Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change explores recent developments in literature produced by Tibetan writers in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas of the People's Republic of China, and by Tibetan writers living outside China. This truly groundbreaking volume brings together works that offer a panoramic view of a variegated body of literature that will serve to further the development of Tibetan literature studies and stimulate interest in ethnic minority literature in China and globally. A fundamental question posed by the volume is, “What is modern Tibetan literature in the contemporary world?” The rich array of essays provides insights into this complicated, “hotly contested” (p. xiii) question.
The introduction, written by editors Lauran R. Hartley and Patricia Schiaffini-Vedani, sketches the history of Tibetan literature and lays a foundation for the ensuing discussions of modern and contemporary Tibetan literature, which has grown exponentially since the early 1980s. A basic issue is that of language register. Works by ethnic Tibetan authors are written in Tibetan, Chinese, English, and other languages. Some are written by persons of mixed Tibetan and other heritages. Most works are written by authors in China from the Tibetan Autonomous Region and Tibetan communities in the surrounding areas of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan. Other works are written by ethnic Tibetans in northern India, Europe, and the Unites States, thus prompting the term “diaspora literature” for texts composed outside China in Tibetan or English. The volume will serve as a model for explorations of other minority literatures in China (especially the large Sinophone component), and it will be of comparative value to studies of literature in multiethnic states and transnational communities worldwide.
The collection includes essays by a mix of Tibetans living in China and abroad, as well as non-Tibetan writers in the West. The first section, “Engaging Traditions,” includes chapters written from comparative and historical perspectives. Hartley introduces alternative views on the early modern Tibetan monk Gendün Chömpel (1903–51) and other formative figures. The essay describes instances of Tibetan vernacular poetry and subject matter in the early and mid- twentieth century, primarily by progressive monastic writers in the Qinghai-Sichuan corridor, thus foregrounding the burgeoning of colloquial literature in later decades.
Yangdon Dhondup presents an overview of such poetry in Chinese language beginning with several “pioneer” poets, including Wang Zuoliang (Tamdrin Gömpo) and the influential Yidan Cairang (Yidam Tsering), both of whom were born in the 1930s and learned Chinese as children, to poets who emerged in the post-1980 era after the Cultural Revolution. Many of the latter are of urban or ethnically mixed backgrounds, raising a number of issues about assimilation and cultural hybridity. Tsering Shakya contextualizes the emergence of modern Tibetan literature (concentrating on fiction) in the People's Republic of China in discourses of colonialism and ethnic identity.
In two related essays, Pema Bhum charts the contested use of free verse as a form for Tibetophone poetry and describes the flood of recent poems in a variety of media, including online formats. Françoise Robin examines the role of religion and agency in modern Tibetan literature, while Nancy G. Lin investigates the works of Döndrup Gyel, whose reputation as a literary rebel in the early 1980s is complicated by his close study and re-rendering of the Tibetan Ramayana.
The second part, “Negotiating Modernities,” explores Tibetan literature and “modernism” from the perspective of cultural studies. Lara Maconi discusses diglossia and Tibetan literature, covering authorship, editorial circles, and literary criticism in China, as well as debates over language use in the pre– and post–Cultural Revolution eras. Schiaffini-Vedani examines the influence of “magical realism,” a style of writing that emerged among Latin American writers in the 1940s, on the works of novelist Zhaxi Dawa as a counterdiscourse to realist literature. Howard Y. F. Choy discusses narrative voice in the works of Alai.
Other essays treat urban space in Tibetan literature (Riika J. Virtanen), diaspora writing (Hortsang Jigme), and the possibilities of new perspectives on postmodern colonialist theory vis-à-vis the emergence of modern Tibetan literature (Steven J. Venturino). In this section, Sangye Gyatso (Gangzhun) presents a useful micro-chronology of the development of Tibetan writing in China since 1980, breaking the history into six short periods that culminate by 1996 in the present state of “plurality” with the emergence of writer and poet coteries (many in Qinghai) with names such as the “Four Crazy Bothers,” “The Four-Owl Siblings of Rongwo,” and the very recent “Third Generation” group.
The volume also includes a glossary of Tibetan spellings, a glossary of Chinese terms, a bibliography of Tibetan works in translation (English and French), and a thorough bibliography of Chinese, Tibetan, and Western-language sources. These tools make the content accessible to a wide audience of specialists and nonspecialists. Given its breadth, depth, and relevance, this volume will become a key text in the introduction and study of modern Tibetan literature and the vigorous discourse in which it is contextualized.
