No Time for Dreams
Living in Burma Under Military Rule
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- $59.99
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- $59.99
Publisher Description
Compelling images of cinnamon-robed monks confronting the guns and clubs of Burma's military junta outraged the world in September 2007. Then communications links were cut, and curfews, interrogations, midnight raids, beatings, and arrests crushed the remnants of defiance. Tragically, it had all happened before. No Time for Dreams narrates a remarkable woman's search over four decades for independence and purpose as repression spreads throughout her country, once known as the Golden Land.
Inspired by the legacy of her father, Ba Tin's struggle against British colonialism beginning in the 1930s, San San Tin infuses her journey from school girl to journalist and, briefly, to businesswoman with an unbroken spirit of resistance. Offering a compassionate insider's view of politics, culture, religion, and family during nearly half a century of unrelenting dictatorship, this riveting personal story traces an arc of decline to reveal the bitter fate of a once-prosperous and cosmopolitan society.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In elegant prose colored by vivid but not precious descriptions of her homeland, Burmese journalist Tin relates with great effect the insidious erosion of freedoms that occurred in her country, beginning in the 1950s with the installation of military rule and the imposition of socialism. Burma, or Myanmar since 1989, is a country often obscured to the rest of the world via the political paranoia of its government. Tin lifts the lid on how the country deteriorated under authoritarian socialism to become one of the world's poorest nations, and writes of her own personal conflict as both government-regulated journalist in a male-dominated environment and despairing Burmese patriot. As the turmoil grows, Tin's story continues to vacillate between resignation and the furtive search for any signs of hope, such as the one in 1988 when democracy advocates took to the streets for a brief moment of free expression. After enduring 10 more years of the often violent military junta's rule, Tin moved to the United States in 1998 to pursue a journalism fellowship. Her quiet but powerful story deserves a wide audience.
