Ko Ko Thett's review of K.M. Kaung's novella Black Rice - this review was published on Monday in Myanmar Times -
Black Rice, 45 pages
Kyi May Kaung
Words Sounds and Images (2013)
Black Rice by Kyi May Kaung, first published in the spring 2007 issue of Northern Virginia Review, has been released in print and e-book formats. It is a meticulously crafted bite-size delight - bite-size because you wouldn’t even know how it dissolves on your literary palate until you come to realize you have savoured it in one sitting, wanting for more.
Set in the 1940s and 1950s in colonial and decolonizing Burma, the nascent state almost ripped apart by a war of all against all between the government forces, the communists and the ethnic Karen rebels, Black Rice is the story of a black-skinned boy, who describes himself as ‘the black mascot in their white-skinned family.’
Black Rice was adopted and doted on by a food-binging mother, a survivor of multiple miscarriages, and firmed up by a whimsical and booze-binging father. ‘It was as if she blamed him for his blood, which did not agree with hers … It’s good I had those miscarriages. They might have grown up to be drunkards like you.’ Black Rice’s mother laments. Black Rice fled from home at sixteen, after convincing his best friend to tag along with him. They joined the army, whose task was to annihilate the communist and ‘multicoloured’ ethnic insurgents. Their lives and fates seemed set on the same course until the boys ended up prisoners of war in the hands of Karen rebels.
In the quaint lyricism of the protagonist, the author manages to unpack many of the Burmese cultural idiosyncrasies in a most efficient way – Black Rice’s insider’s observations of his own family, his society and the war he fought were first-hand and vivid. The reader is bound to relish layer after layer of Burmese obsessions with astrology, amulets and the skin colour, a Burmese mother’s ritual to cope with her miscarriages, the Burmese women’s soft power over their husbands, the Burmese men’s thoughtless manners, the brutality of the Burmese armed forces and rebel groups alike, and their food and eating culture (from naan bread to fried water convolvulus).
To avoid repeating unpronounceable words and to improve a sense of wonder, Kyi May Kaung has calqued some Burmese names to great effect. General Ne Win, the source of Burma’s military dictatorship, becomes General Bright Sun and Daw Hla, Black Rice’s mother, becomes Pretty Lady who actually suffers from consumption, a disease often associated with Victorian novels. While many of the social, cultural and political issues remain eerily relevant in the transitional Myanmar today many others, the kind of fun and play the protagonist and his best friend had as Burmese children cracking the almonds, may be felt as nostalgia.
When we read the disclaimer in the opening of a book, ‘This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real...’, don’t we almost always expect a true story? Black Rice could as well be a true story or a combination of many a true story common to Burmese life. True story or not, Black Rice is a novella of what Salman Rushdie calls human truth, as opposed to ‘photographic, journalistic, recorded truth’ but ‘the truth we recognize as human beings…our strengths, weaknesses, how we interact.’ I hope she extends the novella into a novel someday.
ko ko thett – July 2013
