Full Description
Ocean, as Much as Rain presents for the first time in the English-language world a collection of masterfully translated literary writings by prominent Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser. In these stories, lyrical essays, and poetry, Woeser interweaves texts, photographs, silences, and documentary details. Featuring a distinctively imaginative use of satire and digressive rhetoric, Woeser's stories bring to life Tibetan characters whose lives are entwined with politics, history, and religion. Woeser illuminates the ruins and places that she has come across during her various sojourns in Chinese-ruled Tibet, reviving sites from the past of her parents and their generation. These writings range from ingenious retellings of cultural encounters and confrontation to insightful commentaries on ecological issues and tourism in Tibet that never shun contradictions, dilemmas, or questions about the future. With an introduction by Fiona Sze-Lorrain and an author interview by editors-translators Sze-Lorrain and Dechen Pemba, Ocean, as Much as Rain is a landmark publication that celebrates the work of a steadfast dissident and a leading Tibetan literary figure of our times.
Contents
Foreword / Pankaj Mishra vii
Introduction. Ocean Can Be Rain: Woeser's Poetry, Fiction, and Lyrical Prose / Fiona Sze-Lorrain 1
Translation Credits 1
1. A Sheet of Paper Can Also Become a Knife 13
2. My Tongue Surgery 14
3. Spring 18
4. Rinchen the Sky-Burial Master 19
5. Tibet 35
6. Garpon La's Offerings 38
7. On the Fifteenth Midnight of the Fourth Month in the Tibetan Calendar 49
8. Two Excerpts from The Prayer Beads of Fate 51
9. The King of Dzi 54
10. "Do Not Forget the Past . . ." 73
11. Celebrity Street Toilets in Lhasa 74
12. Ocean, as Much as Rain 87
13. Remembering a Smashed Buddha 106
14. The Ruins of Lhasa: Yabzhi Taktser 108
15. Let Me Write, the Fear of Lhasa Breaks My Heart 131
16. Only This Useless Poem—for Lobsang Tsepak 133
17. Back of Lhasa, Day One, from Seven Days in Lhasa 136
18. The Killing Trip 147
19. A Few Years Later 163
20. Masks and Tea 165
21. An Eye for History and Reality: Woeser and Her Story of Tibet / Dechen Pemba and Fiona Sze-Lorrain 167
Acknowledgments 181
Glossary of Place Names 183
Bibliography 185
Biographies 189
Index 191
