to use the law to advance individual rights in a one-party communist state.