*books back in rotation after another country was chosen

Bones Will Crow

On a rooftop
Under the moon
My soul sits like an aristocrat
While my body rests
In a dimly lit corner.
—Aung Cheimt

“An illuminating account of real Myanmar narrated by uncensored and often deviant Burmese, who dare to dream and challenge the norms. Myanmar Studies scholars and literature fans often lament the lack of authentic Burmese voices in print, accessible to the world outside Burma. Bones will Crow not only fills this gap but also presents the readers a counter-narrative of 'exotic' Burma often associated with golden pagodas and smiling faces. Daily struggles under crony capitalism, confronting commercialization of female bodies, an exile's homesickness, issues Burmese grapple with leap out of the pages of this anthology. This anthology is a long overdue, much-welcomed addition.” —Tharapi Than, PhD, Teaching Fellow and Lector in Burmese (University of London)

This is the first anthology of contemporary Burmese poets published in the West, and includes the work of Burmese poets who have been in exile and in prison. The poems include global references from a culture in which foreign books and the internet are regarded with suspicion and where censorship is an industry. The poets have been ingenious in their use of metaphor to escape surveillance and censorship, writing post-modern, avant-garde, performance and online poetries. Through their wildly diverse styles, these poems delight in the freedom to experiment with poetic tradition.

“A highly-anticipated anthology of 15 diverse Burmese poets spanning several generations, whose contribution to the continual fight against the suppression of democracy and free speech is even more necessary now. These poets are essential reading for the wider world for their historical perspective and experimental approaches to poetry and poetics.” —Poetry Review

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Letters from Burma

In these astonishing letters, Aung San Suu Kyi reaches out beyond Burma’s* borders to paint for her readers a vivid and poignant picture of her native land. Here, she celebrates the courageous army officers, academics, actors and everyday people who have supported the National League for Democracy, often at great risk to their own lives. She reveals the impact of political decisions on the people of Burma, from the terrible cost to the children of imprisoned dissidents—allowed to see their parents for only fifteen minutes every fortnight—to the effect of inflation on the national diet and of state repression on traditions of hospitality. She also evokes the beauty of the country’s seasons and scenery, customs and festivities that remain so close to her heart. Through these remarkable letters, the reader catches a glimpse of exactly what is at stake as Suu Kyi fights on for freedom in Burma, and of the love for her homeland that sustains her non-violent battle.

Aung San Suu Kyi is the leader if the struggle for human rights and democracy in Burma. Born in 1945 as the daughter of Burma’s national hero Aung San, she was two years old when he was assassinated, just before Burma gained the independence to which he has dedicated his life. She herself was placed under house arrest in Rangoon in 1989, where she remained for almost 15 of the 21 years until her release in 2010, becoming one of the world’s most prominent political prisoners & a Nobel Peace prize winner.

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*P.S. Confused why this book refers to Burma & not Myanmar? As noted by AP News in the article, Myanmar, Burma and why the different names matter: “For generations, the country was called Burma, after the dominant Burman ethnic group. But in 1989, one year after the ruling junta brutally suppressed a pro-democracy uprising, military leaders suddenly changed its name to Myanmar. By then, Burma was an international pariah, desperate for any way to improve its image. Hoping for a sliver of legitimacy, it said it was discarding a name handed down from its colonial past and to foster ethnic unity. The old name, officials said, excluded the country’s many ethnic minorities.

At home, though, it changed nothing. In the Burmese language, ‘Myanmar’ is simply the more formal version of ‘Burma. The country’s name was changed only in English.

It was linguistic sleight-of-hand. But few people were fooled. Much of the world showed defiance of the junta by refusing to use the new name. Over the years, many countries and news outlets, including The Associated Press, had begun using the country’s official name. As repression eased and international opposition to the military became less vocal, ‘Myanmar’ became increasingly common. Inside the country, opposition leaders made clear it didn’t matter much anymore. Unlike most of the world, the U.S. government still officially uses ‘Burma.’ But even Washington has started to mellow its stance. In 2012, during a visit to the country, then-President Barack Obama used both ‘Burma’ and ‘Myanmar.’”

Memoir

Note: This is a unique book & a treasure because it was the only one we could find from a native Lao author! In addition, he is Hmong, which is an indigenous group in Southeast & East Asia with a rich culture & language that originated in China before migration began in the 19th century.

While Wang Yee Vang was born in Laos, he, like a number of his countrymen, was recruited to join the US Secret Army defending US national security interests from 1961 to 1975. First training in Thailand, he returned to Laos to fight in “The Secret War”, a covert CIA-backed effort to seize power from Communists during the Vietnam War. Vang rose up thru the ranks in the army before attaining the rank of Colonel and the fall of Laos when he left the country eventually settling in the US. He then went on to found Lao Veterans of America, a Lao- and Hmong-American veterans’ non-profit organization.

From the preface: “I wrote this memoir because many of my colleagues suggested, while I was working for Lao and Hmong communities inside and outside Laos for decades, that I should tell the young generations what happened and why some 500,000 Lao citizens became refugees and immigrated to Western countries.

I noted what I remembered and what I faced while I was working for the Royal Lao Government because I was one of the regular officers. My civil grade and military rank were given by the king of Laos, which we called royal ordinance.

I hope that this work would help our young generations in doing some research. May it help them accomplish their goals and the works that they need to accomplish. Thank you for reading this memoir.”

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Stay Alive, My Son

On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh to open a new and appalling chapter in the story of the twentieth century. On that day, Pin Yathay was a qualified engineer in the Ministry of Public Works. Successful and highly educated, he had been critical of the corrupt Lon Nol regime and hoped that the Khmer Rouge would be the patriotic saviors of Cambodia.In Stay Alive, My Son, Pin Yathay provides an unforgettable testament of the horror that ensued and a gripping account of personal courage, sacrifice and survival.

Documenting the 27 months from the arrival of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh to his escape into Thailand, Pin Yathay is a powerful and haunting memoir of Cambodia's killing fields. With 17 members of his family, Pin Yathay was evacuated by the Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh, his family taking with them whatever they might need for the three days before they would be allowed to return to their home. Instead, they were moved on from camp to camp, their possessions confiscated or abandoned. As days became weeks and weeks became months, they became the “New People,” displaced urban dwellers compelled to live and work as peasants, their days were filled with forced manual labor and their survival dependent on ever more meager communal rations. The body count mounted, first as malnutrition bred rampant disease and then as the Khmer Rouge singled out the dissidents for sudden death in the darkness.

Eventually, Pin Yathay's family was reduced from 17 to just himself, his wife, and their one remaining son, Nawath. Wracked with pain and disease, robbed of all they had owned, living on the very edge of dying, they faced a future of escalating horror. With Nawath too ill to travel, Pin Yathay and his wife, Any, had to make the heart-breaking decision whether to leave him to the care of a Cambodian hospital in order to make a desperate break for freedom. “Stay alive, my son,” he tells Nawath before embarking on a nightmarish escape to the Thai border.

“During the Kampuchean revolutionary madness... all the urban population was driven out to work in the country, creating new peasant communities which operated on strict, dogmatic Maoist lines.... Pin Yathay's story is told with no attempt at self-aggrandizement.... For he has to live with the shame of having deserted his own child in order to facilitate his escape, of losing his wife in the jungle through ineptitude: it is a revelation of prehistoric strength within the human conscience which is far beyond our imaginings.” —Times Literary Supplement

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Survival in the Killing Fields

Note: If this book is chosen as a club read, it will be read over 2 months since it is a longer book.

“Nothing has shaped my life as much as surviving the Pol Pot regime. I am a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust. That’s who I am,” says Haing Ngor. And in his memoir, Survival in the Killing Fields, he tells the gripping and frequently terrifying story of his term in the hell created by the communist Khmer Rouge. Like Dith Pran, the Cambodian doctor and interpreter whom Ngor played in an Oscar-winning performance in The Killing Fields, Ngor lived through the atrocities that the 1984 film portrayed. Like Pran, too, Ngor was a doctor by profession, and he experienced firsthand his country’s wretched descent, under the Khmer Rouge, into senseless brutality, slavery, squalor, starvation, and disease —all of which are recounted in sometimes unimaginable horror in Ngor’s poignant memoir. Since the original publication of this searing personal chronicle, Haing Ngor’s life has ended with his murder, which has never been satisfactorily solved. In an epilogue written especially for this new edition, Ngor’s coauthor, Roger Warner, offers a glimpse into this complex, enigmatic man’s last years—years that he lived “like his country: scarred, and incapable of fully healing.”

The best book on Cambodia that has ever been published.

“For his role in the film The Killing Fields, Haing Ngor, a Cambodian doctor with no acting experience, won an Oscar. In playing the part, he drew on his own tormented life as a war slave during the Cambodian civil war. His book is a very demanding read, but it is of such high merit and rare importance that it deserves a place in every collection. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal

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