Customer Reviews

Tears of the Lotus: Accounts of Tibetan Resistance to the Chinese Invasion, 1950-1962

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I came across the Roger McCarthy book while doing graduate research at a tibetan refugee camp. I found the story was an amazingly well written documentation of the CIA involvement with the last tibetan operatives. At the time of the reading it was on the cutting edge of CIA information that was newly released to the public. The story is a tragic one, another chapter in US history where we have exploited, manipulated a vulnerable people for US self interests....only to abandon them when it ceases to serve militarily/economically. McCarthy does very well at describing what went on in the CIA training camps in Colorado and in the last Tibetan border hold out in Mustang. My opinion of the books content/context shifted as I had the opportunity to live in one of the Tibetan Refugee Settlements in Pokhara Nepal,(where a number of these ex-operatives still reside). After interviewing them I discovered that McCarthys view was very much from his own perspective, not that of the tibetans,(several of whom I spoke to who had been interviewed by McCarthy). Also the tibetan soldiers did not receive credit, or compensation for their contributions to the book, or for the losses of their families by our government. A disappointment for sure! But, given the importance of the material alone and it's contribution to deepen ones understanding of the tibetan refugees, the war, and the survival of the last vestiges of a free tibet.....this is a MUST read.