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A Daughter's Memoir of Burma

Author : Wendy Law-Yone

Publisher : Columbia University Press

Page : 329 pages

File Size : 26,80 MB

Release : 2014-07-29

Category : History

ISBN : 0231537808

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Book Description

Wendy Law-Yone was just fifteen when Burma's military staged a coup and overthrew the civilian government in 1962. The daughter of Ed Law-Yone, the daredevil founder and chief editor of The Nation, Burma's leading postwar English-language newspaper, she experienced firsthand the perils and promises of a newly independent Burma. On the eve of Wendy's studies abroad, Ed Law-Yone was arrested and The Nation shut down. Wendy herself was briefly imprisoned. After his release, Ed fled to Thailand with his family, where he formed a government-in-exile and tried, unsuccessfully, to foment a revolution. Exiled to America with his wife and children, Ed never gave up hope that Burma would one day adopt a new democratic government. Though he died disappointed, he left in his daughter's care an illuminating trove of papers documenting the experiences of an eccentric, ambitious, humorous, and determined patriot, vividly recounting the realities of colonial rule, Japanese occupation, postwar reconstruction, and military dictatorship. This memoir tells the twin histories of Law-Yone's kin and his country, a nation whose vicissitudes continue to intrigue the world.



A Daughter's Memoir of Burma

Author : Wendy Law-Yone

Publisher : Columbia University Press

Page : 330 pages

File Size : 14,53 MB

Release : 2014

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 0231169361

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Book Description

Wendy Law-Yone was just fifteen when Burma's military staged a coup and overthrew the civilian government in 1962. The daughter of Ed Law-Yone, the daredevil founder and chief editor of The Nation, Burma's leading postwar English-language newspaper, she experienced firsthand the perils and promises of a newly independent Burma. On the eve of Wendy's studies abroad, Ed Law-Yone was arrested and The Nation shut down. Wendy herself was briefly imprisoned. After his release, Ed fled to Thailand with his family, where he formed a government-in-exile and tried, unsuccessfully, to foment a revolution. Exiled to America with his wife and children, Ed never gave up hope that Burma would one day adopt a new democratic government. Though he died disappointed, he left in his daughter's care an illuminating trove of papers documenting the experiences of an eccentric, ambitious, humorous, and determined patriot, vividly recounting the realities of colonial rule, Japanese occupation, postwar reconstruction, and military dictatorship. This memoir tells the twin histories of Law-Yone's kin and his country, a nation whose vicissitudes continue to intrigue the world.



Little Daughter

Author : Zoya Phan

Publisher : Pocket Books

Page : 0 pages

File Size : 17,93 MB

Release : 2010

Category : Burma

ISBN : 9781847394262

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Book Description

Zoya Phan was born in the remote jungles of Burma, to the Karen ethnic group. For decades the Karen have been under attack from Burma's military junta; Zoya's mother was a guerrilla soldier, her father a freedom activist. She lived in a bamboo hut on stilts by the Moei River; she hunted for edible fungi with her much-loved adopted brother, Say Say. Many Karen are Christian or Buddhist, but Zoya's parents were animist, venerating the spirits of forest, river and moon. Her early years were blissfully removed from the war. At the age of fourteen, however, Zoya's childhood was shattered as the Burmese army attacked. With their house in flames, Zoya and her family fled. So began two terrible years of running from guns, as Zoya joined thousands of refugees hiding in the jungle. Her family scattered, Zoya sought sanctuary across the border in a Thai refugee camp. Conditions in the camp were difficult, and Zoya now had to care for her ailing mother. Zoya, a gifted pupil, was eventually able to escape, first to Bangkok and then, with her enemies still pursuing her, in 2004 she fled to the UK and claimed asylum. The following year, at a 'free Burma' march, she was plucked from the crowd to appear on the BBC, the first of countless interviews with the world's media. She became the face of a nation enslaved, rubbing shoulders with presidents and film stars. By turns uplifting, tragic and entirely gripping, this is the extraordinary true story of the girl from the jungle who became an icon of a suffering land.



Miss Burma

Author : Charmaine Craig

Publisher : Grove Press

Page : 359 pages

File Size : 48,56 MB

Release : 2017-05-02

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 0802189520

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Book Description

“Craig wields powerful and vivid prose to illuminate a country and a family trapped not only by war and revolution, but also by desire and loss.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Miss Burma tells the story of modern-day Burma through the eyes of Benny and Khin, husband and wife, and their daughter Louisa. After attending school in Calcutta, Benny settles in Rangoon, then part of the British Empire, and falls in love with Khin, a woman who is part of a long-persecuted ethnic minority group, the Karen. World War II comes to Southeast Asia, and Benny and Khin must go into hiding in the eastern part of the country during the Japanese occupation, beginning a journey that will lead them to change the country’s history. Years later, Benny and Khin’s eldest child, Louisa, has a danger-filled, tempestuous childhood and reaches prominence as Burma’s first beauty queen soon before the country falls to dictatorship. As Louisa navigates her newfound fame, she is forced to reckon with her family’s past, the West’s ongoing covert dealings in her country, and her own loyalty to the cause of the Karen people. Based on the story of the author’s mother and grandparents, Miss Burma is a captivating portrait of how modern Burma came to be and of the ordinary people swept up in the struggle for self-determination and freedom. “At once beautiful and heartbreaking . . . An incredible family saga.” —Refinery29 “Miss Burma charts both a political history and a deeply personal one—and of those incendiary moments when private and public motivations overlap.” —Los Angeles Times



Twilight over Burma

Author : Inge Sargent

Publisher : University of Hawaii Press

Page : 244 pages

File Size : 39,18 MB

Release : 1994-08-01

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 9780824816285

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Book Description

Just married and returning to live in her new husband's native land, a young Austrian woman arrived with her Burmese husband by passenger ship in Rangoon in 1953. They were met at dockside by hundreds of well-wishers displaying colorful banners, playing music on homemade instruments, and carrying giant bouquets of flowers. She was puzzled by this unusual welcome until her embarrassed husband explained that he was something more than a recently graduated mining engineer - he was the Prince of Hsipaw, the ruler of an autonomous state in Burma's Shan mountains. And these people were his subjects! She immersed herself in the Shan lifestyle, eagerly learning the language, the culture, and the history of the Shan hill people. The Princess of Hsipaw fell in love with this remote, exotic land and its warm and friendly people. She worked at her husband's side to bring change and modernization to their primitive country. Her efforts to improve the education and health care of the country, and her husband's commitment to improve the economic well-being of the people made them one of the most popular ruling couples in Southeast Asia. Then the violent military coup of 1962 shattered the idyllic existence of the previous ten years. Her life irrevocably changed. Inge Sargent tells a story of a life most of us can only dream about. She vividly describes the social, religious, and political events she experienced. She details the day-to-day living as a "reluctant ruler" and her role as her husband's equal - a role that perplexed the males in Hsipaw and created awe in the females. And then she describes the military events that threatened her life and that of her children. Twilight over Burma is a story of a great happiness destroyed by evil, of one woman's determination and bravery against a ruthless military regime, and of the truth behind the overthrow of one of Burma's most popular local leaders.



Dadland

Author : Keggie Carew

Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Page : 420 pages

File Size : 23,70 MB

Release : 2017-03-07

Category : History

ISBN : 0802190383

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Book Description

As her father’s memory fails, a daughter explores his military past: “Part family memoir, part history book . . . Compelling and moving from start to finish” (Financial Times). One of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Ten Best Books of the Year For most of Keggie Carew’s life, she was kept at arm’s length from her father’s personal history. But when she is invited to join him for the sixtieth anniversary of the Jedburghs—an elite special operations unit that was the first collaboration between the American and British Secret Services during World War II—a new door opens in their relationship. As dementia begins to stake a claim over Tom Carew’s memory, Keggie embarks on a quest to unravel his story, and soon finds herself in a far more consuming place than she bargained for. Tom Carew was a maverick, a left-handed stutterer, a law unto himself. As a Jedburgh he parachuted behind enemy lines to raise guerrilla resistance first against the Germans in France, then against the Japanese in Southeast Asia, where he won the nickname “Lawrence of Burma.” But his wartime exploits were only the beginning. A winner of the Costa Book Award, Dadland takes us on a journey through peace and war and shady corners of twentieth-century politics; though the author’s English childhood and the breakdown of her family, and into the mysterious realm of memory. “Brings to mind Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk in the way it soars off in surprising directions, teaches you things you didn’t know, and ambushes your emotions.” ―NPR “Astonishing . . . Mixes intimate memoir, biography, history and detective story: this is a shape-shifting hybrid that meditates on the nature of time and identity . . . Tom Carew was a razzle-dazzle character, larger than life and anarchically self-invented . . . For all its vigor and comic zest, Dadland is a careful and tender discovery that patiently circles around a man who spent his life mythologizing and running away from himself.” ―The Observer



Moonlight on Linoleum

Author : Terry Helwig

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 306 pages

File Size : 17,85 MB

Release : 2012-05

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1451628676

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Book Description

Forced by her mother's instability to care for her five siblings, Helwig crafts a moving story of a mother she loved and struggled to understand. But ultimately, to keep her own dreams alive, Terry had to decide when to hold on to what she loved and when to let go.



Burma My Mother

Author : Khemawadee Mangrai (Sao)

Publisher :

Page : 191 pages

File Size : 43,97 MB

Release : 2014-07-08

Category : Burma

ISBN : 9780987596130

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Book Description

A memoir of living through good times and bad in Burma before an escape to a new life of freedom, BURMA MY MOTHER is published in both ebook and pdf formats.Author Sao Khemawadee Mangrai grew up in a Shan state in the north-east of Myanmar, previously known as Burma, and now lives in Sydney. Her memories are infused by the beauty of the country and the grace of the Buddhist culture.She also writes candidly about her life before and after the assassination of the independence leader, General Aung San in 1947.On that sad day, sitting beside the General was a Shan chief, Sao Sam Htun, who was assassinated alongside him, one of a total of nine killed in the attack on the government's Executive Council meeting.Khemawadee had no idea then that she would later marry his son, who would also suffer under the military regime, thrown into prison without cause for 5 years.Her memoir was written during a weekly memoir class held in Surry Hills facilitated by Sydney School of Arts & Humanities.



The King In Exile

Author : Sudha Shah

Publisher : Harper Collins

Page : 480 pages

File Size : 19,40 MB

Release : 2012-06-14

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 9350295989

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Book Description

'An absorbing read. Exhaustively researched and gracefully written, The King in Exile tells a story of compelling human interest, filled with drama, pathos and tragedy... [It] heralds the arrival of a writer of non-fiction who is both uncommonly talented and exceptionally diligent...One of the great merits of [the book] is that it is completely free of jargon and theorizing. It is in essence a family story, centred on five women whose lives were waylaid by history' - Amitav Ghosh in his blog 'The captivity of Burma's last king and the fall of the Konbaung dynasty: a compelling new account' In 1879, as the king of Burma lay dying, one of his queens schemed for his forty-first son, Thibaw, to supersede his half brothers to the throne. For seven years, King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat ruled from the resplendent, intrigue-infused Golden Palace in Mandalay, where they were treated as demi-gods. After a war against Britain in 1885, their kingdom was lost, and the family exiled to the secluded town of Ratnagiri in British-occupied India. Here they lived, closely guarded, for over thirty-one years. The king's four daughters received almost no education, and their social interaction was restricted mainly to their staff. As the princesses grew, so did their hopes and frustrations. Two of them fell in love with 'highly inappropriate' men. In 1916, the heartbroken king died. Queen Supayalat and her daughters were permitted to return to Rangoon in 1919. In Burma, the old queen regained some of her feisty spirit as visitors came by daily to pay their respects. All the princesses, however, had to make numerous adjustments in a world they had no knowledge of. The impact of the deposition and exile echoed forever in each of their lives, as it did in the lives of their children. Written after years of meticulous research, and richly supplemented with photographs and illustrations, The King in Exile is an engrossing human-interest story of this forgotten but fascinating family.



A Burmese Heart

Author : Y. M. V. Han

Publisher : Y.M.V. Han

Page : 318 pages

File Size : 49,71 MB

Release : 2015-06-06

Category :

ISBN : 9780996225403

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Book Description

Spanning the colonial, independence, and dictatorship periods in Burma (Myanmar), A Burmese Heart is a gripping personal account of one woman and her family who lived through the making and unmaking of their country's turbulent history. Tinsa Maw-Naing is born into privilege as the daughter of a wealthy barrister and his wife in Rangoon (Yangon), and she is forewarned at birth that she is destined to live a life of extremes. She is introduced to chaos at an early age when her father, Dr. Ba Maw, becomes Prime Minister and initiates the independence movement with likeminded nationalists during the fall of the colonial era. Forced to confront war and mortality during her childhood, Tinsa's fate and mettle are tested amidst unparalleled destruction. Tinsa marries Bo Yan Naing, one of the famed Thirty Comrades who were the nucleus of the modern military, and becomes one of the first female English Literature university lecturers during Burma's gilded age of democracy. Her bliss is short-lived when a military dictatorship takes power in 1962, and her husband ignites a pro-democracy insurgency on the Thai-Burma border. In May 1966, soldiers ransack Tinsa's home and she is taken to the notorious Ye Kyi Aing Prison in the outskirts of Rangoon (Yangon), where she is imprisoned for years as punishment for her husband's insurrection. Her family and friends languish in secret detention centers as the first political detainees of that era, silent witnesses to the rise of a new regime. A Burmese Heart is an engrossing account of surviving history as told through the eyes of one woman. It is also the story of a country and its people - revolutionaries, intellectuals, martyrs, innocent bystanders - who are perpetually caught in the violent cycles of politics, a history silenced until now.