LAUSR

ABSTRACT Family Matters examines the ways in which the life writing of Tibetan women in exile negotiates the place of gender in the (re)writing of Tibetan history. It is concerned with the alternative histories contained within women’s life stories and their relation to ‘official’ Tibetan national history and the structures of power that maintain the gendered nature of the historical archive in the Tibetan exile community. Engaging questions of gender, nationalism, and life writing through the lens of postcolonial feminism, I use a historically contextualised close-textual analysis to show how House with the Turquoise Roof (1995) and Dalai Lama, my son (2000) present so far neglected national histories where women and their lives have mostly remained hidden from view.