Burmese Lives: Ordinary Life Stories Under the Burmese Regime

by Wen-chin Chang (Editor), Eric Tagliacozzo (Editor)

This volume explores the life stories of ordinary Burmese by drawing on the narratives of individual subjects and using an array of interdisciplinary approaches, covering anthropology, history, literature, ethnomusicology, economics and political science. Burma is one of the most diverse societies in Southeast Asia in terms of its ethnic composition. It has a long history of resistance from the public realm against colonial rule and post-independence regimes. However, its isolation for decades before 1988 deprived scholars of a close look into the many faces of this society. Looking into the life stories of members of several major ethnic communities, who hail from different occupations and are of different ages and genders, this book has a particular significance that would help reveal the multiplicities of Burma's modern history. The authors of this volume write about stories of their long-term informants, close friends, family members, or even themselves to bring out a wide
range of issues relating to migration, economy, politics, religion and culture. The constituted stories jointly highlight the protagonists' survival strategies in everyday life that demonstrate their constant courage, pain and frustration in dealing with numerous social injustices and adversities. Through these stories, we see movement of lives as well as that of Burmese society.

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 14, 2014

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A proper academic assessment of individual life stories in Burma. For a non-academic, this book may be difficult to read, as it has a structure of a collection of articles, and can be very technical at times. Some stories were more interesting than others, although I learned a lot from all of them. Particularly, Ma Thida's chapter was my favorite because it was most interesting. It shows the deep compassion that exists in Burmese society, and in my personal opinion, there is something remarkable about her method of storytelling. It read very naturally and was easy to follow while targeting some deep truths about the unsettling medical system that existed in the early 2000s.

The Chinese-Burmese connections were new and spelled out in great detail in this book. I learned a great deal about migration, trade, and the lives of minority individuals in particular. I wish that there were more books like this, though some that are written on a level that is not reserved for academics only because this is a beautiful way of understanding a very complex country.