PRFDHR Seminar: Far from the Rooftop of the World: Travels among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents, Amy Yee

In 2008, China’s government cracked down on protests in Tibet. Amy Yee, then a journalist for the Financial Times, found herself covering a press conference with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, his exile home in India. She never imagined a hug from the spiritual leader would be the start of a global, fourteen-year journey to spotlight the stories of Tibetans in exile.

This talk by Amy Yee will discuss her recent book ‘Far from the Rooftop of the World: Travels among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents’, a nonfiction narrative and travelogue set in India - as well as Australia, Belgium and New York, where Tibetans emigrated overseas. It gives new insight into relationships between Tibetan and Chinese people, especially since Yee is herself Chinese American.

While there are many books written about the Dalai Lama and Tibet, few focus on how ordinary Tibetans abroad are living and sustaining their identity and culture in exile. It focuses on ordinary but extraordinary Tibetans navigating between worlds. It also includes encounters with educators, community leaders, monks and nuns, and advocates, including Chinese pro-democracy activists, over the course of a decade.

Amy Yee is an award-winning journalist, most recently with Bloomberg/CityLab and previously a Financial Times correspondent in India where she lived for seven years. She has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, NPR and 30+ media outlets.
She has won three awards from the United Nations Correspondents Association; four from the South Asian Journalists Association; and first place from the Association of Healthcare Journalists for analysis about reducing deaths of children in India and Bangladesh. In 2023, she won the Asian American Journalists Association’s award for reporting about protecting rights of immigrant voters, and a Society of Professional Journalists award for racial equity reporting. She has had four Notable Essays in the Best American Essays.

Yee is a MacDowell fellow and a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School, Columbia Journalism School, Wellesley and Hunter’s MFA program.