The contributions in this volume analyze the cultural narratives of Tibetan exiles from the 1950s to the present.

With its analytic focus on the cultural production by Tibetans-in-exile, this volume examines contemporary Tibetan fiction, poetry, music, art, cinema, pamphlets, testimony, and memoir. The twelve case studies highlight the themes of Tibetans’ self-representation, politicized national consciousness, religious and cultural heritages, and resistance to the forces of colonization. This book demonstrates how Tibetan cultural narratives adjust to intercultural influences and ongoing social and political struggles in exile.

Part I: Resisting Representation: The Anglophone Tibetan Literature

Chapter 1: Tibetan Literary Influences in the English Poems of Chögyam Trungpa

Chapter 2: Lessons Unlearned: Identity and Resistance in Tsering Wangmo Dhompa’s Poetry

Chapter 3: Are We There Yet?: The Politics of Tibetan Self-Fashioning and Representation in Tenzin Tsundue's Poetry

Chapter 4: Hybrid Cartographies: Mapping in The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes

Chapter 5: The Faith and the Flag: A Study of Early Nationalist Phase in Tibet in the First Tibetan-English Novel Idols on the Path

Part II: Performing Displacement: Film, Art, and Music

Chapter 6: The Institutionalization and Transmission of Tibetan Music in Exile: The Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts

Chapter 7: Struggle to Inscribe Individuality: Tibetan Pop Singers in India and Nepal

Chapter 8: Tibetan Diasporic Cinema: Traces of Memory, Visions of Hope

Chapter 9: The Palette Where the Past Meets the Present: A Critical Appreciation of Paintings by Tibetan Children in Exile

Part III Testimonial Narration: Media and Memoir

Chapter 10: Circulating Pluralized Selfhood: Testimony and Witnessing in Protest Pamphlets as Emergent Narrative Genre

Chapter 11: Human Rights Practice and the Evolution of Testimony in the Tibetan Diaspora

Chapter 12: Traversing Borders: A Tibetan Odyssey in Coming Home to Tibet