Title: Across Many Mountains: Three Daughters of Tibet
Author: Yangzom Brauen
Publisher: Harvill Secker Random House
ISBN: 9781846553455
Back Cover Text
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About the Author:
Born in 1980 to a Swiss father and Tibetan mother, Yangzom Brauen is an actress and political activist. She lives in both Los Angeles and Berlin and has appeared in a number of German and American fils. She is also very active in the Free Tibet movement, making regular broadcasts about Tibet and organising public demostrations against the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
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Why I Read The Book?
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Author: Yangzom Brauen
Publisher: Harvill Secker Random House
ISBN: 9781846553455
Back Cover Text
Kunsang thought she would never leave Tibet. One of Tibet's youngest nuns, she grew up in a remote mountain village where, as a teenager, she entered the local nunnery. Though simple, Kunsang's life gave her all she needed: a oneness with nature, a sense of the spiritual in all things. She married a monk, had two children and lived in peace and prayer. But not for long.
There was a saying in Tibet: 'When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth.' The Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 changed everything for Kunsang. When Chinese soldiers began destroying her monastery, she and her family were forced to flee in a hair-raising trek across the Himalayas in winter. She spent several years in Indian refuge camps. Both her husband and her younger child died. Then came an extraordinary turn of events: the arrival of Martin Brauen, a cultured young Swiss man with a fascination for Tibet, who fell in love with her daughter and took both of them to Switzerland where Yangzom would be born, the author of this remarkable book.
Many important stories lie hidden until the right person arrives to tell them. Yangzom Brauen has rescued the story of her inspirational grandmother, writing a book full of love and endurance, and giving us a rare and vivid glimpse of life in rural Tibet before the arrival of the Chinese.
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About the Author:
Born in 1980 to a Swiss father and Tibetan mother, Yangzom Brauen is an actress and political activist. She lives in both Los Angeles and Berlin and has appeared in a number of German and American fils. She is also very active in the Free Tibet movement, making regular broadcasts about Tibet and organising public demostrations against the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
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Why I Read The Book?
I just love any stories that is told about Tibet. The first and second chapters already make you really get a sense of what it would feel like to live in Tibet during the occupations of Chinese while fleeing in such horrible conditions to India.
(Sonam, Kunsang and Yangzom)
Fleeing home can never be easy especially when you are six plus your shoes are roughly hand-sewn, stuffed with hay, it turned to some "ice-cake" under such low temperature and your route is over the world's highest mountain range. This was the journey that author's mother took with her parents when they fled Tibet during the Chinese occupations in Tibet. They were leaving everything behind and all that they knew are traveling to India in hope that they could find sanctuary in the country where the Dalai Lama was in exile.
Even though they do manage to get into India but their impressions of the country (the heat, the sickness, lack of clean water, and the inequalities making them have second thought. Being refugees over there are tough. They spend years on road-building sites smashing stones with their bare hands with hammers. But the author's mother, Sonam manage to get an education, alongside trying to work to survive. Then her life takes a fairytale turn.
(Yangzom and her mother)
Kunsang, the author's grandmother, who has journeyed to a Western country, yet she is still a strong faith Buddhist nun, days and nights she pend her time chanting and praying on her own made little altar. If the Chinese had not invaded, she would be living in the small village of Pang in southern Tibet.
All in all, this is a collection of the author's memories, memories of Yangzom’s tribute to her grandmother and mother, as well as to her lost homeland. It tells of what daily life was like in Tibet before the arrival of the Chinese, showing how religion informed every aspect of people’s lives and at the end it is a love story between Yangzom and her extraordinary grandmother, the love between Sonam and her Swiss rescuer and most importantly the love for a country that no longer exists.
