Vancouver readings by author activist Canyon Sam
Author Canyon Sam from San Francisco will be reading from her groundbreaking new book about Tibetan women. Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History (University of Washington Press, 2009) melds memoir with the life stories of four Tibetan women in a gripping narrative as the author, a Chinese American, travels on China's new Beijing to Lhasa railroad, or "Sky Train," to search for women from her oral history project after fifteen years time. As the author revisits the Tibetan family she lived with in the 1980s and reveals unknown stories of women's resistance and spiritual resilience in the last fifty years of occupation, she comes to embrace her own capacity for faith and acceptance of Tibet's irreversible changes. “A miracle of a book,” Maxine Hong Kingston.
Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of Tibetan exile. Q&A and booksigning will follow the reading.
Canyon Sam is best known as for her nationally-acclaimed solo theater shows which explore contemporary issues through the lens of Buddhist practice. (“A master storyteller," Village Voice). Ms. Sam has published in Shambhala Sun, Seattle Review, and numerous feminist and Buddhist anthologies: most recently, Homelands: Womens' Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time (Seal, 2007). In the 1980s, she spent a year in Tibet, India, and China and subsequently worked as an activist for Tibet for many years, including speaking before U.S. Congress. SKY TRAIN is the result of an oral history project of Tibetan women begun in 1990. www.canyonsam.com.
Thursday October 15th 7:30 PM (Admission Free, Limited Seating)
Alma VanDusen Room
Lower Level
Central Library
350 West Georgia
Sponsored by: Vancouver Public Library
Co Sponsored by: Canada Tibet Committee www.tibet.ca/vancouver
Friday October 16th 5:30 PM (Admission Free)
Institute of Asian Research
C.K. Choi Building Room 120
Contemporary Tibetan Studies Program
1855 West Mall
UBC
