In the winter of 1982, Bhuchung Sonam left his home in Central Tibet. For five days he and his father traveled through the Himalayas to the border with Nepal. When he was only about 11 years old, he knew little about what they were fleeing – China’s decades-long colonization of his homeland – and why. Nor did he realize that he would never see his homeland, his mother, or his six siblings again.
After arriving in Nepal, Sonam and his father made a pilgrimage to Buddhist sites in neighboring India, the home of the Dalai Lama and many other exiled Tibetans. Without much explanation, the father then returned to Tibet, leaving Sonam in the care of a family friend.
Sonam never saw his father again, who died when he was in 11th grade. He last spoke to his mother nine years ago. During the brief conversation, she promised, “We’ll see each other again.” But by then Sonam knew that the political situation in Tibet made that almost impossible.
Left without relatives in a foreign land, he said, everything was new: bananas, dal, the infamous Indian monsoon. Writing and literature became a salve to help him survive the loss of his homeland and his family. “The writing seals the pain,” he said. “It’s a process of negotiating this really hard and endless barrage of obstacles and challenges that exile throws at you.”
He became a writer and editor and published nine volumes of poetry and anthologies. But perhaps his most significant literary contribution has been as editor and publisher of TibetWrites, a press and online platform for Tibetan writing. Now in its 20th year, TibetWrites and its publishing arm, Blackneck, have printed more than 50 books and become the engine of a small but growing Tibetan literary ecosystem.
As the Chinese government continues to suppress Tibet and detain its writers and intellectuals, many Tibetans say Sonam’s publishing has brought a sense of home to a stateless population living in exile, with literature becoming a proxy for the nation-state.
“It’s not like I can live my life on Tibetan land,” said Tenzin Dickie, a writer and editor, “but I can live it in Tibetan literature.”
The idea for TibetWrites started in 2003. After working for a publication in Delhi, Sonam moved back to Dharamsala, India, and came into contact with Tenzin Tsundue, a writer and activist. Like Sonam, Tsundue was concerned about the limited opportunities for Tibetan writers, and in particular about the lack of secular Tibetan literature available in English. At the time, Sonam was editing what he believes was the first English-language anthology of Tibetan poetry, “Muses in Exile”. But that was just one anthology. He wanted to do more to cultivate a Tibetan literary tradition.
For more than a millennium, Tibetan literature has focused on the Buddhist quest for enlightenment, which Dickie says is diametrically opposed to fiction. In an introduction to a collection of short stories she edited, “Old Demons, New Gods,” Dickie writes, “The Buddhist ideal has always been the elimination of desire,” and “fiction, of course, begins with desire.”
While writers in Tibet circumvented the restrictions of censorship, Tibetan publications in India largely focused on Buddhism, history and politics. In the West, Sonam felt that Tibetan writers struggled with stories with a spiritual focus that squashed the experience of Tibetans. And he believed that a Tibetan editor could best help shape the voice and sensitivity of Tibetan writers.
With the exception of a short-lived literary magazine founded in the late 1970s by Tibetan students at Delhi University, there were few opportunities for Tibetan writers to express the lived experiences of ordinary people, least of all the experiences of Tibetans in exile.
Sonam, Tsundue and another founder decided to create an online platform for writing from Tibet and the diaspora. After much deliberation, the trio named their company TibetWrites. It was declarative, Sonam said; it demanded that the world look at Tibetans “first and foremost as human beings”.
The partnership between Sonam and Tsundue flourished. Within a few years, they began publishing their own books under their imprint, Blackneck. The quieter and gentler of the two, Sonam handles the editorial duties. Tsundue — who wears a red bandana he vowed not to take off until Tibet is free from Chinese rule — is more outspoken and handles the marketing.
Among the books they have published are ‘Broken Portraits’, a collection of feminist poems by Kaysang, a third-generation Tibetan born in exile, and ‘Wangdu’s Diary’, which tells the experiences of an exiled official’s visit to Tibet. in 1980.
Sonam and Tsundue both work from home and neither of them get paid for their work. Until a few years ago, due to TibetWrites’ small budget, writers took on the cost of printing their books; in return they got a platform and promotion.
In addition to publishing original works by Tibetan authors who write in English, Sonam also translates texts from Tibetan into English. Last year, his translation work was honored in Italy with the Ostana Prize, which recognizes writers who help preserve literature in minority languages.
In an unusual move that carries great legal risk, Sonam does not seek copyright permission when publishing translated works by Tibetan writers. He does this to avoid endangering the writers, he said: If the Chinese government had evidence that authors from Tibet were collaborating with exiles or “separatists,” as the government calls them, they could be arrested.
Shelly Bhoil, a scholar and editor of Resistant Hybridities: New Narratives of Exile Tibet, praised Sonam’s press for helping to shift perceptions of Tibet and Tibetan writers. “He showed the world that Tibetans are the authors of their own stories,” she said.
By making literature from Tibet widely available in English to Tibetans in the diaspora, many of whom cannot read Tibetan, Sonam has also “expanded a brotherhood across Tibetans, across borders, across the Himalayas,” Bhoil said.
Academics also pay attention to TibetWrites. Bhoil has noticed an increasing interest in Tibetan literature in a field historically dominated by research on Buddhism and history. Sonam often gets questions from scholars and others interested in Tibetan literature.
After Sonam included stories by Luguma Wangje, a young Tibetan writer from New York, in a collection of short stories and poems he edited, “Under the Blue Skies”, she was approached by a university press who wanted to print her work in a anthology.
They have never met in person, but Sonam has encouraged Wangje and urged her to keep writing. “He is a mentor and inspires me,” said Wangje.
Whether TibetWrites will lead authors to success outside the Tibetan literary sphere has yet to be determined. But Tsering Yangzom Lama, a Tibetan-Canadian writer and TibetWrites contributor, said via email that the success of her novel “We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies,” released last year by Bloomsbury Publishing, suggested that “readers being hungry for Tibetan stories.” Dickie is also hopeful that TibetWrites will launch writers’ careers soon: “If it hasn’t already, it will.”
Sonam and Tsundue also try to correct the translation imbalance between Tibetan and Western languages. The West has translated a lot from Tibet, mainly Buddhist texts, Sonam said: “Whatever we have, we have given.”
But few works have been translated into Tibetan. He is trying to remedy that and has already started translating books such as John Steinbeck’s ‘The Pearl’ and Charles Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’.
In an unexpected twist, as TibetWrites and its audience has grown, Sonam has begun to receive submissions from non-Tibetan writers, including Indians and writers from the West. But he remains adamant that his publication is exclusive to Tibetans who have few avenues to more mainstream publications.
And Tibetans in Tibet are paying attention. Sonam said a friend there told him that writers ask questions about authors in exile, including Sonam himself. Knowing that his work is recognized in Tibet confirms his commitment to both the inherent value of literature and its service to the Tibetan movement for self-determination.
“Until we find a political solution, we have to keep and build on this idea of Tibet – whether you call it a home or an idea,” he said, “and art does that.”
