Ama Adhe, the Voice That Remembers: The Heroic Story of a Woman's Fight to Free Tibet - Hardcover

Tapontsang, Adhe; Blakeslee, Joy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0861711300 ISBN 13: 9780861711307

Publisher: Wisdom Pubns, 1997

Synopsis

The author recounts her twenty-seven-year imprisonment in Chinese labor camps, a punishment for her participation in the resistance to China's occupation of Tibet during the fifties, an intimate story of faith amid persecution, torture, starvation, and degradation. Original. Tour. IP.

About this title

About the Author

Ama Adhe Tapontsang is a native of the Kham region of eastern Tibet, where she spent a happy childhood, and is an activist dedicated to securing the much-needed freedom of her country. Imprisoned for twenty-seven years for her resistance activities following the invasion of her country by the Chinese Communists in the 1950s, she faced inhuman torture and deprivation. Following her release, she left in 1987 for India, where she now lives in Dharamsala. The Voice That Remembers is the story of her life.

Joy Blakeslee, M.A. Ed, J.D., is a writer and teacher who specializes in human rights, history, and literacy. Blakeslee has worked in civil rights law, as a teacher for the New York Department of Education, and as an independent researcher. She has visited India many times, and is profoundly impressed by the strength, determination, and spirituality of the Tibetan people. She is currently co-writing a book with Dr. Gloria Frelix about post-Civil Rights era Mississippi, and corporate, environmental racism. Blakeslee lives in Florida.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I have traveled a long distance from the land of my youth, from the dreams and innocence of childhood, and have come to see a world that many of my fellow Tibetans could never have dreamed of.

There was no choice but for me to make this journey. Somehow, I have survived, a witness to the voices of my dying compatriots, my family and friends. Those I once knew are gone, and I have given them my solemn promise that somehow their lives will not be wiped out, forgotten, and confused within a web of history that has been rewritten by those who find it useful to destroy the memory of many I have known and loved. Fulfilling this promise is the only purpose remaining in my life.

As a witness, I have prepared long and carefully. I do not understand the reason that this has come to be my part to play; but I understand very well the purpose of what must be said. Although the world is a bigger place than I had dreamed, it is not so large that all its inhabitants are not somehow connected. Sooner or later, actions make their way in a chain of effects from one person to another, from one country to another, until a circle is completed. I speak not only of the past that lives in me, but of the waves that spring from the rock thrown into the water, moving farther and farther until they reach the shore.

I am free now. There are no guards outside my door. There is enough to eat. Yet an exile can never forget the severed roots of beginnings, the precious fragments of the past carried always within the heart. My greatest desire is to return to the land of my birth. That will not be possible until Tibet is once again the land of her own people. At this time, I am considered an outlaw by the Chinese administration because I have chosen not to lower my head and try to forget the years of slavery that so many of my people have endured.

But I can remember back beyond the years of sorrow...looking outside the window of my present home in Dharamsala, I can see a mountain illumined by the evening moon. Though it is beautiful, it reminds me of another, greater mountain below which my early life unfolded.

I grew up in freedom and happiness. Now those memories seem to belong to another time, to a place far away. As I pass through the hours of each day, my heart remains with the memories of my family and friends whose bones have become part of a land now tread by strangers.

In 1987 the time came for me to leave my native land. In order to do this, it was necessary to convince the authorities that I would soon return and would speak to no one of my life's experiences: of the destruction of so many lives through torture, starvation, and the degradation of slave-labor; of so many monasteries, the ancient treasures of which were desecrated and stolen for the value of the gold they contained; of the countless thousands of monks, nuns, and lamas who died in the labor camps; of my own family, most of whom perished as a direct result of the occupation of our land.

As I prepared for my journey they told me, "It is not good to die in a foreign land. One's bones should rest in the land of one's birth." My heart agrees, and it saddens me to live with my people in a community of refugees. Yet, the heart of a culture lives in its people. Its preservation resides in their willingness and freedom to carry on its traditions. It is only in exile that I am free to speak of my life's joys and sorrows. Until my land is free, it is in exile that I must remain.

Within my heart lies the memory of a land known as Kham, one of Tibet's eastern regions. In voicing my experiences, I hope that the culture of my homeland as well as the horrendous suffering and destruction imposed on its people will not continue to be easily dismissed as a casualty of what has often been termed progress.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wisdom Pubns
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0861711300
• ISBN 13: 9780861711307
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 257