Download or read book Fifty Years in the Karen Revolution in Burma written by Ralph and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-15 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty Years in the Karen Revolution in Burma is about commitment to an ideal, individual survival and the universality of the human experience. A memoir of two tenacious souls, it sheds light on why Burma/Myanmar's decades-long pursuit for a peaceful and democratic future has been elusive. Simply put, the aspirations of Burma's ethnic nationalities for self-determination within a genuine federal union runs counter to the idea of a unitary state orchestrated and run by the dominant majority Burmans, or Bamar. This seemingly intractable dilemma of opposing visions for Burma is personified in the story of Saw Ralph and Naw Sheera, two prominent ethnic Karen leaders who lived—and eventually left—"the Longest War," leaving the reader with insights on the cultural, social, and political challenges facing other non-Burman ethnic nationalities. Fifty Years in the Karen Revolution in Burma is also about the ordinariness and universality of the challenges increasingly faced by diaspora communities around the world today. Saw Ralph and Naw Sheera's day to day lives—how they fell in love, married, had children—while trying to survive in a precarious war zone—and how they had to adapt to their new lives as refugees and immigrants in Australia will resound with many.
Download or read book Twilight over Burma written by Inge Sargent and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1994-08-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Suffering in Silence written by Karen Human Rights Group and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2001 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Situated in the triangle between South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China, Burma is a country of 50 million people struggling under the oppression of one of the world's most brutal military regimes. Yet, the voices of its people remain largely unheard in the international arena. Most of the limited media coverage deals with the non-violent struggle for democracy led by Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or the Army's repression of university students and urban dissidents, but these only form a small part of the story. This book presents the voices of ethnic Karen villagers to give an idea of what it is like to be a rural villager in Burma: the brutal and constant shifts of forced labor for the Army, the intimidation tactics, the systematic extortion and looting by Army and State authorities, the constant fear of arbitrary arrest, rape, torture, and summary execution, the forced relocation and burning of hundreds of civilian villages and the systematic uprooting of their crops. Three detailed reports produced by the Karen Human Rights Group in 1999 are used to give the reader a sampling of the life of Karen villagers, both in areas where there is armed resistance to the rule of the SPDC junta and in areas where the junta is fully in control. The Karen Human Rights Group is a small and independent local organization which has been using the firsthand testimony of villagers to document the human rights situation in rural Burma since 1992. Much of the group's work can be seen online at www.khrg.org. Kevin Heppner, who contributed the introductory sections of the book, is a Canadian volunteer who founded KHRG in 1992 and still serves as its coordinator. Claudio Delang, who edited this book, has a keen interest in Karen life and customs. He is currently completing a PhD dissertation on the Karen and Hmong in northern Thailand.
Download or read book Burmese Lessons written by Karen Connelly and published by Nan A. Talese. This book was released on 2010-05-18 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Forty Years in Burma written by John Ebenezer Marks and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bamboo People written by Mitali Perkins and published by Charlesbridge. This book was released on 2012-07-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two Burmese boys, one a Karenni refugee and the other the son of an imprisoned Burmese doctor, meet in the jungle and in order to survive they must learn to trust each other.
Download or read book A Savage Dreamland written by David Eimer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a country where building a temple takes priority over installing traffic lights, golf courses are ploughed out alongside fields of opium poppies and fortune-tellers are consulted on a daily basis even by the government, any sepia-tinged and colonial idea of Burma is long out of date. To explore its magic and depths, David Eimer takes his narrative through history, class and geography, including areas still barred to foreigners. This is a story balanced by historical context but related by the people with whom Eimer shares his time, from granddaughters of former presidents to the squatters in Yangon's shacks, from former political exiles to jade miners digging for their fortune in the far north.
Download or read book The Rebel of Rangoon written by Delphine Schrank and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2015 An epic, multigenerational story of courage and sacrifice set in a tropical dictatorship, The Rebel of Rangoon captures a gripping moment of possibility in Burma (Myanmar) Once the shining promise of Southeast Asia, Burma in May 2009 ranks among the world's most repressive and impoverished nations. Its ruling military junta seems to be at the height of its powers. But despite decades of constant brutality-and with their leader, the Nobel Peace Prize-laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, languishing under house arrest-a shadowy fellowship of oddballs and misfits, young dreamers and wizened elders, bonded by the urge to say no to the system, refuses to relent. In the byways of Rangoon and through the pathways of Internet cafes, Nway, a maverick daredevil; Nigel, his ally and sometime rival; and Grandpa, the movement's senior strategist who has just emerged from nineteen years in prison, prepare to fight a battle fifty years in the making. When Burma was still sealed to foreign journalists, Delphine Schrank spent four years underground reporting among dissidents as they struggled to free their country. From prison cells and safe houses, The Rebel of Rangoon follows the inner life of Nway and his comrades to describe that journey, revealing in the process how a movement of dissidents came into being, how it almost died, and how it pushed its government to crack apart and begin an irreversible process of political reform. The result is a profoundly human exploration of daring and defiance and the power and meaning of freedom.
Download or read book Among Insurgents written by Shelby Tucker and published by HarperPerennial. This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work describes a remarkable and perilous journey. The author entered Burma through the Shan State and later crossed the Kachin State. Drawing on interviews with opium poppy growers, he examines the symbiotic relationship between the Burmese civil war and the drugs trade.
Download or read book The Hidden History of Burma Race Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century written by Thant Myint-U and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2019 A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2020 “An urgent book.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times During a century of colonialism, Burma was plundered for its natural resources and remade as a racial hierarchy. Over decades of dictatorship, it suffered civil war, repression, and deep poverty. Today, Burma faces a mountain of challenges: crony capitalism, exploding inequality, rising ethnonationalism, extreme racial violence, climate change, multibillion dollar criminal networks, and the power of China next door. Thant Myint-U shows how the country’s past shapes its recent and almost unbelievable attempt to create a new democracy in the heart of Asia, and helps to answer the big questions: Can this multicultural country of 55 million succeed? And what does Burma’s story really tell us about the most critical issues of our time?
Download or read book Fifty Years Reminiscences of India written by Fitz William Thomas Pollok and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book For Your Tomorrow written by Robert H. Farquharson and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the causes of the Burma War, tells the story of its course, and reveals for the first time the surprisingly significant role Canada and Canadians played in it.
Download or read book Verse by the Side of the Road written by Frank Rowsome, Jr. and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1979-09-01 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the fall of 1925, young Allan Odell conceived the idea of using consecutive signs along the roadside. . . . In 1963 the last signs were taken down, ending the most famous outdoor advertising venture ever.”—1977 Minnesota Almanac The whole story is in this book, plus all the jingles used. The signs are gone now, except for one set on permanent display at The Smithsonian. You can have them all, always, in your own library with this book. “Rowsome’s volume indexes each of the 600 jingles . . . and as you down the list, preferably reading aloud, it might evoke visions of 1940 Chevies, roadside diners, signs that said EATS. . . . Why were the Burma-Shave jingles so universally loved? Because they were light-hearted and humorous in hard times and war times.”—Bov Swift, Knight News Service
Download or read book The River of Lost Footsteps written by Thant Myint-U and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-05-15 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly two decades Western governments and a growing activist community have been frustrated in their attempts to bring about a freer and more democratic Burma—through sanctions and tourist boycotts—only to see an apparent slide toward even harsher dictatorship. But what do we really know about Burma and its history? And what can Burma's past tell us about the present and even its future? In The River of Lost Footsteps, Thant Myint-U tells the story of modern Burma, in part through a telling of his own family's history, in an interwoven narrative that is by turns lyrical, dramatic, and appalling. His maternal grandfather, U Thant, rose from being the schoolmaster of a small town in the Irrawaddy Delta to become the UN secretary-general in the 1960s. And on his father's side, the author is descended from a long line of courtiers who served at Burma's Court of Ava for nearly two centuries. Through their stories and others, he portrays Burma's rise and decline in the modern world, from the time of Portuguese pirates and renegade Mughal princes through the decades of British colonialism, the devastation of World War II, and a sixty-year civil war that continues today and is the longest-running war anywhere in the world. The River of Lost Footsteps is a work both personal and global, a distinctive contribution that makes Burma accessible and enthralling.
Download or read book Futureface written by Alex Wagner and published by One World. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the host of MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight, “a rich and revealing memoir” (The New York Times) about her travels around the globe to solve the mystery of her ancestry, confronting the question at the heart of the American experience of immigration, race, and identity: Who are my people? “A thoughtful, beautiful meditation on what makes us who we are . . . and the values and ideals that bind us together as Americans.”—Barack Obama The daughter of a Burmese mother and a white American father, Alex Wagner grew up thinking of herself as a “futureface”—an avatar of a mixed-race future when all races would merge into a brown singularity. But when one family mystery leads to another, Wagner’s post-racial ideals fray as she becomes obsessed with the specifics of her own family’s racial and ethnic history. Drawn into the wild world of ancestry, she embarks upon a quest around the world—and into her own DNA—to answer the ultimate questions of who she really is and where she belongs. The journey takes her from Burma to Luxembourg, from ruined colonial capitals with records written on banana leaves to Mormon databases, genetic labs, and the rest of the twenty-first-century genealogy complex. But soon she begins to grapple with a deeper question: Does it matter? Is our enduring obsession with blood and land, race and identity, worth all the trouble it’s caused us? Wagner weaves together fascinating history, genetic science, and sociology but is really after deeper stuff than her own ancestry: in a time of conflict over who we are as a country, she tries to find the story where we all belong. Praise for Futureface “Smart, searching . . . Meditating on our ancestors, as Wagner’s own story shows, can suggest better ways of being ourselves.”—Maud Newton, The New York Times Book Review “Sincere and instructive . . . This timely reflection on American identity, with a bonus exposé of DNA ancestry testing, deserves a wide audience.”—Library Journal “The narrative is part Mary Roach–style participation-heavy research, part family history, and part exploration of existential loneliness. . . . The journey is worth taking.”—Kirkus Reviews “[A] ruminative exploration of ethnicity and identity . . . Wagner’s odyssey is an effective riposte to anti-immigrant politics.”—Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The Road Past Mandalay written by John Masters and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second part of the bestselling novelist's dramatic autobiography about his time in the Gurkhas during the second world war This is the second part of John Masters' autobiography: how he fought with his Gurkha regiment during World War II until his promotion to command one of the Chindit columns behind enemy lines in Burma. Written by a bestselling novelist at the height of his powers, it is an exceptionally moving story that culminates in him having to personally shoot a number of wounded British soldiers who cannot be evacuated before their position is overrun by the Japanese. It is an uncomfortable reminder that Churchill's obsession with 'special forces' squandered thousands of Allied lives in operations that owed more to public relations than strategic calculation. This military and moral odyssey is one of the greatest of World War II frontline memoirs.
Download or read book The Wrong Way Round written by Andy Benfield and published by Lost Classics Book Company. This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Picking up his Royal Enfield motorcycle in Delhi, Andy Benfield leaves for Burma with his aristocratic girlfriend in a bid to be the first westerner to cross into Burma by motorcycle in over fifty years and to win his girlfriend's heart. Triumphs, mishaps, and unexpected experiences follow the unprepared couple along the Himalayas toward their goal.
