Tsering Yangzom Lama's We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies examines the cost of exile — read an excerpt now
The novel is a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize
We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama recounts a Tibetan family's struggle to create new lives of dignity, love and hope after China's invasion of Tibet in the 1950s. Readers follow sisters Lhamo and Tenkyi on a multi-decade journey through exile, from a harrowing trek across the Himalayas to a refugee camp on the border of Nepal. Decades later, the sisters are separated. Tenyki lives in Toronto with Lhamo's daughter Dolma, who has to decide if it's worth risking her dreams to help her community.
"Within the last 50 years, Tibetans have lost their homelands and experienced profound upheaval — personal and societal. We have gone from being nomads or farmers living on our ancestral lands, to refugees begging on the streets for food, to immigrants living all over the world," Lama told CBC Books in an interview.
"Tibetans in Tibet can no longer move freely throughout their country. They need Chinese permits to simply go from one region to another. The occupation of our homeland is also a form of spiritual violence, one that denies people freedom to worship in this ancient way. Meanwhile, those of us in exile cannot enter Tibet, except in rare circumstances. Instead, we travel across the face of the earth in search of safety and refuge. Whether inside or outside Tibet, we experience this colonization and displacement in our bodies. We carry it in our day-to-day existence.
"I wanted to understand what had happened to us, how we survived, and how colonization and exile have shaped us."
Lama is a Tibetan Canadian author based in Vancouver. Born and raised in Nepal, she's also lived in Toronto and New York City. Lama holds a BA in creative writing and international relations from the University of British Columbia and a MFA from Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Globe and Mail, The Malahat Review and Grain. We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies is her debut novel. Lama was named a writer to watch by CBC Books in 2022.
Read an excerpt from We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies below.
Pokhara, Nepal
Summer 1962
By sundown, they tell us, we will reach our sixth and final camp.
Five rented buses have driven our group as far as the roads and riverbank would allow, and now we are on foot, walking in a deep river gorge, our steps and sightlines hemmed in by an endless procession of hills. The trail is narrow, so we walk in a long, slow line, all 400 of us gathered from various border towns. Ahead, Ashang Migmar and Po Dhondup carry our possessions, their heavy sheepskin coats hanging from their waists, while I carry Tenkyi on my back. Like so many in our group, my little sister is unwell and too weak to walk. At least she's still with us. In Baglung, we heard that our aunt, Shumo Yangsel, and her husband had been there for several weeks before our arrival. They had begged for food on the side of the main road, telling anyone who passed by that their children were waiting in the mountains for help. Ashang thinks Shumo's sons must not have survived the journey out. He wants to find her, his little sister, and keeps asking the two foreign aid workers who rented the buses about her. But they don't know anything about Shumo's whereabouts. All they can tell us is that we're heading to the camp, our new home, they call it. A message passing slowly, in pieces, from their tongues to ours.
LISTEN | Tsering Yangzom Lama on reflecting the Tibetan diaspora through fiction:
But where are they leading us? I had thought in Mustang that we had reached the lowlands, but here, with this heavy air, we can hardly breathe. It frightens me to think that the earth could keep falling down and down like this. Meanwhile, the sun grows hotter in each place we go, as if to light us all on fire. Yet in the corner of my eyes, behind these dark hills, I can see a line of mountains, white and silver, even more luminous than the sun. As I take these steps, I think of home, where we don't have roads. Where we walk any place we wish, across the grassy plains, along the wide gentle hills.
Half a day has passed without food or water. We have become a silent line of bodies that traces the unceasing river to our right. My lower lip cracks and bleeds from thirst, and as I lick its rough surface, I peer down over the edge at a river that taunts me with its waters. If I go down for a drink, I doubt I could manage to climb back up this cliff.
All they can tell us is that we're heading to the camp, our new home, they call it. A message passing slowly, in pieces, from their tongues to ours.
Finally, at sunset, we hear foreign chatter. The aid workers ascend a small hilltop and pull out some papers. Then they drop their bags and move out of view. "This must be it!" someone shouts behind me.
Gripping onto bunches of grass, we clamber up the hill to see the land.
Even Tenkyi is on her feet now, walking to the top of the ridge. As we look out on a small clearing of hard earth and few trees, I clutch her hand. Ashang kneels and rubs the soil with his fingers. "Nothing will grow here," he says. "With this kind of earth, the milk will be thin. The butter will be pale." How, he wonders, can we raise animals, or have any measure of space in this narrow plot of rocks? How, he whispers, can he call himself a nomad? A nomad would never pitch his tent on such barren land.
But no one says a word to the foreigners. We hear that they have paid the Nepali government for this bit of earth. They have also made promises to local villagers to give them water pumps and more so that our group of four hundred or so refugees, as we're now called, can stay here. On this hilltop, we must make a new life.
Excerpted from WE MEASURE THE EARTH WITH OUR BODIES. Copyright © 2022 by Tsering Yangzom Lama. Excerpted by permission of McClelland & Stewart All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
