THREADS OF AWAKENING

An American woman tells the story of her education in a Tibetan Buddhist art form in this debut memoir.

Rinchen-Wongmo, a textile artist and instructor, offers an engaging work about her multiyear sojourn to India that culminated in her learning to make Tibetan Buddhist cloth artworks known as thangkas and meeting the Dalai Lama. The author tells of how she volunteered to help members of the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India, in the early 1990s; over the ensuing years, she became a student of traditional Tibetan Buddhist fabric art. After finding one and then another teacher willing to train an outsider, she eventually went from student to practitioner and teacher; along the way, she received blessings and instruction from the Dalai Lama himself on how to best practice the craft. The book includes black-and-white photos of the author and her travels, full-color photos of thangkas (by the author and her teacher Dorjee Wangdu), and instructions on the basics of the craft, along with a glossary of terms at the end of the book. Rinchen-Wongmo tells an intriguing story, although it’s not clear at the outset whether it’s intended as a memoir or instruction manual. The introduction is a description of the thangka craft, which is hard to describe; it contains elements of appliqué and patchwork, but doesn’t fit easily into either category. After that, the author’s background and travelogue take up a good part of the book, with only a gradual explanation of how the art fits in. Even the proper pronunciation of thangka (“TAHN-kuh”) isn’t mentioned until well into the book’s main text. Still, the narrative threads eventually weave together in a sensitive work that considers Rinchen-Wongmo’s difficulties navigating Tibetan culture in her quest to learn a new art. Along the way, it effectively delves into the Buddhist thought that she incorporated into her worldview along the way.

A disjointed but ultimately compelling remembrance that invites readers to explore its subject further.