Ocean, as Much as Rain presents for the first time in the English-language world a collection of masterfully translated literary writings by prominent Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser. In these stories, lyrical essays, and poetry, Woeser interweaves texts, photographs, silences, and documentary details. Featuring a distinctively imaginative use of satire and digressive rhetoric, Woeser’s stories bring to life Tibetan characters whose lives are entwined with politics, history, and religion. Woeser illuminates the ruins and places that she has come across during her various sojourns in Chinese-ruled Tibet, reviving sites from the past of her parents and their generation. These writings range from ingenious retellings of cultural encounters and confrontation to insightful commentaries on ecological issues and tourism in Tibet that never shun contradictions, dilemmas, or questions about the future. With an introduction by Fiona Sze-Lorrain and an author interview by editors-translators Sze-Lorrain and Dechen Pemba, Ocean, as Much as Rain is a landmark publication that celebrates the work of a steadfast dissident and a leading Tibetan literary figure of our times.
Foreword / Pankaj Mishra vii
Introduction. Ocean Can Be Rain: Woeser’s Poetry, Fiction, and Lyrical Prose / Fiona Sze-Lorrain 1
Translation Credits
1. A Sheet of Paper Can Also Become a Knife
2. My Tongue Surgery
3. Spring
4. Rinchen the Sky-Burial Master
5. Tibet
6. Garpon La’s Offerings
7. On the Fifteenth Midnight of the Fourth Month in the Tibetan Calendar
8. Two Excerpts from The Prayer Beads of Fate
9. The King of Dzi
10. “Do Not Forget the Past . . .”
11. Celebrity Street Toilets in Lhasa
12. Ocean, as Much as Rain
13. Remembering a Smashed Buddha
14. The Ruins of Lhasa: Yabzhi Taktser
15. Let Me Write, the Fear of Lhasa Breaks My Heart
16. Only This Useless Poem—for Lobsang Tsepak
17. Back of Lhasa, Day One, from Seven Days in Lhasa
18. The Killing Trip
19. A Few Years Later
20. Masks and Tea
21. An Eye for History and Reality: Woeser and Her Story of Tibet / Dechen Pemba and Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Acknowledgments
Glossary of Place Names
About the Editors, Translators, and Contributor
Index
Tsering Woeser is a Tibetan writer, poet, activist, and the author of numerous books of poetry and prose.
Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a writer, poet, translator, and the author of, most recently, Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Stories.
Dechen Pemba is the editor of High Peaks Pure Earth.
