Black Rice - a novella by K.M.Kaung - reviewed by ko ko thett

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
 

La Cirque du Soleil - Ka - the complete version - sad condolences for athlete who died -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ldWC1EQ5X0

Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma: A Strange Collection of Clear Victories by Kyi May Kaung -

Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma:  A Strange Collection of Clear Victories by Kyi May Kaung - first draft written in Nov. 2012 - an edited version was published in International Gallerie -

During his historic six-hour visit to Rangoon, Burma, newly re-elected U.S. President Barack Obama mispronounced Aung San Suu Kyi’s name twice, calling her “Aung Yann Suu Kyi” – one almost saw Suu Kyi hiding her wince.
Yann means “reckless.”
Her real name is:
Aung San – from her famous father – the George Washington of Burma.
Aung = victory or victorious
San= strange, glorious or unique, rare or scarce.
Suu—her own given name, based on the day of the week on which she was born, and the name of Aung San’s mother, whose father was hanged by the British during the Saya San uprising of 1920.
Kyi – based on her mother’s name.
As Jack Healey, the former director of Amnesty International said, “We should learn how to pronounce her name correctly.”
Be that as it may, on Nov 13, 2010, a week after the rigged election, the junta released her from her third bout of house arrest, which had started from a roadside ambush – and is now known as the Depayin Massacre.
Daw Suu was truly between a rock and a hard place.  She cannot be blamed for having sent out feelers that she could help get sanctions lifted in exchange for being treated better by the junta, now hiding behind its front man, the so-called “moderate” PM turned president.

Thein Sein went to see her.   When Obama called her by phone this time last year, she had only to say “I trust him.  I think I can work with him,” for him to send Secretary of State Mrs. Hilary Clinton.  (See my poem in Foreign Policy in Focus, In the Garden by the Lake.)
This unleashed an unreasonable euphoria which has only now started to wear a bit thin as BBC 4 uncovers mass graves in Western Burma, where a genocide against the Muslim Rohingya community has been going on since June, even as Suu Kyi traveled internationally and gave impeccable speeches.  In the northeast of Burma, the junta, now in civilian dress, broke a 17 year ceasefire.
What are the Lady’s prospects?
One should note, she did not win a majority in the April 1 “April Fools’ Day” by-elections -- she won the majority of the few seats she and her party were allowed to contest.  Nevertheless, she campaigned all over the country and won – once again demonstrating her popularity.
But it is not about popularity, is it?
It is about what the junta allows to happen in Burma.
What seems to have happened is due to a coincidence of wants and needs by major actors:
Suu Kyi’s situation was a no-win one.
The junta itself was said to have been scared of what happened in the Middle East, and wanted an exit and an out.
The USA and Europe are in the throes of a major recession – the United States itself hugely indebted to China, which is holding the bulk of its national debt or treasury bills.  The foreign media and the Burmese exile media are compromised as they have apparently traded access for “doing PR for the junta.”
But the Lady is losing patience again – she said “Nothing will happen if the constitution is not changed.” She also said two days ago -- “The military is already the most powerful entity in the country.  We in the parliament (hluttaw) should not make decisions that increase its power.”
Her prospects over-all are not good. 
One can argue that they never were and I used to think she has a martyr complex.
She can surely win in 2015. 
But then, what?
Every day on Burmese language news from VOA and RFA, we see tearful farmers whose land has been taken by the thousands of acres by the junta cronies.  We see miners in equal desperation.  We see workers, each one a Fantine out of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, who sold her hair, her teeth and her body to stay alive.
Maybe the junta will let Suu win, and then let her “handle” these deep-seated structural and systemic (to do with the system) changes.
Then everyone will hate her.  Already there’s a growing chorus of those who think she did not speak up forcibly enough about the plight of the Rohingya.
Like all politicians, she will, when she comes to power, have to pay off supporters.  Then she can easily be accused of corruption as Benazir Bhutto was.
I don’t wish to sound flippant or disrespectful – she is one of my greatest heroes.
But some days I think she should leave and carve out a life for herself as an international figure who is deeply respected.
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"Fakebook in Burma" (The Irrawaddy) is a misleading title -

"Fakebook in Burma" is a misleading title -  people in Burma use fake names out of fear of the junta for revealing the truth - Junta-aligned people use it to spy on and infiltrate democracy networks - Some people use it just for innocent and naive or commercial reasons.

See --

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/38770#.Uc4PRjJHxtY.twitter

Bayingyi or Portuguese-Burmese in Burma -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6HWMj-7DPhg#at=131

Visit me on Facebook folks - and thanks for reading this blog too -

https://www.facebook.com/kyi.m.kaung

K.M.Kaung's novella Black Rice --

K.M. Kaung's novella Black Rice is about an extremely dark-skinned man who is adopted by a pale family in Burma.  His tormented coming of age coincides with the outbreak of multicolored insurgencies in Burma a year before independence from the British in 1948. 

Follow him from the jungle where he goes to escape an unhappy family situation to a surprise event and ending in the gorgeous, lyrical, visual prose of poet and political scientist K.M.Kaung --

 http://www.amazon.com/Black-Rice-Novella-K-Kaung/dp/0615797520