In 2008 I started working on a nonfiction book about Tibetan refugees I met in India, where I was a reporter for the Financial Times. In March 2008, when protests in Tibet turned violent, I was sent to cover a press conference that the Dalai Lama was giving in Dharamsala, the northern Indian town where he lives in exile. The Tibetan spiritual leader spoke about the turmoil in Tibet and pleaded for calm.
During that first visit to Dharamsala, I was amazed by the Tibetans I met and the Himalayan hill town that had become their home. Some were forced to flee their homeland because of persecution. Others were born in India but had a strong sense of Tibetan identity while straddling the two cultures of their ancestral and adopted homes. The question of how identity forms completely intrigued me.
It took 14 years to get the book published. But when it was finally released in late 2023, issues about immigration and refugees were more timely and urgent than ever.
The book won the Chicago Writers Association’s Book of the Year prize for traditional nonfiction. I will touch on that relevance at an awards ceremony in Chicago on Jan. 18.
Although Tibet and India are far from Chicago, themes of migration and living between worlds are universal. The challenges of adapting to new homes while retaining and reframing identity and culture are common to many Americans, even those who don’t know the experiences of past generations.
In recent years, the plight of migrants has been one of Chicago’s most pressing issues.
More than 51,000 asylum seekers and migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have arrived in Chicago since 2022. Some are now at risk of being deported, as President-elect Donald Trump has threatened.
The world is grappling with historic levels of migration. An estimated 122.6 million people worldwide were forced to flee their homes, said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. That includes 43.7 million refugees.
War and instability have recently displaced millions in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Congo, Myanmar and more countries. Since 2015, more than 7.7 million people have left Venezuela, according to the UN High Commissioner. About 6.5 million arrived mostly in South American countries such as Colombia, but thousands arrived in U.S. cities struggling to offer support.
Bringing Tibetan culture to new lands
How do people adjust — or not — as they forge new lives? It is difficult to get deeper insight into that, and refugees too often they are reduced to faceless statistics. In my book, I sought to humanize the experience of Tibetans. How did they decide to leave families they would never see again? How did they clandestinely walk for 27 days over icy mountains? How did they adjust to life in exile? What happened when their journeys unexpectedly continued beyond India? Three Tibetans I met in India got asylum in Australia and Belgium. One emigrated to the U.S., which made for a surprising final chapter. Similar questions can be asked of Chicago’s new arrivals.
I wrote about how tens of thousands of Tibetans fled to India after 1959 when China took over their homeland. When they arrived, these refugees were destitute and traumatized. Scores died and suffered from disease, malnutrition and injuries from arduous journeys.
From that calamitous start, Tibetan settlements were established across India over decades. And the diaspora has spread around the world. Life in exile is by no means perfect; problems and challenges persist. Yet it is remarkable how Tibetans have transplanted their culture to new lands, even while their home is under threat by China’s authoritarian government.
At the Tibetan Alliance of Chicago’s community center in Evanston, children learn Tibetan language, music and dance in a way that is not allowed in their homeland. Tibetans commune and celebrate festivals there.
I got lost on my first trip to the community center, which is tucked behind an Afghan restaurant. But I realized I was in the right place when I spotted Tibetan men playing cricket — adopted from India — in a nearby park. Even in a Chicago suburb, Tibetan culture is alive in all its hybrid forms.
Someone once remarked that my book must be “depressing” since it’s about refugees. I was taken aback. While there is sadness and tragedy in the stories of many Tibetans, I was truly impressed by their resilience and spirit. I hope the book captures that.
Their stories are not depressing, but rather, inspiring and hopeful, in spite of hardship. That’s why I didn’t give up trying to publish the book. I strongly believed their stories should be shared with the world.
The Tibetan refugees I wrote about are ordinary people who don’t get the spotlight, yet they are extraordinary with remarkable stories. That is surely also the case for many refugees whose new lives in Chicago — and other adopted homes — are still in their first chapters.
Amy Yee is a business and economy reporter for the Sun-Times. She is author of “Far From the Rooftop of the World: Travels among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents,” with a foreword by the Dalai Lama.
The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines.
Get Opinions content delivered to your inbox.