Writing in Exile

When Bhuchung D. Sonam left his homeland of Tibet in 1982, he didn’t realize that he would never be able to return. In exile, he turned to writing as a way of expressing his grief and frustration—and a way of preserving the idea of his homeland. Now, Sonam works as a writer, publisher, and translator, and his press, TibetWrites, has published more than fifty books that center modern Tibetan voices.

In a recent episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sat down with Sonam to discuss how writing has helped him navigate life in exile, why he views art as a form of resistance, and how literature can serve as a bridge across cultures.

You left Tibet in the winter of 1982 at the age of 11, and you say that writing became a salve to help you survive the loss of your homeland. So how did you first start writing, and how did literature help you navigate life in exile? I was taken out of Tibet when I was about 11. I went to the Tibetan Children’s Village school here in Dharamsala, where I learned English and where I was introduced to a number of Tibetan stories, like the story of Milarepa and the songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama. That’s how I started writing in Tibetan: by imitating the Sixth Dalai Lama’s songs. Later, when I went to university, I decided to write in English because I knew that if I went on writing in Tibetan, then my experience would remain limited only to Tibetan communities and the limited number of people who could read Tibetan.

I think what writing does for me is it seals the pain. I grew up as a refugee, so for the last forty years, I’ve been living in one rented room after another. That’s forty years of being dislocated from my parents and family. And on top of that, if you add the collective Tibetan suffering, then the pain becomes too much. Writing eases this frustration and loneliness and hope, and it also helps me to reroot myself and stay grounded. When I sit down and think about everything happening in Tibet, sometimes I get really depressed, desperate, and frustrated. We are such a small community, and we don’t really have the luxury of losing ourselves in depression. The other possibility is to try to use that frustration and anger and loss to create works of art that ease the pain. In the process, it helps me tell my story to a larger audience. That’s how I look at writing. First and foremost, if I write a poem, it feels so good. It takes so much of that built-in frustration and angst, and it makes me much lighter and more sane and more grounded, so to speak.

You’ve also said that writing is a form of resistance, an act to not be forgotten. How so? Well, for any group of people fighting for their freedom, narrative is really important. It is said that he who tells his story better has a better chance of survival. And so it is the case with Tibet. You know, we are such a small community, and we are facing a humongous country with huge resources, both military and economic. So if the challenge is that big, then the least we can do is ensure that we tell our stories. I think that narratives based on lived experience are really important because, ultimately, the audience is smart enough to distinguish between a narrative that is based on lived experience and propaganda that is churned out to fool people. In that sense, the act of writing is an act of resistance—and not just the act of writing but the act of creating a film, or the act of painting, or the act of creating a piece of theater.

You said in an interview with the New York Times, “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, and art does that.” So how does art help to hold and build the idea of Tibet? You know, religion can have very clear definitions: If you do this, then you are a Buddhist, or if you do this, then you are a Christian, or if you do this, or if you don’t do that, then you go either up or down. The beauty of art is that it’s infinite. Anybody at any point in time can define aspects of art in any way they want. And whether it’s contemporary Tibetan films or stories or paintings, art can give the new generation of Tibetans ideas about Tibet, through which they can engage in dialogue even without being in the same place.

We are fewer than 200,000 Tibetan refugees, and we are scattered across more than thirty different countries around the world. The possibility for us to be together is very, very limited. Except for the big religious festivals, not a large number of Tibetans gather together. But our aspiration for a future Tibet must go on. So if we are to create this community of people who have some invisible connection, I think art does that. This is because the music that is produced from Tibet can be heard anywhere. It’s the same with books as well. All the books that we write or produce here in India are read by young Tibetans around the world. This creates a kind of a community where we may not be together in one place but we are still connected. I don’t know any channel other than art that can play that role.

When you talk about art preserving this idea of Tibet, I’m wondering how you see the relationship between that idea of Tibet and the actual Tibet. Are they divergent? Are they in dialogue? How do you think about that? I think for people who were born in Tibet and who were then driven into exile, their idea of Tibet is very different from those who were born in exile, particularly the third and the fourth generation. For them, by and large, Tibet becomes a mental image constructed from stories they’ve heard, or books they’ve read, or maybe a picture they’ve seen on social media. For the younger generation of Tibetans, their idea of Tibet might be very far from the actual Tibet. For me, I was born in Tibet, and I know that the village that I was born in, the village that I knew at the time, is no more. But I still cling to that idea; it is precious to me because it’s the only place in Tibet where I lived and grew up.

This is where the act of telling stories plays an important role. For a young girl born in New York who may not speak Tibetan and may have no access to Tibetan culture and language, how can we give her things so that her idea of Tibet is rooted in something? A story, a song, a piece of art, anything? That link is really important not only for the sanity of that individual but also for the larger struggle to continue. I think it is really important for us to make sure that we continuously tell our stories so that the subsequent generation of Tibetans can still have that connection to Tibet. Whether it is an actual reflection of the Tibet that exists physically or not, how wonderful that each of us has our own Tibet to cling to.

Visit tricycle.org/podcast to listen to the full episode.