SKY TRAIN:
Tibetan Women on the Edge of History
Winner of the PEN American Center Open Book Award, Sky Train uncovers the unknown history of Tibet from the perspective of its women in a lyrical memoir that spans more than twenty years. Traveling on the newly opened, Beijing-to-Lhasa train in 2007 author Canyon Sam crossed the Himalayas to find women from her earlier oral history project and stayed with the Tibetan family with whom she’d lived in 1986. As she reveals the unexplored stories of women’s resistance, courage and spiritual resilience through fifty years of Chinese occupation, and gives a first hand account of the changes brought by the controversial new railroad — Sky Train — she comes to embrace her own capacity for faith and acceptance.
Bend Like a River:
A Chinese American Woman’s Tibetan Journey
Part spiritual coming of age story, part meditation on race and identity, and part trauma recovery account, written in her lyrical, funny, visceral style, Bend Like A River: A Chinese American Woman's Tibetan Journey is a memoir of one year in the mid 1980s when the 29-year-old author flees Reagan-led America to the P.R.C. to fulfill a life goal to live in China for a year.
Right before her departure, in a consultation with her psychic, every time she asks a question about her trip to China, the seer answers saying that she must go to Tibet.
The Day I Met the Dalai Lama
In this vivid, intimate account, Canyon Sam recalls her 1986 audience with His Holiness— a meeting that unfolded with humor, candor, and unexpected spiritual clarity.
On a birthday like no other, Canyon Sam reflects on celebrating beauty and practicing joy and compassion in the face of an increase in anti-Asian violence.