Review by Booklist Review
Hilton, a journalist and China expert, and Tsering, the Dalai Lama's mother, each present invaluable insights into the history and religious traditions of Tibet. Westerners know little about the Panchen Lama, the Dalai Lama's counterpart, a gap Hilton adroitly fills with her groundbreaking account of the roles the two highest lamas played in Tibet in the past and of how the Panchen Lama came to be a pawn of the Chinese. Hilton tells the complete and complex stories of the ninth and tenth Panchen Lamas for the first time and then chronicles the political struggle that ensued over finding the tenth Panchen Lama's successor after his death in 1989. The recognition of incarnated lamas is a sacred act, but the Chinese undermined the process and selected a boy they could supervise. Their interference forced the Dalai Lama and his advisors into a strategy of subterfuge in an effort to keep the boy they identified as the authentic eleventh Panchen Lama safe, a plan Hilton herself participated in but to no avail. While every aspect of Tibet's story is tragic, the plight of the young Panchen Lama is particularly wrenching: he has either been imprisoned or killed. Hilton's exacting and compassionate exposewill safeguard what is known of the truth. Tsering gave birth to 16 children, of which 7 survived and 3 are incarnate lamas, including the Dalai Lama. Revered by Tibetans everywhere, Tsering recorded her life story for her granddaughter, and her compelling posthumous memoir embodies nothing less than the soul of Tibetan Buddhism. In a voice full of quiet wonder, she remembers the "plentiful paradise" of her rural Tibetan childhood, the harshness of the early years of her marriage, and her abrupt elevation to the very top of Tibet's elaborate theocracy, followed all too soon by the terror of war and the sorrows of exile. Tsering recounts an astonishing amount of detail in her vivid and moving descriptions of everyday life, illuminating the simple if laborious world of Tibetan peasantry, now lost forever, as well as the demanding rituals and responsibilities associated with the Dalai Lama's life first in Lhasa and then in Dharamsala. This story of faith and perseverance preserves Tibet's past and gives heart to those struggling to secure its future. --Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This spare, fascinating autobiography by the Dalai Lama's mama addresses issues as diverse as faith, political intrigue and the harsh demands of rural life. Born at the turn of the century to a hardworking peasant family in a frontier region of Tibet, Diki Tsering (her married name) entered an arranged marriage at 16 and found herself entirely under the thumb of a brutal, sometimes violent mother-in-law. She bore 16 children, but only seven survived their toddlerhoods (four of these deaths were blamed on a malevolent family ghost). One of her sons, of course, was recognized at age four as the incarnation of the Dalai Lama, the highest religious and political leader in Tibet. Diki Tsering followed him to urban Lhasa, where she traded her dawn-to-dusk working life for the leisured, and sometimes bewildering, social role as Tibet's "Mother of Compassion." She accompanied the youthful lama on his travels to India and on a year-long expedition to China, where officials attempted to coax the Tibetan entourage into capitulating to Chinese leadership. When the party arrived home, however, they discovered that the Chinese had already infiltrated Tibet, taking over Diki Tsering's homeland and other areas. The family managed to escape to India in 1959, sneaking out at night dressed as soldiers. The story is enthralling, although the writing (edited from taped interviews with Diki Tsering before her death in 1980) is choppy and the narrative sometimes confusing. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
From birth to exile from Tibet--and more. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A new addition to the cottage industry of books by and about the Dalai Lama. Tsering was born in 1901 to a peasant family. Fans of the Dalai Lama will enjoy her memoir because of the vignettes of her son's childhood and because of Tsering's heart-rending account of the Chinese invasion of Tibet. But even more arresting are the descriptions of the everyday workings of a Tibetan peasant home: Tsering writes especially evocatively of cooking. 'Kitchens were the pride of every housewife,' she tells us, describing the variety of breads, noodles, steamed dumplings, and barley dishes she learned to cook as a young girl. She also describes Tibetan dress in great detail, noting the importance of jewelry for adult women and the 70 small braids women wore in their hair. Tsering married at 16, and the first years of her marriage contained little other than hard work'she often slept only four hours a night, and she was scolded by her mother-in-law if she did not complete her chores quickly enough. She had 16 children, of whom only seven survived past infancy (and one of whom became the 14th Dalai Lama). He 'was different from my other children right from the start,' Tsering tells us. Tsering's descriptions of quotidian goings-on are occasionally embellished with nuggets of spiritual insight'like the importance of suffering in the Buddhist tradition'but the reader primarily interested in his own spiritual growth will want to skip this book and go straight to those written by Tsering's son. At times, it must be said, Tsering's tale seems a little saccharine'didn't Mom ever lose her temper at His Holiness? This slender volume has much to recommend it, but at the end the reader is left wanting more'the book is perhaps too thin, both in page count and substance. (Author tour)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
