In the winter of 1982, Bhuchung Sonam left his home in Central Tibet. For five days, he trekked with his father across the Himalayas to the Nepali border. Only around 11 years old then, he knew little about what they were fleeing — China’s decades-long colonization of his homeland — and why. He also didn’t realize that he would never again see his homeland, his mother or his six siblings.
After arriving in Nepal, Sonam and his father made a pilgrimage to Buddhist sites in neighboring India, the home of the Dalai Lama and of many other Tibetans in exile. Without offering much explanation, the father then returned to Tibet, leaving Sonam under the care of a family friend.
Sonam never again saw his father, who died when he was in the 11th grade. He last spoke to his mother nine years ago. During the short call, she promised, “We will meet one more time.” But by then, Sonam knew that the political situation in Tibet made that nearly impossible.
Left in a foreign country without kin, he said, everything was new: bananas, dal, the notorious Indian monsoon. Writing and literature became a salve to help survive the loss of his homeland and his family. “The writing seals the pain,” he said. “It’s a process of negotiating this really harsh and endless barrage of obstacles and challenges that exile throws at you.”
He became a writer and editor, publishing nine books of poetry and anthologies. But arguably his more important 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 offshoot, 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 clamp down on Tibet and detain its writers and intellectuals, many Tibetans say Sonam’s publishing house has provided a sense of home for a stateless population coping with 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 began in 2003. After working for a publication in Delhi, Sonam moved back to Dharamsala, in India, and connected with Tenzin Tsundue, a writer and activist. Like Sonam, Tsundue was concerned by the limited avenues for Tibetan writers, and in particular, with the dearth 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 only one anthology. He wanted to do more to cultivate a Tibetan literary tradition.
For over a millennium, Tibetan literature centered on the Buddhist quest for enlightenment, which Dickie argues is diametrically opposed to fiction. In an introduction to a story anthology she edited, “Old Demons, New Deities,” Dickie writes, “The Buddhist ideal has always been the elimination of desire,” and “fiction, of course, begins with desire.”
While writers in Tibet worked around the constraints of censorship, Tibetan-run publications in India largely focused on Buddhism, history and politics. In the West, Sonam felt that Tibetan writers wrestled against narratives with a spiritual focus that flattened the experience of Tibetans. And he believed that a Tibetan editor could best help shape the voice and sensibility of Tibetan writers.
With the exception of a short-lived literary magazine founded by Tibetan students at Delhi University in the late 1970s, there were few avenues for Tibetan writers to express the lived experiences of ordinary people, and 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 the world look at Tibetans “as human beings, first and foremost.”
Sonam and Tsundue’s partnership thrived. Within a few years, they began publishing their own books under their imprint, Blackneck. The quieter and more soft-spoken of the two, Sonam handles the editorial duties. Tsundue — who wears a red bandanna that he has vowed to not take off until Tibet is free from Chinese rule — is more outspoken, and handles the marketing.
Among the books they’ve published are “Broken Portraits,” a feminist poetry collection by Kaysang, a third-generation Tibetan born in exile, and “Wangdu’s Diary,” which recounts the experiences of a government-in-exile official’s visit to Tibet in 1980.
Sonam and Tsundue both work from home, and neither is compensated for his work. Until only a few years ago, because of TibetWrites’ shoestring budget, writers took on the costs of printing their books; in return, they got a platform and promotion.
In addition to publishing original work by Tibetan authors who write in English, Sonam also translates writing 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 doesn’t seek copyright permission when publishing translated works by Tibetan writers. He does this to avoid putting the writers in jeopardy, 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 face detention.
Shelly Bhoil, a scholar and editor of “Resistant Hybridities: New Narratives of Exile Tibet,” praised Sonam’s press for helping to change perceptions of Tibet and Tibetan writers. “He made the world see that Tibetans are the authors of their own stories,” she said.
In making literature from Tibet widely available in English to Tibetans across the diaspora, many of whom can’t read Tibetan, Sonam has also “extended a brotherhood across Tibetans, across the borders, across the Himalayas,” Bhoil said.
Academics are paying attention to TibetWrites, too. Bhoil has noticed an increase in interest in Tibetan literature in a field historically dominated by research on Buddhism and history. Sonam often receives inquiries from scholars and others interested in Tibetan literature.
After Sonam included stories by Luguma Wangje, a young Tibetan writer based in New York, in a collection of short stories and poems he edited, “Under the Blue Skies,” she was contacted by a university press that wanted to print her work in an anthology.
They’ve never met in person, but Sonam has encouraged Wangje, urging 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 is yet to be determined. But Tsering Yangzom Lama, a Tibetan Canadian writer and a TibetWrites collaborator, said over email that the success of her novel, “We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies,” which was released by Bloomsbury Publishing last year, suggested that “readers are hungry for Tibetan stories.” Dickie is also hopeful that TibetWrites will soon launch the careers of writers: “If it hasn’t already, it will.”
Sonam and Tsundue are also attempting to correct the imbalance of translation between Tibetan and Western languages. The West has translated much from Tibet, mostly Buddhist texts, Sonam said: “Whatever we have, we’ve given.”
But few works have been translated into Tibetan. He’s trying to remedy that, and has already begun translating books like John Steinbeck’s “The Pearl” and Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations.”
In an unexpected turn, as TibetWrites and its audience has grown, Sonam has begun receiving submissions from non-Tibetan writers, including Indians and writers from the West. But he remains adamant that his publication is exclusively for Tibetans who have few paths to more mainstream publications.
And Tibetans inside Tibet are paying attention. Sonam said a friend there told him that writers are asking about authors in exile, including Sonam himself. Knowing that his work is being recognized in Tibet has affirmed 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 hold and build this idea of Tibet — whether you call it a home or an idea,” he said, “and art does that.”
