- Street:
- Village Books
- Additional:
- 1200 Eleventh Street
- City:
- Bellingham ,
- Province:
- Washington
- Postal Code:
- 98225
- Country:
- United States
Traveling on China’s new “Sky Train,” Tibet activist Canyon Sam 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. With the Foreword written by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Sky Train has received praise from Maxine Hong Kingston, Alice Walker, Sylvia Boorstein, Sharon Salzberg.
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.
