Ocean, as Much as Rain: Woeser’s Testimony of Resistance Against State-imposed Amnesia by Thinley Chodon

Woeser’s Ocean, as Much as Rain opens with a poem that accurately sets the tone for the rest of this translated collection: “A sheet of paper can also become a knife even sharper”. Demonstrating her unique positionality and resistance from the very beginning, Woeser’s dissidence is louder than the Chinese colonial state’s violent imposition of silence, surveillance, and erasure.

Ocean, edited and translated from Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain with Dechen Pemba, is the first ever English translation of the collected works of Woeser’s cross-genre writing that ranges from lyrical prose, poetry, reportage, photography, and testimony announcing Woeser as a truth-teller who observes the absurdity that has become the reality of occupied Tibet.