An autonomous Tibet? As envisioned here, that would surely be the Dalai Lama’s greatest legacy.
A subtly reasoned argument for a free Tibet after 75 years of Chinese occupation.
“The responsibility for the nation and people of Tibet was placed upon me the moment I was recognized as the Dalai Lama at the age of two.” When he became Tibet’s leader at 16, the year Chinese soldiers swarmed into the formerly independent nation, he entered into numerous discussions with Mao Zedong (“truly unlike anyone I had met”), Zhou Enlai (“clever and smooth-talking”), and other Communist leaders, one of whom warned him that he should flee because Tibet would meet the same fate as Hungary, freshly crushed by the Soviets. When it became apparent that Mao intended to absorb Tibet as a strategic buffer and as part of the symbolic restoration of “territories that had once been part of the Manchu Qing empire,” the Dalai Lama went into exile and, as he notes, has never since been able to return to his native land. “Mao probably realized that with me gone out of Tibet,” he writes, “China would struggle with the question of legitimacy both of their authority and their presence in Tibet. He was right.” Today, he adds, the regime of Xi Jinping is bent on assimilating Tibet, suppressing religious practices, and removing children to Mandarin-speaking boarding schools. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama still finds hope for Tibet in the roiling undercurrents of Chinese society—the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, for example, which, he holds, by no means “marks the end of the Chinese people’s quest for greater freedom, dignity, and democracy.” A surprising discovery is that the Dalai Lama has long been willing to leave Tibet within the People’s Republic of China, but with control over its own internal affairs and a democratic government.
An autonomous Tibet? As envisioned here, that would surely be the Dalai Lama’s greatest legacy.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780063391390
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
