Before 1959, and after
In 1994, I went to Tibet for the first time, not with my mother as I had dreamed of, but alone after she was killed in a car accident on the first day of that year. For years, she had talked about taking me to meet her family and to see her birthplace but we decided to wait until I graduated from college. So, after I completed the Tibetan Buddhist death rituals for forty-nine days, I took my exams and went to Tibet to meet the people who had known and loved my mother before I was born.
I had adjusted myself to living in multiple languages and privileged the English language because it was the language of security and power.
People often
