Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History

Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History

by Canyon Sam
ISBN-10:
029598953X
ISBN-13:
9780295989532
Pub. Date:
08/28/2009
Publisher:
University of Washington Press
ISBN-10:
029598953X
ISBN-13:
9780295989532
Pub. Date:
08/28/2009
Publisher:
University of Washington Press
Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History

Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History

by Canyon Sam
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Overview

Through a lyrical narrative of her journey to Tibet in 2007, activist Canyon Sam contemplates modern history from the perspective of Tibetan women. Traveling on China's new "Sky Train," she celebrates Tibetan New Year with the Lhasa family whom she'd befriended decades earlier and concludes an oral-history project with women elders.

As she uncovers stories of Tibetan women's courage, resourcefulness, and spiritual strength in the face of loss and hardship since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, and observes the changes wrought by the controversial new rail line in the futuristic "new Lhasa," Sam comes to embrace her own capacity for letting go, for faith, and for acceptance. Her glimpse of Tibet's past through the lens of the women - a visionary educator, a freedom fighter, a gulag survivor, and a child bride - affords her a unique perspective on the state of Tibetan culture today - in Tibet, in exile, and in the widening Tibetan diaspora.

Gracefully connecting the women's poignant histories to larger cultural, political, and spiritual themes, the author comes full circle, finding wisdom and wholeness even as she acknowledges Tibet's irreversible changes.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780295989532
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Publication date: 08/28/2009
Series: A Mclellan Book Series
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 284
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Canyon Sam is a San Francisco writer, performance artist, and Tibet activist. Her one-woman show The Dissident was critically acclaimed in the Village Voice and the Boston Globe. This is her first book.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

1. Sky Train

2. Morning on the Changtang

3. Lhasa

4. Crossing the Himalayas

5. Dharamsala

Epilogue

Notes

Glossary

Acknowledgments

About the Author

What People are Saying About This

Valerie Matsumoto

"Through the experiences of older Tibetan women, the author offers a captivating journey spanning half a century and several countries. Sky Train conveys women's lessons of community-building, generosity, faith, and determination. A beautiful, moving, riveting book."

Alice Walker

"A book that is sure to illuminate a Tibet so many of us have been longing to know."

Robert Thurman

"Canyon Sam's Sky Train powerfully moves the heart, as it brings to life deep truths about our world today, about Tibet, the land and people and especially its outstanding women. Just as important is the author's own revelatory discovery of 'Tibet' as a compassionate, wise, and down to earth state-of-mind essential to the survival of the whole world. Words cannot express how wonderful is this honest, generous, and perceptive book."

Sylvia Boorstein

"This book about the Dharma of connection, of companioning, of compassion, has strengthened my own devotion."

Maxine Hong Kingston

"Years ago following her ancestral roots to China, but finding instead Tibet as a spiritual home, Canyon Sam made a miracle of a journey. Now in Sky Train she guides the reader on a life-changing adventure back to Tibet after more than twenty years and an epoch of cataclysmic change to produce a miracle of a book."

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