Mar Jang-nyug (pseudonym) is a Tibetan writer born and brought up in Marong village of Ngaba in the Tibetan province of Amdo. TCHRD presents another translated and edited essay from the author’s forthcoming book, Ancestors’ Tomb. This essay was written on 25 March 2012, a few months after the death of the author’s mother.
Ancestors’ Tomb is replete with accounts of unaddressed grievances and unfulfilled aspirations, at once personal and yet political, as is demonstrated by the tortured body of the author’s mother and her legacy to her son of a wounded heart, both bearing witness to brutalities bygone and present.
The invoking of memories about Ngaba during the nascent stages of Chinese rule is telling in that it gives a historical context – resonant with the underlying Buddhist theme of cause and effect – to the spate of self-immolation protests in Tibet in recent years.
