Tag Archives: carole mcgranahan

An Unhappy Mother’s Day: Tibetan Self-immolation protests and Splaining over Corpses

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sonam tso.jpg

(Tibetan self-immolater Sonam Tso)

Today is Mother’s Day. The day before yesterday, on Friday, the 6th of May, news broke about yet another Tibetan self-immolation protest that took place inside Tibet. This was delayed news, however. The self-immolation took place some two months ago, but Tibetan exile media organizations had only now been able to even verify that it had happened. The woman who self-immolated was a mother of five. I had got up from being asleep and saw the news on Facebook. I shared this link, after quickly making a rough translation of the initial written information in the article: Continue reading →

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“If You Don’t Wear Them, We Will”: Preservation, Appropriation, and the Importance of Role-models in Tibetan Cultural Life

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tibetan chupa

I came across this Tibetan meme on Facebook a few months ago. In true meme style, pithy as it is, it manages to encapsulate and gesture towards a great deal. The image shows an assortment of beaming non-Tibetan foreigners wearing traditional Tibetan dress. The top speech bubble says:

“We will learn spoken and written Tibetan and then we will teach it to you” Continue reading →

A Lazy Lucifer: Bear Sacrifices in Boulder

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bear falling.jpg

Was just reminded of that time when a drugged bear fell out of a tree at our university, and I spent 45 minutes procrastinating grading by writing a poem about the incident and this iconic photo of it, after my adviser Carole McGranahan dared me to. Carole and I had both been marvelling at how mesmerizing this photo taken by a student at the scene was (the photo has since become internet-famous), and Carole said that someone ought to write a poem about it, and then proceeded to nominate me. Continue reading →