Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution - Hardcover

by Tsering Woeser (Author), Robert Barnett (Editor), Susan T. Chen (Translator)

Access the glossary of Tibetan terms.
Access the glossary of Chinese and English terms.
Access the Index. When Red Guards arrived in Tibet in 1966, intent on creating a classless society, they unleashed a decade of revolutionary violence, political rallies, and factional warfare marked by the ransacking of temples, the destruction of religious artifacts, the burning of books, and the public humiliation of Tibet's remaining lamas and scholars. Within Tibet, discussion of those events has long been banned, and no visual records of this history were known to have survived.

Author Biography

Tsering Woeser is a Tibetan poet and essayist. She is the most prominent commentator on the Tibet issue still living within China and has written twenty-one books in Chinese, with eighteen translations of her work published in nine other languages, including Voices from Tibet, Tibet on Fire, and two others in English. Woeser has received the Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands and the U.S. Department of State's International Women of Courage Award. She lives under close surveillance in Beijing. Tsering Dorje (1937-91) was a Tibetan officer in the People's Liberation Army who served in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution. Robert Barnett is a leading scholar of modern Tibetan history and politics who founded and directed the Modern Tibetan Studies program at Columbia from 2000 until 2017. His books include Lhasa: Streets with Memories, and he is currently a professorial research associate at SOAS, University of London. Susan T. Chen is a longtime collaborator with Tsering Woeser and translator of her work. She received her PhD in contemporary Tibetan culture from Emory University and is visiting assistant professor of history at Wingate University in North Carolina.