Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan
by Jamie Zeppa
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jamie ZeppaEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-05-01
ISBN: 157322815X
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9781573228152
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan
Book Review: Awesome
Summary: 5 Stars
In this book, Jaime Zeppa describes her life in Bhutan. The most important thing to know about this book is that it is about a personal experience and is not a travel book. In her book, Zeppa describes the country, politics, and people of Bhutan through her own eyes and experiences. She does not write this book to be a documentary on Bhutan, it is a story on how Bhutan changed her. Zeppa does a great job of describing the country through her experiences. After the reader finishes the book, they feel like they know the author, the people she speaks of, and the country personally. Her descriptions of the land make the book come to life. I do not normally like a lot of detailed description in novels and other books that I read, but as you read page after page she paints a very beautiful and detailed picture so that the reader is able to see it first hand. She does a wonderful job describing what the country looks like physically. Here is a piece of how she describes her home. "The strip of garden all around my house is ablaze with crimson poppies, orange gladioli, yellow dahlias, and several varieties of roses. A flowering shrub climbs up the door frame and drops tiny pink petals on my lap. Huge crows swoop and circle overhead, and a bird I cannot see sings sweetly from the gracious arms of a cherry tree." It is very easy for the reader to see the garden and the birds even if they do not know specifically what the different flowers look like. Another example is when she is describing dusk falling at her first posting. "The mist is at war with the mountains, and winning. It creeps like a disease, withering green trees, eroding ridges, diminishing the massive bulk of the mountains, turning solid rock to shadow. Everything looks long-deserted, haunted, like the last day of time."
Her descriptions of the culture and the people make the reader feel like they know what the author is going through. One example shows the reader what a cultural and language barrier she had to overcome when she arrives at her first posting. On one of the first days of class she asks one student "`[w]hen is your birthday?' He picks up his pencil and writes very carefully while the others watch. Over his shoulder [she reads], `It is rice and pork.'"
When she is transferred from an elementary school to a college, she learns that there is a lot of gossip among the other lecturers. She describes what she goes through as she is welcomed and invited into other lecturer's homes. "At Mr. Gupta's house, I am warned to keep away from Mr. Matthew, at Mr. Matthew's house, I am warned to stay clear of Mr. Bose. Mr. Bose advises me to have nothing to do with Mr. Chatterji . . ." and so on. You also learn about a great deal of the culture. When she is having tea with a student he "winces slightly when I flip a spoonful of sugar into his cup backhandedly but says nothing." After she asks him if she did anything wrong, he tells her that "in Bhutan, we never pour anything in that backward way unless someone in that household has died. That is how we serve the dead." She continues to write about the things she learns to do and not to do according to the Bhutanese culture.
I have read a few other reviews and out of the ones I read, there were two from people who did not like the book. Both reviews claimed that the author spent her time in Bhutan trying to force her own culture on her students, rather trying to accept their culture. I do not agree. Initially, she looked at the country and the culture through the eyes of a Canadian. In the first chapter of the book she admits that "except for a week on a beach in Cuba, [she] had never been anywhere." This was the main reason for applying for the posting in Bhutan. She wanted to experience another culture. She never actually thought about the fact that while Canada is a largely populated and developed country, Bhutan is a very small third world country. When she first arrives, naturally she only has her culture as a Canadian to judge Bhutan by.
If you continue to read the book you will see that, even though she has doubts about staying in Bhutan, she starts to accept the culture from the first day she arrives. She stops wearing her clothes and begins to wear a kira, which is traditional dress for Bhutanese women, even though she does not have to. As the story continues, she starts to trade in her way of life as a Canadian, and embraces the Bhutanese culture. She cooks and eats the food they do and in the end of the story she "becom[es] a Buddhist." She continues to write that she "does not see Canada as [her] home" anymore.
I really enjoyed this book and I strongly recommend it. It is easy to read, and it is very hard to put down. The language Zeppa uses is comfortable and casual. It is less like reading and more like a conversation. She is very open about her feelings and thoughts, and that enables you to trust her.
If you like to read books about other places and different cultures, and want an inside opinion rather than that of an encyclopedia, you will love this book. If you enjoy tales of love and adventure, this book will thrill you. You need to be a little open minded about different cultures, lifestyles, and religions. If you are not, this story will be a little challenging for you. If you would rather read a tourist's view point of Bhutan, you will not want to spend your time on this book.
Summary of Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan
"Reading the early pages of this rich, romantic, lushly descriptive memoir of Zeppa's three years in the tiny Buddhist kingdom just south of Tibet, I counted my cushy American blessings...But by the end, I not only got why Zeppa stayed in Bhutan...I actually envied her experience. Her tale is part love story, part history lesson and part Buddhism 101...Zeppa writes romantically without romanticizing, and her fascinating story is something you'll marvel at the first time and want to go back to again and again." --Mademoiselle
"Heartfelt...a good reminder that your passport, both literally and figuratively, can open up an entire world of possibilities." --Harper's Bazaar
"Zeppa's story sheds the customary contours of the year-abroad memoir and starts to become something more like a memoir of conversion, a testament of newfound faith." --The New York Times Book Review
"A joy to read." --Chicago Tribune
As a teacher of English literature, Jamie Zeppa would understand how the story of her journey into Bhutan could be fit into the convenient box of "coming-of-age romance," a romance with a landscape, a people, a religion, and a dark, irresistible student. An innocent, young Catholic woman from a Canadian mining town who had "never been anywhere," Zeppa signed up for a two-year stint teaching in a remote corner of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Despite the initial shock of material privation and such minor inconveniences as giardia, boils, and leeches, Zeppa felt herself growing into the vast spaces of simplicity that opened up beyond the clutter of modern life. Alongside her burgeoning enchantment, a parallel realization that all was not right in Shangri-La arose, especially after her transfer to a college campus charged with the politics of ethnic division. Still she maintained her center by devouring the library's Buddhist tracts and persevering in an increasingly fruitful meditation practice. When the time came for her to leave, she had undergone a personal transformation and found herself caught between two worlds that were incompatible and mutually incomprehensible. Zeppa's candid, witty account is a spiritual memoir, a travel diary, and, more than anything, a romance that retraces the vicissitudes of ineluctable passion. --Brian Bruya
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