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368 pages, Paperback
First published May 2, 2017
“It is better to be in a position of having to ask for charity than to be in the position of never having to ask.”This sounds very close to a lesson I’d once heard from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk from Vietnam, who said that having less than one needed offered an opportunity for developing and expressing compassion. Craig explains that having to ask for something develops one’s spiritual muscle.
“One of man’s injunctions is to strive to live joyously. In the face of these terrible wars abroad, when our very peace is threatened, we must find a way to rejoice in our circumstances. We must find a way to do more than endure.”What a remarkable and completely freeing and true thing to say. At the end of the novel, several characters look upon their lives and recognize this necessity to strive…to find greatness in the midst of failure. The lessons are applied, and it is grace-giving and forgiving and loving, despite all.
"I’ve been trying to figure out all these years—in defending our rights with this revolution—is whether or not we have the right to kill…It seems clear enough that violence, murder even of the murderous, is a surrender of a kind. But do we have the right to stand by and watch people be made slaves…"I love that Craig asks these big, earthshaking questions because the answers are the things that may save us. The questions show us we are worthy to be saved. We will all come across these questions in the course of a life and to have a story big enough, consequential enough, to introduce them without pedantry is a tremendous gift.
Known by her maiden name, Louisa Benson, my mother was not Burman, the majority race in Myanmar. Her father was Sephardic, and her mother was of the Karen ethnic nationality, one of Burma’s indigenous and chronically oppressed people.
She was born on the eve of Burma’s involvement in the Second World War, when the Japanese invaded, led by a band of Burmans wanting to oust the British.
“Don’t you see” his searching glance seemed to tell her “All of that – that suffering you put yourself through – it came out of a need not to offend. And as long as you concern yourself with upsetting others, you’re in prison.” And “As I see it, you are your father’s daughter. He was a warrior, too, in his way. Trust him to endure this”
“Don’t speak” she said “Don’t immediately deny it. Just listen to me, and let me read your eyes”
How very Western to trust the word of a man who speaks fluently, intelligently, even brilliantly. How very Western to trust that he has the same code of honour. How naive to think that because he makes one gesture towards Western democracy he couldn’t possibly at the same time be plotting a systematized form of inequality – a state in which one “dominant” race rules and is sanctioned to discriminate against others – against “minorities”.
“I have never had a need to be seen, to be recognized for doing anything. In fact, I prefer to be invisible. Nothing seems more appropriate than to pass out of this world as invisibly as I passed into it, remarked by only one or two who truly cared for me.”Rangoon. 1940. A man sees a woman in a red dress standing on the jetty and falls in love. The woman does not even speak his language. She belongs to the Karen, a persecuted ethnic minority. They marry. They suffer. They grow apart. A daughter of their strained relationship becomes 1956’s Miss Burma, but the military dictatorship exploits her as the face of the "unity" and "integration" in post-colonial Burma. The dictator deceives. He distracts the international community while the Burman ethnic majority exterminates the minorities—including the Karen people. "Burma for Burmans!" "Blood and Soil!" Miss Burma trades in her tiara for... Implausible? Charmaine Craig bases her story on the lives of her grandparents and mother, who was the historical Miss Burma.