She lost both her husband and her youngest child on that journey, but the future held an extraordinary turn of events that would forever change her life-the arrival in the refugee camps of a cultured young Swiss man long fascinated with Tibet. When soldiers arrived at her mountain monastery, destroying everything in their path, Kunsang and her family fled across the Himalayas only to spend years in Indian refugee camps. There was a saying in Tibet: 'When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth.' The Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 changed everything. She married a monk, had two children, and lived in peace and prayer. Though simple, Kunsang's life gave her all she needed: a oneness with nature and a sense of the spiritual in all things.

One of the country's youngest Buddhist nuns, she grew up in a remote mountain village where, as a teenager, she entered the local nunnery. Kunsang thought she would never leave Tibet. Media Issues, Communication & JournalismĪ powerful, emotional memoir and an extraordinary portrait of three generations of Tibetan women whose lives are forever changed when Chairman Mao's Red Army crushes Tibetan independence, sending a young mother and her six-year-old daughter on a treacherous journey across the snowy Himalayas toward freedom.Computer Science & Information Technology.Subtle humor lightens Brauen's urgent tone for example, descriptions of Kunsang's and Sonam's first encounters with cutlery, and Brauen's 'Pippi Longstocking childhood.' Chapters in which, many years later, the family travels back to Tibet demonstrate how memory can soften harsh realities and disappointment, while Brauen's compassion inspires hope that Tibetans might one day achieve the justice they seek. Brauen recounts Kunsang's early years in Tibet and harrowing 1959 journey across the mountains to India with her husband and daughter, Sonam (Brauen's mother), to escape persecution from the Chinese Sonam's awakening social conscience, marriage to a Swiss curator/activist living in the West, and career as an artist in New York and Brauen's own conflicts as a Swiss-born political activist, actor, and model. Her narrative begins nearly a century ago, when her now 91-year-old grandmother Kunsang became a Buddhist nun in a country where ritual and superstition fostered peace and stability within a rigid social hierarchy. Blending family memories with Tibet's troubled history with the People's Republic of China, Brauen reflects on three generations of women honoring their heritage despite physical, spiritual, and cultural exile.

Across Many Mountains by Yangzom Brauen