Thin Places: A Pilgrimage Home
Thin Places begins with the story of my 18 month stay in Hedangna, a village in northeastern Nepal, while conducting research for a doctorate in Anthropology. The book continues with my return home and my journey to find a sense of place in a marriage and culture where I no longer felt I belonged.
“Ann Armbrecht has written an intricate, smart, soulful story about the shape-shifting boundaries between culture and landscape, people and place… As an anthropologist, Armbrecht is trustworthy and revelatory in her patterned thinking. As a writer, she is an elegant and tempered voice exposing the truth of our relations.”
Terry Tempest Williams, Author of Finding Beauty in a Broken World
Winner, 2009 Nautilus Award – Gold Winner for Memoir / Personal Journey
30% Discount at Columbia University Press with coupon code CUP30
Settlements of Hope: An Account of Tibetan Refugees in Nepal
In the mid-1980’s, I taught English in a Tibetan refugee settlement in Jawalakhel, Nepal just south of Kathmandu. While there, I began speaking with the men and women who fled Tibet after the Chinese invasion. This book tells the story of their efforts to balance the age-old traditions of Tibetan culture with the pressures and opportunities of an increasingly mechanized world. And this account touches on the struggles of all cultures to retain their identities in a globalized world.
At the end of my 18 month stay in Nepal, I had the opportunity to visit the Dharamsala to interview His Holiness the Dalai Lama, one of the most remarkable interviews of my life.