Sky Burial by Xinran

Annotation:

The heart-rending tale of lost love, and the grand adventure to reclaim it. Wen’s journey demonstrates that true love can make the longest journey endurable.

Justification for Nomination:

Wen, a newly wed in 1950’s China, begins to worry when her husband, Kejun, does not return from his unit’s trip to subdue Tibet. She is a doctor, like her husband, and so joins the army and volunteers for duty in Tibet to reclaim him. Upon entering Tibet, her unit comes under attack nightly from locals. Despite this, Wen befriends a Tibetan woman named Zhuoma. Wen finds that her and Zhuoma have much in common, as Zhuoma’s true love has disappeared as well. To sue for peace with the Tibetans, Wen and others from her unit (and Zhuoma) decide to stay in Tibet. From here she continues to search for her husband.

And search she does. She and Zhuoma are taken in by a nomadic Tibetan family, and cared for. Soon Wen has adopted Tibetan dress, and begins to learn their culture. She finds that there are many differences between her culture, and Tibetan cultural and spiritual beliefs. After Zhuoma is kidnapped her hope of finding Kejun is destroyed, as she doesn’t speak Tibetan. Wen writes letters to Kejun in her book, hoping one day to be reunited with him. Years pass, she learns Tibetan, and begins her journey anew. She finds Zhuoma’s love, now a Buddhist monk, and later Zhuoma. After further traveling, she finds information about what happened to Kejun, and learns his ultimate fate. She returns to China more than 30 years after she left, presumably tells the author enough of her story to write this book, is overwhelmed by the societal changes, then disappears, presumably to Tibet.

I almost didn’t nominate this book. The book is quite interesting, and on the surface seems to be nothing but a cultural study of nomadic life in Tibet. Although it’s marketed as a love story, first glance identifies it as detailed culture book. This is all interesting even on its own, but it didn’t seem to necessarily fit as a YA work, except as a “trying on” situation. The book’s pacing is also very steady. It’s not too fast, or too slow, it just is. Almost as if it is an avatar of Buddhism. That was until I gave the book some thought for several days.

What changed my mind is that Wen, though an adult, and eventually far older, is incredibly idealistic, on a quest, and she is out of place in her environment. Her love for Kejun is so strong, and so pure. Though they were only married for weeks before his disappearance, what besides a naïve worldview would cause someone to defy all odds to search for someone literally (from a non-Tibetan’s viewpoint) in the middle of nowhere? If this isn’t a teenage style romance, and extreme idealism, I don’t know what is. Wen is also on a quest in lands unknown. Young adults identify with quests, because in a way being a teenager is the quest to adulthood. Her quest for Kejun is decades long, much like the path to maturity.

This story is also a quest for identity, in that Wen is out of place in Tibet, but after living there long enough, loses her Chinese identity. She questions who she is as a Chinese in Tibet, and later as Chinese (by way of decades in Tibet) in China. She can’t quite fit in anywhere. Wen cultivates a relationship with her host family and Zhuoma, and she goes from being an outsider to practically one of the family. Although the ending, and what happens to Wen is ambiguous, one could assume that the one thing she does find is her identity. It may not be the identity she wanted, and it is definitely not what she set out to find, but she found something on he quest. The author says that she disappeared after their interview, I would like to think that after all her time in Tibet, she found that her identity was now as a Tibetan, and she went back there to live. In this way, I think that Wen’s journey for love, her hope and enthusiasm for finding Kejun, and her ultimate realization of her identity make this a great book for young adults to read.

Suggestions for Improvement:

This book’s pacing needs to be kicked up a notch, as do the feelings of romance. I also think that the feelings in the story could have been presented better. A love story should really touch the heart, and irk some deep feelings out. Sky Burial didn’t do that a lot. I also found it hard to believe that not speaking Tibetan would hinder this brave woman’s search for Kejun for several years or decades. I would have liked to see her make her journey far sooner in life, rather than waste most of her whole life wandering the plains of Tibet. It seems to me that she kind of forgot about looking for her husband while she did chores around the campsite.


Genre: Romance/Love story, Multicultural, Epic Journey