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Review | Forbidden Memory explores the role of Tibetan Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution
- The starting point for Tsering Woeser’s book was a trunk of photographs taken by her father in Tibet in the 1960s
- Based on more than 70 interviews, Woeser makes a powerful and nuanced argument against popular perceptions
Reading Time:3 minutes
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Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution
by Tsering Woeser
Potomac Books
4/5 stars
The Dalai Lama has called it “the most sacred temple” in Tibet. Located in the capital, Lhasa, and dating back to the seventh century, the Jokhang temple is a magnet for devout Tibetans who gather there every day to pray, prostrating themselves on the ground.
But among the worshippers who visit Jokhang these days, it would not be unusual to find former cadres of Mao Zedong’s revolutionary Red Guards – Tibetans who helped ransack the temple in the early years of China’s tumultuous 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
Ajay is a Los Angeles-based journalist who worked as a staff correspondent for Asiaweek magazine in Hong Kong in the 1990s and in the New Delhi bureaus of The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal Asia.
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