As a poet, essayist, blogger, and independent researcher, Tsering Woeser has long been among the most prominent, thoughtful, and courageous Tibetan public intellectuals working inside China. Thanks to editor Robert Barnett and translator Susan Chen, Woeser's groundbreaking work on the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, Forbidden Memory, in now available in English. Featuring roughly three hundred photographs taken between 1964 and 1976 by the author's father, Tsering Dorje, and based in part on extensive interviews, Forbidden Memory is a unique visual record of “an era of Tibet that had been erased” (p. xii). It is also a deeply personal rumination on victimhood and culpability, violence and loss, and culture, language, and identity. Beautifully designed, it should be read by anyone interested in recent Tibetan history and Maoist China.
First published in 2006 in Taiwan, Woeser explains that the original Chinese title, Shajie, “killing and looting,” is how Chinese speakers...
