We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

March 14, 2022
Lama debuts with the heartfelt and magical saga of a Tibetan family’s love, sacrifice, and heritage. Starting in 1960, Lama interweaves the lives of four characters: Lhamo and her younger sister Tenkyi, whose parents are killed during their flight from Tibet to Nepal, where they resettle in a village for refugees; Lhamo’s daughter Dolma; and Samphel, Lhamo’s childhood love, whom she meets in Nepal. Lama also explores the influence of a ku—an ancient statue that Samphel’s uncle brings into Lhamo’s village—on each of their lives. Lhamo, despite heartache, encourages her younger sister to leave their village to study in India and improve her future prospects. Decades later, in another act of selflessness, Lhamo suggests her daughter join Tenkyi, now in Toronto, to complete her studies and have a better life. When Dolma discovers the ku of Lhamo’s childhood in the possession of a private collector in Canada, she sets in motion a series of events that illustrate the power of the ancient relic and its hold on Lhamo’s family. Lama imbues this mesmerizing tale—informed by her own family fleeing Tibet for Nepal in the early 1960s— with a rich sense of history, mysticism, and ritual. This brings great revelations and significance to a family’s courage and acts of cultural preservation.

March 15, 2022
The aftereffects of the oppression of Tibetans across two continents and six decades powers this domestic epic. Lama's debut novel opens in 1960, a decade after China's invasion of Tibet and shortly after a quelled uprising and exile of the Dalai Lama. Lhamo and Tenkyi, two sisters, are forced to leave for a refugee camp in Nepal and orphaned not long after. From there, the girls' paths diverge: Lhamo remains in Nepal as the camp becomes a tent city, has a daughter, and attempts to maintain the spiritual traditions stamped out by the Chinese. Bookish Tenkyi, meanwhile, leaves for Canada and, by 2012, takes in Lhamo's daughter, Dolma, an aspiring scholar of Tibetan culture. The non-Tibetan academics Dolma meets are knowledgeable but also condescending, and Westerners' callousness toward her heritage is symbolized by a statue of a "Nameless Saint" that Dolma believes is a stolen family heirloom. Dolma's investigations bring her deeper into her family history, the ethically messy artifacts trade, and Tibetan spirituality, culminating in a trek to the edge of the country she's exiled from. Lama's delivery can be somewhat stiff--romantic interludes feel flat, and Dolma's dialogue is sometimes sodden with explication of Tibetan political history and spiritual practice. But the novel thrives as a story about sisterhood, parenthood, and the heart-piercing feeling of exile. Dolma can't bring herself to admire Toronto's "Little Tibet" neighborhood, which she sees as a "copy of a copy of home. Another temporary stop in an endless journey." (The frustrations are exemplified by Tenkyi's dashed hopes of becoming a teacher; she works as a hotel housekeeper.) And Lama wisely gives the novel multiple narrators--Lhamo, Tenkyi, Dolma, and Samphel, a childhood friend of the sisters--who capture the breadth of Tibetan culture and the range of emotional impacts of separation. A smart, sweeping story about the abuse and transformation of a culture stripped of its country.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 15, 2022
Years after the 1959 Chinese invasion of Tibet displaces orphaned sisters Lhamo and Tenkyi, who end up in a Nepali refugee camp, their memories of the land that was once theirs are like fever dreams. "When the past holds such power over you, even threatening the present, you must not speak of it," says a character in Tsering Yangzom Lama's achingly beautiful debut. But the past might be the only thing worth preserving. So it comes to pass that an ancient earthen statue of a god-like figure embodies the very spirit of Tibet in the refugee camp. Years later, the relic, called the Nameless Saint, resurfaces in Canada, where Tenkyi is living with her sister's daughter, Dolma. The figure's reappearance unsettles Dolma, who revisits Nepal to unearth her personal history. Exile is a heavy cloak that no character can cast aside. Contrasted with vivid descriptions of the Himalayas, Tenkyi says of her neighborhood in Toronto, "some triumphantly call this place 'Little Tibet.' But to me, this place is the camp built anew. A copy of a copy of home. Another temporary stop in an endless journey." It is the characters' capacity for romance, jealousy, and even pettiness that adds nuance and color to this tale of historic and personal loss, tempering their trials with a measure of joy.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.