Across Many Mountains

July 4, 2011
Blending family memories with Tibet's troubled history with the People's Republic of China, Brauen reflects on three generations of women honoring their heritage despite physical, spiritual, and cultural exile. Her narrative begins nearly a century ago, when her now 91-year-old grandmother Kunsang became a Buddhist nun in a country where ritual and superstition fostered peace and stability within a rigid social hierarchy. Brauen recounts Kunsang's early years in Tibet and harrowing 1959 journey across the mountains to India with her husband and daughter, Sonam (Brauen's mother), to escape persecution from the Chinese; Sonam's awakening social conscience, marriage to a Swiss curator/activist living in the West, and career as an artist in New York; and Brauen's own conflicts as a Swiss-born political activist, actor, and model. Subtle humor lightens Brauen's urgent tone; for example, descriptions of Kunsang's and Sonam's first encounters with cutlery, and Brauen's "Pippi Longstocking childhood." Chapters in which, many years later, the family travels back to Tibet demonstrate how memory can soften harsh realities and disappointment, while Brauen's compassion inspires hope that Tibetans might one day achieve the justice they seek.

June 15, 2011

The experiences of three generations of remarkable Tibetan women over the course of a century.

Through the prism of her own life and that of her mother and grandmother, debut author Brauen illuminates a unique culture and its transformation under the repressive Chinese occupation of Tibet. Her story begins with the birth of her grandmother in the 1920s and concludes with the author's career as an actress and her activities in support of Tibetan liberation. Her grandparents spent their early years as members of a secluded monastic community in Tibet. When their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled the country to escape Chinese repression, her grandparents followed with their two daughters. Although the Brauen expresses great respect for her grandmother's spirituality, she is by no means uncritical of life in old Tibet, which, she writes, "was not a utopian Shangri-La, the blissful paradise on earth that people in the West like to conjure." The family's journey across the Himalayas was harrowing. When they arrived in India, they faced the brutal circumstances of life in a refugee camp lacking decent sanitary facilities, food and drinking water. Many died, including her father and younger sister. Her mother and grandmother were fortunate to find work with a Swiss-supported charity for Tibetan orphans, even though her mother could only attend school for a few years. When her mother was 17, she met Martin Brauen—the author's Swiss father—who had come to India to study Buddhism. After a prolonged courtship, they married and moved to Switzerland, taking her grandmother with them. It was there that the author and her younger brother were born. In 1986, the family visited Tibet for a joyful reunion with relatives. While recognizing that her grandmother's Tibet is inevitably changing, for her the Dalai Lama remains a cherished example of transcendent Tibetan spiritual values.

An absorbing, multilayered account of the evolution of an enduring culture.

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Starred review from September 1, 2011
In her heart-gripping family memoir, actor and activist Brauen provides a unique and illuminating view of the Tibetan diaspora. Writing with immediacy and grace, Brauen recaptures the lost world of her grandmother's youth as a Buddhist nun high in the mountains of Tibet, a land then hermetically sealed off from the rest of humanity. Kunsang's life was traditionally devout and materially austere. Permitted to marry, she and Tsering had two young children when they were forced to flee the violent Chinese invasion in 1959. With meticulous detail and riveting drama, Brauen chronicles their harrowing escape to India and the grueling circumstances that claimed the lives of Tsering and their younger daughter. Grieving and destitute, Kunsang and Soman nonetheless faced each day with fortitude, ingenuity, and compassion, and as their remarkable story unfolds, readers will gain new appreciation for the power of mother-daughter love, hard work, education, and philanthropy. The women eventually embarked on another cross-cultural adventure when Sonam married Martin Brauen, then a Swiss student whose family tree includes King Henry II, Martin Luther, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. With her own extraordinary experiences in the mix, Yangzom portrays three generations of women dedicated to preserving their endangered culture in an unforgettable tale of survival, creativity, faith, social responsibility, and revolutionary love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)