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Rating: 
Summary: Words and Pictures
Review: The book has an excellent selection of quite shocking photographs. The graphic design and production values are exceptional. The text articles are largely very informative. Elliot Sperling presents a thoughtful analysis of the dynamic nature of Tibetan culture and identity, dispelling the rather silly historical myths of feudal hell vs. high altitude nirvana. Mickey Spiegel's reporting of the stories of individual recent Tibetan exiles brings home the concrete, human reality of how awful things are for those Tibetans unwilling to kowtow to China's colonialist and racist policies. Orville Schell's final article is a bizarre piece of writing in this context. I can only conclude that it was included for some form of "balance". His direct comments on Tibetans are that their cuisine is "inedible" to Westerners, they engage in only "the most modest kinds of personal hygiene", and they have shown themselves "capable of considerable savagery against one another". Schell's big thing is the romanticization of Tibet by others. He admits he once was so eneamoured, and his shame and anger about this seem to dominate his analyis. Its a real pity that this self-loathing makes him blind to the issues of justice and legitimacy that the Tibetan problem presents. These issues are the fundamental attraction for many if not a majority of Tibet's foreign supporters.
Rating:
Summary: Read this now! Read it twice!
Review: This book is an excellent introduction to Tibet, especially Elliot Sperling's candid and daring introduction, "Exile and Dissent". The pictures compel you to read; the reading rewards.It is especially refreshing to see a moderate human rights organization like Human Rights Watch endorse Sperling's accurate and unrestrained discussion of Tibetan nationhood. Sperling never goes so far as to explicitly endorse statehood for Tibet--that would certainly compromise Human Rights Watch's ability to advocate for human rights from a non-partisan position--but he comes close: "A strong case can be made that prior to 1951, Tibet was at best part one part of the empires built by the Mongol and later Manchu emperors who conquered China, but never an "integral" part of China itself" (32). The best moment in the book, in my mind, is Sperling's paragraph on 'cultural preservation': "Tibetan culture, like any other, is dynamic. Calling for its "preservation" automatically brings forth the need for it to be defined, which which in turn evokes a stuffed-and-mounted item fit for a museum. Tibetan culture does not need to be frozen in time, but Tibetan cultural life needs to be protected from measures that repress literary and artistic expression...The contours of dissent in Tibet and its repression by China are not shaped by calls for cultural preservation or cultural autonomy, but by calls for Tibetan independence" (36). Tibetan dissidents, Western supporters, Western journalists, US diplomats, members of the Tibetan government: read this paragraph twice! Cultural preservation is not freedom; it is the opposite of freedom. This is why Beijing contributes money to cultural preservation efforts in Tibet: the more the culture is 'preserved', the more it is frozen, and the less threatening it becomes. Not only is the threat removed; with the threat disappears the culture's ability to sustain and give solace to its people. Culture, once preserved, becomes emasculated, of little use to anyone. I think few more important passages have been written on Tibet than this one. Shocking and beautiful photographs, and powerful testimony, follow; by the end, any intelligent reader will be compelled to action. Hopefully, the reader will at least be well-armed against the unfortunate note on which the book ends. Orville Schell's pusilannimous and meandering essay, the last in the book, is the worst kind of contrast to Sperling's clarity and gutsiness. Schell's essay ranges from offensive to simply odd. What, for example, could motivate anyone to write "Of course, China's President Jiang Zemin, like many of his countrymen, tends not to romanticize Tibet as Westerners do..." (175)? Worse is Schell's inability to distinguish Hollywood's brief fascination with Tibet from the global social justice movement which has arisen to protest China's brutal occupation. His drastically misguided assertion that "Tibet's new Western persona [was] consigned to Hollywood's custody" denies both the authenticity and strength of the freedom movement and the possiblity that celebrities are capable of sincere feeling and political work. Hollywood made two movies about Tibet. The movies mythologized it. Of course they did; that's what Hollywood does. But it is insulting to deny the work and influence of the Tibet movement by conflating it with a Hollywood trend. And then there is Schell's weird analysis of the severity of the occupation: "To foreigners looking on from afar, the Chinese occupation and the dismantling of traditional culture and society seemed similar ...................."(175-6). "To foreigners"? "Seemed"? "Represented"? This is either the height of timidity (Beijing, after all, is more than capable of revoking the visas on which Schell, a Sinologist, depends for his livelihood) or simple ignorance. Given the other essays and the testimony in this book, it is difficult to believe that Schell can really be unaware of the severity of the occupation--indeed, he mentions it at various points. Why then such timidity? Eventually, one grows tired of wondering--and returns to Sperling, and the freedom struggle.
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