Exploring art, history and belonging through the lens of the Tibetan diaspora

In April 2012, New York's Rubin Museum of Art – which specializes in Himalayan regions – had an unnamed 15th century mudstone statue on display. It seemed to depict a mythic Buddhist figure from Tibet, but it was nameless and devoid of a backstory. When writer Tsering Yangzom Lama looked at the icon, she saw a symbol of all that's been lost for those who fled Tibet — an autonomous region in China that it claims as part of its territory, but that many Tibetans have claimed as independent for centuries. The statue also inspired Lama's debut novel, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies, an intergenerational story of a Tibetan family in exile. Lama walks Piya Chattopadhyay through her work of fiction, set between refugee settlements and one of the world's largest Tibetan diasporas: Toronto.