I keep a weblog like it's still the 90s. For commentary and dissent please visit jontaylor.ca, or various other purveyors of thought online.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Tsering Shakya: Tibetan Questions

New Left Review - Tsering Shakya: Tibetan Questions: "Tsering Shakya was born in Lhasa in 1959. His father, the headmaster of a small Tibetan-language private school, died while he was still a child. The family was divided by the onset of the Cultural Revolution: an older brother and sister were strongly committed leftists, while another brother was imprisoned for opposition to it. In 1967, his mother left for Nepal with Shakya—her youngest child—and her other daughter. Shakya attended a Tibetan school in the northern Indian town of Mussoorie for several years; in 1973, he won a scholarship to a boarding school in Hampshire, and then continued his studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Between 1983 and 1990 he worked on anti-racist campaigns with Labour-run municipal councils in London. During the 1990s Shakya produced his outstanding history of Tibet since 1947, The Dragon in the Land of Snows, published in 1999. He also translated the autobiography of Buddhist monk Palden Gyatso (Fire Under the Snow, 1997), and co-edited the first anthology of modern Tibetan short stories and poems (Song of the Snow Lion, 2000). He now teaches at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and is currently working on a study of modern Tibetan literature."