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Aug. 14th, 2009 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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genarti was here a few weeks ago, we spent some time taking over each other's library recommendation lists; one of the things that she put on mine was Pascal Khoo Thwe's autobiography, From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey.
Pascal Khoo Thwe is a member of the minority Padaung people in Burma who joined the 1988 student protests against the military regime. The book covers his childhood in a relatively isolated village, his time in the revolutionary movement and as a member of the Karen rebels fighting against the Burmese army in the zone between Burma and Thailand, and his escape to England to study English at Cambridge in 1989. It's pretty gorgeously written, with a kind of lyrical matter-of-factness that is both refreshing (when he's talking about his own people and their culture) and chilling and heartbreaking (once he starts to write about the regime and the horrors of 1988.) I would definitely recommend it as a read.
That being said . . . man, there are days that I really miss my access to academic journals (yes, I am a hopeless dork, I know!) and this is one of them, because it means that I can't read this article and I DESPERATELY want to. The article looks like it is talking about something I have noticed in the reviews and marketing of the book as well - the "jungle tribesman comes to Cambridge and WRITES! Incredible! Unbelievable! Whowouldathunk!" thing. I don't think I have read a single review that did not mention the "giraffe women" of the Padaung people - and by mentioning that I have just added this review to the number - pretty much to play up the exoticism and contrast of Thwe's background, as far as I can tell. The introduction (by John Casey, who essentially single-handedly arranged for Thwe to get out of Burma and whom Thwe defends several times in the book) also is not free of this. So - that's something to pay attention to.
(Gen? You don't have academic clearance to go read the article, by any chance . . . :D?)
genarti was here a few weeks ago, we spent some time taking over each other's library recommendation lists; one of the things that she put on mine was Pascal Khoo Thwe's autobiography, From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey. Pascal Khoo Thwe is a member of the minority Padaung people in Burma who joined the 1988 student protests against the military regime. The book covers his childhood in a relatively isolated village, his time in the revolutionary movement and as a member of the Karen rebels fighting against the Burmese army in the zone between Burma and Thailand, and his escape to England to study English at Cambridge in 1989. It's pretty gorgeously written, with a kind of lyrical matter-of-factness that is both refreshing (when he's talking about his own people and their culture) and chilling and heartbreaking (once he starts to write about the regime and the horrors of 1988.) I would definitely recommend it as a read.
That being said . . . man, there are days that I really miss my access to academic journals (yes, I am a hopeless dork, I know!) and this is one of them, because it means that I can't read this article and I DESPERATELY want to. The article looks like it is talking about something I have noticed in the reviews and marketing of the book as well - the "jungle tribesman comes to Cambridge and WRITES! Incredible! Unbelievable! Whowouldathunk!" thing. I don't think I have read a single review that did not mention the "giraffe women" of the Padaung people - and by mentioning that I have just added this review to the number - pretty much to play up the exoticism and contrast of Thwe's background, as far as I can tell. The introduction (by John Casey, who essentially single-handedly arranged for Thwe to get out of Burma and whom Thwe defends several times in the book) also is not free of this. So - that's something to pay attention to.
(Gen? You don't have academic clearance to go read the article, by any chance . . . :D?)
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Date: 2009-08-14 04:13 pm (UTC)EEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEE
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Hahaha, I am making it sound cute and it is really so fucked up D:)
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Date: 2009-08-14 04:18 pm (UTC)(UM WELL YES. But it is okay, I fully remember I am talking to 1/2 the originator of the Thomasine Mystique. Standards of cute are different!)
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Date: 2009-08-14 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 08:45 pm (UTC)POSSIBLY . . . THE WORST TOUCH
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Date: 2009-08-15 12:05 am (UTC)