What do you think?
Rate this book
Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History
"In her remarkable book, writer and activist Sam examines the stories of varied Tibetan women---displaced aristocrats, impassioned freedom fighters, educators, and others—--united in their desperation to reclaim their country. Over a period of years, Sam recorded stories of life under Chinese occupation, visiting her subjects by China’s new “sky train.” A third-generation Chinese-American, Sam also chronicles her own experiences in Tibet throughout the narrative, skillfully mimicking readers’ slow discovery of the country in its many dimensions. Though complicated politically, Sam handles Tibet’s dilemma with knowledge and grace, addressing the larger history of Tibet to reveal a beautiful, subtle culture that’s as rich as it is foreign. At no time does Sam sugarcoat the effects of Chinese occupation on the people or the land, rendering human rights issues in terms of intensely personal experience. Visceral and deeply felt, this narrative deserves a read from anyone interested in human rights and the untold stories of oppressed women everywhere.” -- Publishers Weekly Starred Review
284 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
4 people are currently reading
263 people want to read
About the author
Canyon Sam
3 books5 followersCanyon Sam is a San Francisco writer, performance artist, and Tibet activist. Her one-woman show The Dissident was critically acclaimed in the Village Voice and the Boston Globe. Sky Train is her first book."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
July 27, 2021
An interesting book about the Chinese takeover of Tibet from the perspective of women. The author makes a point of stressing how women take the brunt of wars, and China has been waging a war against Tibet. The train from Lhasa to Beijing has facilitated the robbery of Tibetan natural resources and the explosive expansion of Chinese immigration. Tibetan culture, religion and language are being obliterated.
As an activist opposing the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the author writes of the devastating impact this has had on particularly Tibetan women. Since the 1959 invasion she has on several trips interviewed women. She focuses on primarily four. Through them we see the 1959 Chinese invasion, life under Chinese occupation, the resistance movement and finally life in exile.
The book is hard to follow when listened to as an audiobook. I would have found it easier had I been able to see the names. As a result, I had difficulty keeping track of who was who. I also found the book repetitive; the same events are brought up several times. I felt no strong connection with the women. The dates of the author’s travels should at the start have been clearly stated. The trips blend into each other. The teachings of the Dalai Lama, as they are summarized here in this book, are cursory and without depth.
I got a good picture of Lhasa and how it has altered over time. Dharamsala, at the foot of the Indian Himalayas and the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, is visited too.
The book has interesting information but too many weak points to give it more than three stars.
The audiobook is narrated by Donna Portal. She reads clearly but with zero passion and little engagement. Her narration I have given three stars.
***********************
*Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet by Xinran 5 stars
*Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town by Barbara Demick 4 stars
*Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History by Canyon Sam 3 stars
*Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer 3 tars
*Daughter Of Tibet by Rinchen Dolma Taring TBR
As an activist opposing the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the author writes of the devastating impact this has had on particularly Tibetan women. Since the 1959 invasion she has on several trips interviewed women. She focuses on primarily four. Through them we see the 1959 Chinese invasion, life under Chinese occupation, the resistance movement and finally life in exile.
The book is hard to follow when listened to as an audiobook. I would have found it easier had I been able to see the names. As a result, I had difficulty keeping track of who was who. I also found the book repetitive; the same events are brought up several times. I felt no strong connection with the women. The dates of the author’s travels should at the start have been clearly stated. The trips blend into each other. The teachings of the Dalai Lama, as they are summarized here in this book, are cursory and without depth.
I got a good picture of Lhasa and how it has altered over time. Dharamsala, at the foot of the Indian Himalayas and the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, is visited too.
The book has interesting information but too many weak points to give it more than three stars.
The audiobook is narrated by Donna Portal. She reads clearly but with zero passion and little engagement. Her narration I have given three stars.
***********************
*Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet by Xinran 5 stars
*Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town by Barbara Demick 4 stars
*Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History by Canyon Sam 3 stars
*Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer 3 tars
*Daughter Of Tibet by Rinchen Dolma Taring TBR
August 4, 2016
"Women are never afraid. No matter what the Chinese do. Women do what the Chinese don't want them to do, like chant and shout slogans. In prison, the guards could punish us, they could beat us, but we still shouted slogans. We never stayed quiet, we wanted to say more. We wanted to do it again. Our mouths got bigger! We became more determined." - Sonam Choedron
Tibet is the "roof of the world" that teeters dangerously close to falling off the global map, despite the protests of March 2008, despite the 50th anniversary of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama's escape into India, despite the "splittist" activities all throughout China that threaten to bring down the People's Republic.
And yet, the face of Tibet is the face of men. The US-trained guerilla warriors. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the many other, predominantly male, lamas that teach the Dharma to students the world over.
One Tibetan woman notes, however, that Lhasa was a city of women. The men fled. The men fought, and died. The prisons were predominantly filled with women, and the women, even nowadays, are the ones who continue to uphold important parts of the culture, such as wearing the traditional Tibetan dress, the chuba, on a daily basis.
Canyon Sam is a third-generation Chinese-American who started this book over a decade ago. In this "final" publication of it, she focuses on four Tibetan women from the original thirty-six she interviewed: Sonam Choedron, Choekyi Namseling, the late Rinchen Dolma Taring, and the late Mrs. Paljorkhyimsar. These four women can be arraigned on a spectrum of Tibet's history of the past fifty years: the invasion, the occupation, the resistance, and life in exile.
Alongside Canyon's frantic scrambling to re-interview these four women, she revisits Lhasa, and is shocked to see the once quiet city morphed into a city that could pass for any other gaudy Chinese city. The book's title comes from the train that runs from Beijing to Lhasa, and as one Tibetan woman jokes: "The Sky Train comes in like this--ding ding ding, and leaves like this--duuuuunnnngggg duuuuunnnngggg duuuuunnnggg," referencing the use of the train to strip Tibet of its natural resources. Additionally, the train helps promote tourism to Tibet and, far more damaging, facilitates the mass immigration of Chinese people into Tibet.
When I found out I had won this book through goodreads, I initially thought, "Ha! They must have looked at my shelves." I spent a year teaching English to Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala, and a substantial number of my books are categorized under "buddhism" and "tibet" and "feminism."
I was so convinced of this, I went to read the fine print regarding the giveaways. Lo and behold, goodreads uses an algorithm, the main base of which relies on randomness. Out of 438 people, only 2 of us were lucky to win a copy of this book, and I was one of them.
Talk about karma! (And did I mention that I want to go to grad school for Tibetan Studies, and am thinking of doing my thesis on something pertaining to Tibetan women?)
"Twenty years ago, when the public didn't know the first thing about Tibet, we used to pray and dream that somehow Tibet would become a household word. If people knew the truth, we believed, they would come forth and intervene. Tibet would be saved. Now Tibet was indeed a household word, but China had imposed its will, transformed it. Beyond our worst nightmares."
My biggest problem with the book was that it felt rushed. There were too many threads, and it felt that Canyon Sam, to use a cliche, "bit off much more than she could chew."
And then I started planning this review and thought, ha! My review is totally going to mirror her book.
If the book feels rushed, it is because it IS a rushed topic. Two of the four interviewees are dead now. (Om mani padme hum.) The older generation of Tibetans--the ones who knew life prior to the Chinese invasion, the ones who bravely protested against the Chinese military forces, the ones who initially fled--are dying.
My students were mostly between the ages of 18 and 25. Some of them, despite "knowing" three or four languages, are not fluent in any of them. A lot of them primarily fled to India to get an education, because Tibetan is not taught in Chinese schools, even if their parents could afford to send them to Chinese schools. When my students speak, their Tibetan is riddled with English; their English is riddled with Tibetan. They joke around in Hindi, and some of them write in Chinese, but none of them have yet mastered a language to fluency.
And female students were largely absent from my classes. There were five in one class, and only two in the final-year class of the college. And only one of those female students was a nun.
I was the only female teacher at the college. I, a white Western woman, only had a few women for company, other than my students: the college nurse, some of the kitchen staff, the woman who worked all day in the canteen, and the woman whose job it was to keep the office clean and pour us tea twice a day.
When I asked some of the male teachers why they thought this was (being the Western feminist I am), I was told, rather smartly, "Well, if they applied, we would probably hire them! Don't you think we'd actually LIKE more women? Eh? *nudge nudge*" In addition to the admitted "comfort level" with having a white Western woman volunteer-teaching English at the college, and several disparaging comments I've overheard about the woman who served us tea everyday, I do think that Tibetan women are solely undervalued and underappreciated in their society.
In addition to the book feeling rushed, there are these important threads that just sort of dangle in the book. They're important, and they might become your favorite part of the book, but it's hard to ground them in anything in relation to the storyline. More planning could have been done, or at least more delineation from "here in the present" to "author's memory of the first time she interviewed this woman." It would have made the book more easy to swallow, stylistically--which is not to say that Canyon is a bad writer. Quite the opposite. I had to break myself away from the book at several points because I couldn't read through my tears, and all she had mentioned was how one woman snuck her a potato while she was fixing dinner!
I've tried to talk to other Western women involved in the Tibet cause, and I always end up walking away feeling a little... weird. Either they're really actively involved in the Buddhism aspect, or the political aspect, or I just feel like I should shut up about all my little experiences that draw me towards the cause-- that sharing our experiences and ideas is not a part of the connection between us, either as women, as Western women, or Western women who care deeply about Tibet. As a writer, the moments of absolute humanity I've experienced are what I wish to portray about the Tibetan people, because I'm tired of them either being dragged through the mud or put up on a pedestal. I'm tired of the West being gimme-gimme when it comes to Tibet's Dharma teachers, and will never forget what a friend's friend, a nun, told me. She found out that I was teaching English and wanted to learn Tibetan (I only know a little), and reached over, grabbed my arm, and said something to me in Tibetan I couldn't understand. My friend knew very little English and struggled with the translation, but together, he and she were finally able to tell me, "You must learn Tibetan. You must translate books... INTO Tibetan. Science books. General knowledge books. Please." For too many years, the West has been demanding that things be translated from Tibetan into English, without thinking that we should be helping them the way they are helping us. We demand the Buddhist philosophy, the spirituality of these people, and in return, we should give them the science we've been privileged enough to dabble in for many centuries.
Canyon Sam is a writer. It's listed first in the back of the book. I am, first and foremost, a writer, too. Thus, I could connect with her more than someone who does not value the precision of words, the subtle gestures of human beings, the strange adventures that befall us on our journey for truth--and the need to take note of all of these things. I love my activist friends, Tibetan and non-Tibetan, but I will always feel separate from them because of my writerly heart.
And here was Canyon-la, with her similar experiences, echoing sentiments I have had all along but have been afraid to admit--ashamed of, in some sense. The experiences range from ama-las ("mothers") insisting that I eat an omelete for breakfast, in addition to the bread and tea, because of the stereotype that Americans always eat eggs for breakfast, to being asked if I wanted tea and my saying, "Absolutely!", instead of engaging in the polite "no, really, thank you, but no... no, really, I'm all right" social etiquette dance, and then feeling deeply embarrased about my silly inji ("Western") enthusiasm. I, too, miss McLeod Ganj, "not the nerve-jangling, crowded, noisy town, but the place it represented." There has been a void in my life since returning from India. (A void I am trying to stuff with literature about Tibet.)
I faced this review with a heavier heart than other reviews, and it has been one of the most difficult to write. I feel additional pressure because so many people have added this book to their "to-read" list, unlike some of the other books I have reviewed, such as We Tibetans, an account of Kham, Tibet, pre-Chinese invasion, by a Tibetan woman who married a British man. That book might remain stuffed away into a corner, but this new book, thanks to the goodreads giveaway, has the real possibility of being read and changing lives.
I don't know what to say. I'm not afraid of coming on too strong, but I don't know what strings to pull to get your attention. To get you to research Tibet, to educate yourself, to read this book. I'm not satisfied with any approach, because I feel that the Tibet issue is so important that we must utilize ALL approaches. The torture victims must have space in order to tell their harrowing tales, show their bullet scars. We must show you pictures of the children, who only recently traversed the Himalayan mountain range in the dead of winter in order to get a good education; we must show you their gangrened fingers and toes. The monks and nuns must have their say, as they are the backbone of Tibetan Buddhism and it is they who tend to lead the revolts within Tibet itself. The picture of Tibet would be empty without His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, the glue that holds the Tibetan people together as a community, all around the world.
The interesting thing about the Tibet issue is that you can approach it from any angle. Political--in terms of communism, democracy. Environmental--in terms of the minerals being stripped from the Tibetan plateau, the polluted rivers that run through Tibet. Human rights--the torture and abuse the Tibetan people face if they dare to speak up against the communist government. Education--how Tibetans are struggling to retain their language and adapt to a more modern model of education in exile. Religion--the destruction of Tibetan Buddhism by the Chinese, and the flourishing of it with sponsorship from the West. Feminism--well, if feminism is your thing, there's no reason for you to *not* buy this book. I can go on and on...
I think, somewhere in my silly head, that if I can just run down this list with you, at some point something will click. "Hey, I care about global warming." "Hey, I care about the fact that China is producing tainted product after tainted product." And you'll research, and educate yourself, and hopefully join us in speaking up alongside the Tibetan people.
Tibet is the "roof of the world" that teeters dangerously close to falling off the global map, despite the protests of March 2008, despite the 50th anniversary of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama's escape into India, despite the "splittist" activities all throughout China that threaten to bring down the People's Republic.
And yet, the face of Tibet is the face of men. The US-trained guerilla warriors. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the many other, predominantly male, lamas that teach the Dharma to students the world over.
One Tibetan woman notes, however, that Lhasa was a city of women. The men fled. The men fought, and died. The prisons were predominantly filled with women, and the women, even nowadays, are the ones who continue to uphold important parts of the culture, such as wearing the traditional Tibetan dress, the chuba, on a daily basis.
Canyon Sam is a third-generation Chinese-American who started this book over a decade ago. In this "final" publication of it, she focuses on four Tibetan women from the original thirty-six she interviewed: Sonam Choedron, Choekyi Namseling, the late Rinchen Dolma Taring, and the late Mrs. Paljorkhyimsar. These four women can be arraigned on a spectrum of Tibet's history of the past fifty years: the invasion, the occupation, the resistance, and life in exile.
Alongside Canyon's frantic scrambling to re-interview these four women, she revisits Lhasa, and is shocked to see the once quiet city morphed into a city that could pass for any other gaudy Chinese city. The book's title comes from the train that runs from Beijing to Lhasa, and as one Tibetan woman jokes: "The Sky Train comes in like this--ding ding ding, and leaves like this--duuuuunnnngggg duuuuunnnngggg duuuuunnnggg," referencing the use of the train to strip Tibet of its natural resources. Additionally, the train helps promote tourism to Tibet and, far more damaging, facilitates the mass immigration of Chinese people into Tibet.
When I found out I had won this book through goodreads, I initially thought, "Ha! They must have looked at my shelves." I spent a year teaching English to Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala, and a substantial number of my books are categorized under "buddhism" and "tibet" and "feminism."
I was so convinced of this, I went to read the fine print regarding the giveaways. Lo and behold, goodreads uses an algorithm, the main base of which relies on randomness. Out of 438 people, only 2 of us were lucky to win a copy of this book, and I was one of them.
Talk about karma! (And did I mention that I want to go to grad school for Tibetan Studies, and am thinking of doing my thesis on something pertaining to Tibetan women?)
"Twenty years ago, when the public didn't know the first thing about Tibet, we used to pray and dream that somehow Tibet would become a household word. If people knew the truth, we believed, they would come forth and intervene. Tibet would be saved. Now Tibet was indeed a household word, but China had imposed its will, transformed it. Beyond our worst nightmares."
My biggest problem with the book was that it felt rushed. There were too many threads, and it felt that Canyon Sam, to use a cliche, "bit off much more than she could chew."
And then I started planning this review and thought, ha! My review is totally going to mirror her book.
If the book feels rushed, it is because it IS a rushed topic. Two of the four interviewees are dead now. (Om mani padme hum.) The older generation of Tibetans--the ones who knew life prior to the Chinese invasion, the ones who bravely protested against the Chinese military forces, the ones who initially fled--are dying.
My students were mostly between the ages of 18 and 25. Some of them, despite "knowing" three or four languages, are not fluent in any of them. A lot of them primarily fled to India to get an education, because Tibetan is not taught in Chinese schools, even if their parents could afford to send them to Chinese schools. When my students speak, their Tibetan is riddled with English; their English is riddled with Tibetan. They joke around in Hindi, and some of them write in Chinese, but none of them have yet mastered a language to fluency.
And female students were largely absent from my classes. There were five in one class, and only two in the final-year class of the college. And only one of those female students was a nun.
I was the only female teacher at the college. I, a white Western woman, only had a few women for company, other than my students: the college nurse, some of the kitchen staff, the woman who worked all day in the canteen, and the woman whose job it was to keep the office clean and pour us tea twice a day.
When I asked some of the male teachers why they thought this was (being the Western feminist I am), I was told, rather smartly, "Well, if they applied, we would probably hire them! Don't you think we'd actually LIKE more women? Eh? *nudge nudge*" In addition to the admitted "comfort level" with having a white Western woman volunteer-teaching English at the college, and several disparaging comments I've overheard about the woman who served us tea everyday, I do think that Tibetan women are solely undervalued and underappreciated in their society.
In addition to the book feeling rushed, there are these important threads that just sort of dangle in the book. They're important, and they might become your favorite part of the book, but it's hard to ground them in anything in relation to the storyline. More planning could have been done, or at least more delineation from "here in the present" to "author's memory of the first time she interviewed this woman." It would have made the book more easy to swallow, stylistically--which is not to say that Canyon is a bad writer. Quite the opposite. I had to break myself away from the book at several points because I couldn't read through my tears, and all she had mentioned was how one woman snuck her a potato while she was fixing dinner!
I've tried to talk to other Western women involved in the Tibet cause, and I always end up walking away feeling a little... weird. Either they're really actively involved in the Buddhism aspect, or the political aspect, or I just feel like I should shut up about all my little experiences that draw me towards the cause-- that sharing our experiences and ideas is not a part of the connection between us, either as women, as Western women, or Western women who care deeply about Tibet. As a writer, the moments of absolute humanity I've experienced are what I wish to portray about the Tibetan people, because I'm tired of them either being dragged through the mud or put up on a pedestal. I'm tired of the West being gimme-gimme when it comes to Tibet's Dharma teachers, and will never forget what a friend's friend, a nun, told me. She found out that I was teaching English and wanted to learn Tibetan (I only know a little), and reached over, grabbed my arm, and said something to me in Tibetan I couldn't understand. My friend knew very little English and struggled with the translation, but together, he and she were finally able to tell me, "You must learn Tibetan. You must translate books... INTO Tibetan. Science books. General knowledge books. Please." For too many years, the West has been demanding that things be translated from Tibetan into English, without thinking that we should be helping them the way they are helping us. We demand the Buddhist philosophy, the spirituality of these people, and in return, we should give them the science we've been privileged enough to dabble in for many centuries.
Canyon Sam is a writer. It's listed first in the back of the book. I am, first and foremost, a writer, too. Thus, I could connect with her more than someone who does not value the precision of words, the subtle gestures of human beings, the strange adventures that befall us on our journey for truth--and the need to take note of all of these things. I love my activist friends, Tibetan and non-Tibetan, but I will always feel separate from them because of my writerly heart.
And here was Canyon-la, with her similar experiences, echoing sentiments I have had all along but have been afraid to admit--ashamed of, in some sense. The experiences range from ama-las ("mothers") insisting that I eat an omelete for breakfast, in addition to the bread and tea, because of the stereotype that Americans always eat eggs for breakfast, to being asked if I wanted tea and my saying, "Absolutely!", instead of engaging in the polite "no, really, thank you, but no... no, really, I'm all right" social etiquette dance, and then feeling deeply embarrased about my silly inji ("Western") enthusiasm. I, too, miss McLeod Ganj, "not the nerve-jangling, crowded, noisy town, but the place it represented." There has been a void in my life since returning from India. (A void I am trying to stuff with literature about Tibet.)
I faced this review with a heavier heart than other reviews, and it has been one of the most difficult to write. I feel additional pressure because so many people have added this book to their "to-read" list, unlike some of the other books I have reviewed, such as We Tibetans, an account of Kham, Tibet, pre-Chinese invasion, by a Tibetan woman who married a British man. That book might remain stuffed away into a corner, but this new book, thanks to the goodreads giveaway, has the real possibility of being read and changing lives.
I don't know what to say. I'm not afraid of coming on too strong, but I don't know what strings to pull to get your attention. To get you to research Tibet, to educate yourself, to read this book. I'm not satisfied with any approach, because I feel that the Tibet issue is so important that we must utilize ALL approaches. The torture victims must have space in order to tell their harrowing tales, show their bullet scars. We must show you pictures of the children, who only recently traversed the Himalayan mountain range in the dead of winter in order to get a good education; we must show you their gangrened fingers and toes. The monks and nuns must have their say, as they are the backbone of Tibetan Buddhism and it is they who tend to lead the revolts within Tibet itself. The picture of Tibet would be empty without His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, the glue that holds the Tibetan people together as a community, all around the world.
The interesting thing about the Tibet issue is that you can approach it from any angle. Political--in terms of communism, democracy. Environmental--in terms of the minerals being stripped from the Tibetan plateau, the polluted rivers that run through Tibet. Human rights--the torture and abuse the Tibetan people face if they dare to speak up against the communist government. Education--how Tibetans are struggling to retain their language and adapt to a more modern model of education in exile. Religion--the destruction of Tibetan Buddhism by the Chinese, and the flourishing of it with sponsorship from the West. Feminism--well, if feminism is your thing, there's no reason for you to *not* buy this book. I can go on and on...
I think, somewhere in my silly head, that if I can just run down this list with you, at some point something will click. "Hey, I care about global warming." "Hey, I care about the fact that China is producing tainted product after tainted product." And you'll research, and educate yourself, and hopefully join us in speaking up alongside the Tibetan people.
January 21, 2010
I came across a recommendation for this book and I admit being somewhat jaded about it at the onset. The author's experiences led her to conduct a sort of oral history project over many years with the intention of riting a book to document the experiences of Tibetan women especially during the time of the Communist invasion.
I had some notion that this might turn out to be one of those rather syrupy women's studies sorts of books, with a bit of religious tourism as a veneer and a nod to social consciousness.
As I said, a bit jaded.
Fortunately I overcame my misgivings and sat down and read through it. The style was easy to read and did not editorialize overmuch. The author did acknowledge and become a full participant in the book, including her own experiences in collecting the stories, which enhanced the narrative considerably and was a refreshing change from the strict anthropological approach which disingenuously disavows the observer's participation in the facts collected.
The experiences of the women themselves were both wrenching and inspirational. It was not an easy book to read in that respect.
The author's status as a Chinese descendant added particular context to her observations.
This is one of the more personally changing books I have read in the last few years.
I had some notion that this might turn out to be one of those rather syrupy women's studies sorts of books, with a bit of religious tourism as a veneer and a nod to social consciousness.
As I said, a bit jaded.
Fortunately I overcame my misgivings and sat down and read through it. The style was easy to read and did not editorialize overmuch. The author did acknowledge and become a full participant in the book, including her own experiences in collecting the stories, which enhanced the narrative considerably and was a refreshing change from the strict anthropological approach which disingenuously disavows the observer's participation in the facts collected.
The experiences of the women themselves were both wrenching and inspirational. It was not an easy book to read in that respect.
The author's status as a Chinese descendant added particular context to her observations.
This is one of the more personally changing books I have read in the last few years.
April 18, 2010
It is unfortunate that this author largely discarded a collection of Tibetan oral histories in favor of a twitchy and repetitive narrative centered on herself.
May 29, 2024
Important to read. Well written. I recommend
January 7, 2018
i found the narrative to be disjointed and self-serving. the author included far too much of herself in this. i would have preferred more oral histories from the tibetan women and less author-driven narration. additionally, the gap between the two visits to tibet kept getting in the way of the tale; it became easy to get confused as to which visit the author was explaining. not the best book about tibet out there for the reading.
September 16, 2013
This book spent a little too much time discussing the author's travels and not enough time actually talking about the women she interviewed.
November 15, 2025
Words can barely begin to describe how meaningful this book is. As someone with family from/in Taiwan, I am no stranger to China's brutality throughout Asia. I have worked with increasingly more and more Tibetan students at my job, and decided to pick up this book after seeing it at a local secondhand book shop. I'm so glad I was able to read it and I have learned so much about Tibetan culture and resiliency.
The lived experiences and stories shared by the women throughout this book were nothing short of awe-inspiring. I was filled with grief, rage, terror, joy, optimism, and more as I read on through each page. I will undoubtedly return to this text time and time again in the future.
Notable Quotes:
"When I was in prison, I thought, if they kill me, it's all right. I'm not concerned about my life. Freedom is important for the children, the grandchildren. Mine is just a single life. You do what you have to and accept what comes... you will win freedom for future generations -- that's more important than just one life."
"Living well is the best revenge. Tibetans were still taking pleasure in life, still celebrating their traditions."
The lived experiences and stories shared by the women throughout this book were nothing short of awe-inspiring. I was filled with grief, rage, terror, joy, optimism, and more as I read on through each page. I will undoubtedly return to this text time and time again in the future.
Notable Quotes:
"When I was in prison, I thought, if they kill me, it's all right. I'm not concerned about my life. Freedom is important for the children, the grandchildren. Mine is just a single life. You do what you have to and accept what comes... you will win freedom for future generations -- that's more important than just one life."
"Living well is the best revenge. Tibetans were still taking pleasure in life, still celebrating their traditions."
October 25, 2016
This is my first book on Tibet. Reading about the history and the atrocities in Tibet breaks your heart.
The book details the life of Tibetan women (mostly wives of aristocrats). The overlay of a twenty year time difference in stories of 4 women is quite intriguing at the surface, but the execution is not great and could have been better. The author vividly describes the changes that have taken place in the last 20 years, most of them are negative (as it is expected) but fails to put them in context to how the whole world has changed in the same time. At times, it feels like she would prefer to be stuck in past and dismiss the present because it doesn't suit her. She writes just a page (at the end) about Buddhist way of accepting the changes and move on, but it is not convincing.
It is an ok-ish read. I'm intrigued to read Daughter of Tibet after this.
The book details the life of Tibetan women (mostly wives of aristocrats). The overlay of a twenty year time difference in stories of 4 women is quite intriguing at the surface, but the execution is not great and could have been better. The author vividly describes the changes that have taken place in the last 20 years, most of them are negative (as it is expected) but fails to put them in context to how the whole world has changed in the same time. At times, it feels like she would prefer to be stuck in past and dismiss the present because it doesn't suit her. She writes just a page (at the end) about Buddhist way of accepting the changes and move on, but it is not convincing.
It is an ok-ish read. I'm intrigued to read Daughter of Tibet after this.
February 3, 2026
My family was gifted this book because one of the Tibetan women interviewed was my Mola (grandmother). I read it after she passed and found it to be an engaging read. However, when I spoke with my father about it, he mentioned that some of the details were exaggerated, twisted, or skewed.
Since I can no longer ask my Mola for clarification, I’m not sure exactly which parts were misrepresented, but I still enjoyed the book overall. My advice is to take what you read with a grain of salt—as you should with any book based on interviews. Remember that you aren't necessarily hearing the stories directly from the source, and the nuances can often change during translation.
Since I can no longer ask my Mola for clarification, I’m not sure exactly which parts were misrepresented, but I still enjoyed the book overall. My advice is to take what you read with a grain of salt—as you should with any book based on interviews. Remember that you aren't necessarily hearing the stories directly from the source, and the nuances can often change during translation.
February 3, 2017
It took me a little while to get into this, but once I did I really enjoyed it. It's very well written. I liked how she integrated & interspersed her travel experiences with the stories of the Tibetan women. I have been a student & practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism since my time in Nepal & India 7 years ago & I learned a lot about the culture & history. I especially appreciated the focus on women. Thanks Canyon Sam!
June 8, 2017
Such an interesting book. I had no idea about the history of Tibet - love how Canyon Sam wrote about the women in Tibet, something that is often forgotten about when writing about history and current situations.
July 1, 2019
This is an outstanding and very important book. I bought the book because it was written by a friend of mine, but once I started reading it, I had trouble putting it down. I learned so much about the struggles in Tibet, and was fascinated by Canyon Sam's journey. Highly recommended.
January 18, 2017
The heart-wrenching personal stories of the women who survived the Chinese take-over of Tibet are powerfully told in this book, which is part oral history, part memoir, and part journalism. The brutality the women were forced to endure (the monks and many of the men had fled, leaving the women and children behind) was far worse than I could have imagined, and their resilience far stronger. I understand now that Tibet has been robbed not only of its independence but its culture, and essentially is no longer Tibet. The author states that she tried writing this book in several genres and finally settled on the mixture presented here, but it would have been more effective if she had minimized her own personal journey, which detracted from the stories of the Tibetan women.
June 16, 2016
Canyon Sam has done some very fine writing in this book. Over the space of two decades, Sam visits Tibet, Nepal and India, meeting Tibetan women who survived the 1959 invasion by Tibet by China--and the subsequent decades of imprisonment, torture, disappearances and genocide and diaspora. All throughout her book, these stories of Sam's travels as a Chinese-American in the Himalayas never become sentimental. Each chapter is incisive, as if it's been written to save a life--to deliver something, some picture, some anecdote, some glimpse of the truth of these women's stories that will offer hope, not only to the women who have faced the brunt of China's policies in Tibet--but to a world where ending such tragic occupations seems not only a collective failure, but a collective impossibility.
Sam puts together the stories of four women, all of whom lived in Tibet before 1959, and have lived there since. She follows them through decades--from Lhasa as a still sleepy town to its current place as a China's largest whorehouse, while Tibet itself has become China's toilet. Never does rage, despair or apathy dominate the stories of these women--in fact, their resilience, their stubborn refusal to leave behind their belief that compassion is indeed the highest virtue we possess helps this book find the wings with which it soars. Canyon Sam has done an incredibly just job in writing down these adventures. She has offered a lucid picture not only of Tibet over the last decades--but the reality of war, as experienced by women--a story we are too often denied.
Sam puts together the stories of four women, all of whom lived in Tibet before 1959, and have lived there since. She follows them through decades--from Lhasa as a still sleepy town to its current place as a China's largest whorehouse, while Tibet itself has become China's toilet. Never does rage, despair or apathy dominate the stories of these women--in fact, their resilience, their stubborn refusal to leave behind their belief that compassion is indeed the highest virtue we possess helps this book find the wings with which it soars. Canyon Sam has done an incredibly just job in writing down these adventures. She has offered a lucid picture not only of Tibet over the last decades--but the reality of war, as experienced by women--a story we are too often denied.
Read
December 31, 2012Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History, by Camyon Sam, Narrated by Donna Postel, Produced by University Press Audio Books, Downloaded from audible.com.
Publisher’s note: Through a lyrical narrative of her journey to Tibet in 2007, activist Canyon Sam contemplates modern history from the perspective of Tibetan women. Traveling
on China's new "Sky Train", she celebrates Tibetan New Year with the Lhasa family, whom she'd befriended decades earlier, and concludes an oral-history
project with women elders. As she uncovers stories of Tibetan women's courage, resourcefulness, and spiritual strength in the face of loss and hardship
since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, and observes the changes wrought by the controversial new rail line in the futuristic "Lhasa", Sam comes
to embrace her own capacity for letting go, for faith, and for acceptance. Her glimpse of Tibet's past through the lens of the women - a visionary educator,
a freedom fighter, a gulag survivor, and a child bride - affords her a unique perspective on the state of Tibetan culture today - in Tibet, in exile, and
in the widening Tibetan diaspora. Gracefully connecting the women's poignant histories to larger cultural, political, and spiritual themes, the author
comes full circle, finding wisdom and wholeness even as she acknowledges Tibet's irreversible changes.
Publisher’s note: Through a lyrical narrative of her journey to Tibet in 2007, activist Canyon Sam contemplates modern history from the perspective of Tibetan women. Traveling
on China's new "Sky Train", she celebrates Tibetan New Year with the Lhasa family, whom she'd befriended decades earlier, and concludes an oral-history
project with women elders. As she uncovers stories of Tibetan women's courage, resourcefulness, and spiritual strength in the face of loss and hardship
since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, and observes the changes wrought by the controversial new rail line in the futuristic "Lhasa", Sam comes
to embrace her own capacity for letting go, for faith, and for acceptance. Her glimpse of Tibet's past through the lens of the women - a visionary educator,
a freedom fighter, a gulag survivor, and a child bride - affords her a unique perspective on the state of Tibetan culture today - in Tibet, in exile, and
in the widening Tibetan diaspora. Gracefully connecting the women's poignant histories to larger cultural, political, and spiritual themes, the author
comes full circle, finding wisdom and wholeness even as she acknowledges Tibet's irreversible changes.
November 8, 2016
Canyon Sam asks a question early on this beautiful and moving book about Tibet and its people, particularly its women: “What was it that gave them the resilience, the forbearance, not just to survive and endure, but to emerge with clean hearts?”
Having just finished Looking for Trouble, by Virginia Cowles, I found myself remarking on the similarity between Canyon and Virginia - both independent, intellectually curious, and brave women who set out to write as honest an account as they could of what they observed. Canyon Sam writes with clarity and care and even-handedness, while carrying the weight of a deep and sometimes sorrowful love and appreciation for the inexorable loss of Tibetan culture.
What makes this book unique is the focus on women; she starts this project in the 1990’s collecting oral histories of Tibetan women, both in Tibet and in exile. In the course of her research, she discovers the disproportionate burden that women in Tibet bore under Beijing’s policies.
If you have an interest in Tibet, in Tibetan culture, in women’s rights, or in a beautifully written account about one woman’s struggle to tell an important story, this is a book to read.
Having just finished Looking for Trouble, by Virginia Cowles, I found myself remarking on the similarity between Canyon and Virginia - both independent, intellectually curious, and brave women who set out to write as honest an account as they could of what they observed. Canyon Sam writes with clarity and care and even-handedness, while carrying the weight of a deep and sometimes sorrowful love and appreciation for the inexorable loss of Tibetan culture.
What makes this book unique is the focus on women; she starts this project in the 1990’s collecting oral histories of Tibetan women, both in Tibet and in exile. In the course of her research, she discovers the disproportionate burden that women in Tibet bore under Beijing’s policies.
If you have an interest in Tibet, in Tibetan culture, in women’s rights, or in a beautifully written account about one woman’s struggle to tell an important story, this is a book to read.
Read
May 5, 2010This book taught me that no matter how much I am aligned with a writers' political viewpoint, I don't like being told over and over again how correct I am. There were passages describing Tibet that were beautiful--but when Sam began to describe how horrible the Chinese are as a nation, i found myself skimming and getting irritated. This is, in essence, a travel book. At her best, Sam shows me a world that is enticing and erratic, indescribable and fascinating. When she concentrates on her interactions with people, on her movements, on the stories of those she meets, this book mirrors that enticing, erratic, indescribable and fascinating world. When she has a point to make--mainly political-- she reveals her passion but also mars the book itself.
July 25, 2010
A moving book about the lives of four Tibetan women under Chinese oppression. We learn about the vanishing culture of Tibet, following the women's lives as their world changes.
The Sky Train of the title refers to the railroad built by the Chinese to bring Han immigrants into Tibet and drain resources out of Tibet. The author took the train to Lhasa to revisit the women she had interviewed years earlier, and learns thru their stories, that despite all the terrible oppression, for the survival of the human spirit, the most important thing is to "Clean your heart. Keep the vision. 'Tibet' is a state of mind."
The Sky Train of the title refers to the railroad built by the Chinese to bring Han immigrants into Tibet and drain resources out of Tibet. The author took the train to Lhasa to revisit the women she had interviewed years earlier, and learns thru their stories, that despite all the terrible oppression, for the survival of the human spirit, the most important thing is to "Clean your heart. Keep the vision. 'Tibet' is a state of mind."
July 15, 2014
I learned a lot about Tibet. As usual, women are left to save the culture. Summary: Monks and men flee the country, women and children are imprisoned and tortured. Why? It is against their religion to travel with women. So, take the monks to safety, leave the women to fend for themselves. I liked the parts containing the Dali Lamas teaching " refuse to injure others, keep your heart clean, keep the vision, be free." I just think there should be something in there about protecting those in your care, not abandoning them.
December 9, 2009
I'm biased, because Canyon Sam (author) is my cousin. But this is an extremely well-written book that will grab your interest and make you care about Tibet. My book club read it and had a great discussion with the author.
October 18, 2014
Good book that brings to light the suffering of Tibet during the take over by China. The author updates her original story by revisiting on the Sky Train. The three women who are the framework of the story were amazing and the story was well told.
April 19, 2010
I am always moved by books like this.
November 5, 2011
An amazing story. So sad, yet so much hope.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews