Prix Great Lakes College Association pour « Quand notre Terre touchait le ciel »

Tsering Yangzom Lama remporte le prix GLCA (Great Lakes College Association) en catégorie fiction pour son roman Quand notre Terre touchait le ciel. Ce prix récompense chaque année un premier roman canadien et a notamment distingué les débuts de Louise Erdrich, Alice Munro et plus récemment Emily Fridlund (Gallmeister).

Voici l’éloquent mot du jury sur ce texte :

Lama’s beautifully-crafted multigenerational novel asks what it means to lose and try to reclaim one’s cultural inheritance. As children, Tibetan sisters Lhamo and Tenkyi lose nearly everything when they flee Western Tibet and wind up in a refugee camp in Nepal. Later, Lhamo’s daughter, Dolma, and her sister Tenkyi make it to Canada, but remain bereft. This novel traces a remarkable scope of time, geography, and culture, as Lama writes through the exile of Nepalese after Communist occupation. Like the Nameless Saint—a sacred relic worshipped by the sisters’ exiled Tibetan community that is repeatedly stolen and reclaimed—they too are condemned to dislocation, yearning for their homeland and inheritance that have been lost and destroyed. Oracles, and icons, and sisters connect as a way to share the history of a place and tell stories that must be shared to keep alive a vital part of cultural connection which is not so much historical but, instead, current and vibrant because these very stories are shared. The novel speaks to the often forgotten tragedy of Tibet and focuses on individual and cultural trauma that follows over an ocean and into the lives of people who know only of loss. It sheds new light on important questions of colonialism, exile, and cultural identity. The management of time and characters make this book a stunning read.