The Narrative Complexity of History
Chapter 1 discusses the importance of using narrative as a way to understand the history of an exiled group, for both that group and outsiders interested in the group’s history. The author draws on psychological analyses of Holocaust narratives to discuss how that atrocity shaped many of the conventions of speaking and writing about life and displacement after violence. This provides a framework for what comes next: a discussion of the history of Tibet since the first mass exodus in 1959, by way of the stories that have been told about death and survival. The emphasis of this discussion is on the way that exiled groups often embody historical tensions, creating narratives that move across several planes at once.