Burmese Lessons
A true love story
-
-
3.7 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Orange Prize–winner Karen Connelly’s compelling memoir about her journey to Burma, where she fell in love with a leader of the Burmese rebel army.
When Karen Connelly goes to Burma in 1996 to gather information for a series of articles, she discovers a place of unexpected beauty and generosity. She also encounters a country ruled by a brutal military dictatorship that imposes a code of censorship and terror. Carefully seeking out the regime’s critics, she witnesses mass demonstrations, attends protests, interviews detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and flees from police. When it gets too risky for her to stay, Connelly flies back to Thailand, but she cannot leave Burma behind.
Connelly’s interest in the political turns more personal on the Thai-Burmese border, where she falls in love with Maung, the handsome and charismatic leader of one of Burma’s many resistance groups. After visiting Maung’s military camp in the jungle, she faces an agonizing decision: Maung wants to marry Connelly and have a family with her, but if she marries this man she also weds his world and his lifelong cause. Struggling to weigh the idealism of her convictions against the harsh realities of life on the border, Connelly transports the reader into a world as dangerous as it is enchanting.
In radiant prose layered with passion, regret, sensuality and wry humor, Burmese Lessons tells the captivating story of how one woman came to love a wounded, beautiful country and a gifted man who has given his life to the struggle for political change.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Weaving a poignant personal love story within a larger cultural tapestry of Myanmar circa 1996, Canadian poet, memoirist, and novelist Connelly (The Lizard Cage) delivers a lyrical look at a country in the throes of a deeply pernicious military dictatorship. Although she is based in Greece, Connelly's various trips to Burma and Thailand are sponsored by PEN Canada in order to gather information on Burmese political prisoners such as short story author Ma Thida; consequently, Connelly, then in her late 20s, is easily accepted within Burmese artistic circles, gets caught up in violent street demonstrations, and even interviews the revered opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, now under strict house arrest. At a Christmas party, she meets and falls for Maung, a sexy Burmese revolutionary leader who shares his not uncommon story of becoming politicized after the unrest of 1988 and being forced underground. However, she comes to the wrenching realization that her lover belongs to the national struggle for Burmese democracy, and not to her. Connelly writes eloquently of having given her heart to Asia, yet her portrait is dated as the country has changed much since then, considering the recent devastation by Cyclone Nargis, well chronicled in Emma Larkin's Everything Is Broken.
Customer Reviews
A good book and excellent writing
She is a remarkable author. After publishing Lizard Cage which won Orange prize, she thought she was finished with Myanmar because she spent ten years on it . However, she felt compelled to write a memoir about her connection with Myanmar and Myanmar people's struggle for democracy and her love affair with Maung who was from ABSDF.
This woman can really write.
When she and he had a quarrel, she described the room that lacked barrier between them except a fridge which was no use either. She sat on the mattress against the wall and so did he at the other end of it.
She also mentioned that there were unequal roles of men and women in Burmese community . Women were not the high ranking officials in ABSDF and had fewer opportunities to go to town to upgrade themselves by learning. As far as i read, she hasn't written about the execution that took place on Feb 12. For me, that execution was one of the ugliest things that happened in the cause. Students became armed and they craved for power and some turned into the men whom they had run away from. A group of students were accused of being military spies and tortured for months and brutally murdered on February 12 which is Union Day for Burma.
Now, I am reading her experience in MaeSot. A town filled with brothels which are mostly filled with Burmese women. Exploitation and brutality are common there. If a defiant woman refused to have sex with customers, she was beaten and raped till she became obedient. It is called ' seasoning '. Despite such inhumane things going on for decades, Thai government did so little to stop them. It might be because Burmese ppl at border are illegal and so their existence is for exploitation.
The atrocities happened to Karen people are touched on in Chapter 29. As a Burmese, I feel deeply ashamed at such crimes committed by my own race. She made a vow that she would live in conscious mourning. This is what I also should do. Those perpetrators are still among us with impunity. Another story that broke my heart is the one told by her guide who was a KNLA member. He met her for the first time and, knowing she was trying to write a book about Burma, he offered his service as her guide. One day, he shot a young Burmese soldier and searched on his body to find money and other valuable things, he found a letter that the soldier wrote to his mother in a small town. It read that he was saving money to send her money to open a Monhinga shop. Her guide cried like a child. The Burmese soldiers. The Karen soldiers. Refugees. Each one has history and family. When will human race deserve to live in peace and love in peace?
Now, I am reading MoeTheeZun 's account of executions that took place in the camp. It was Maung's responsibility although he was away from the camp when it happened.
Besides those tragedies, she openly depicted her sexual relation with Maung . He sounds critical at her being able to have orgasms. He said that Burmese women were quiet and seemed frightened at orgasms and men's orgasms were functional. I do not know why he seemed perplexed by her enjoying sex.
Overall, it was almost an effortless reading. I appreciate her decision to bring up women issue in the camp and on the border.