No Time for Dreams: Living in Burma Under Military Rule

by Carolyn Wakeman, San San Tin, Emma Larkin author of Finding George Orwell in Burma (Introduction)

Overview

Compelling images of cinnamon-robed monks confronting the guns and clubs of Burma's military junta outraged the world in September 2007. Then communications links were cut, and curfews, interrogations, midnight raids, beatings, and arrests crushed the remnants of defiance. Tragically, it had all happened before. No Time for Dreams narrates a remarkable woman's search over four decades for independence and purpose as repression spreads throughout her country, once known as the Golden Land.

Inspired by the legacy of her father, Ba Tin's struggle against British colonialism beginning in the 1930s, San San Tin infuses her journey from school girl to journalist and, briefly, to businesswoman with an unbroken spirit of resistance. Offering a compassionate insider's view of politics, culture, religion, and family during nearly half a century of unrelenting dictatorship, this riveting personal story traces an arc of decline to reveal the bitter fate of a once-prosperous and cosmopolitan society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742557192
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	01/16/2009
Series:	Asian Voices
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Carolyn Wakeman is professor at the University of California Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, where she directs its Asia Pacific Project. San San Tin is an international broadcaster at Radio Free Asia and a freelance writer and poet. Emma Larkin is the pseudonym of an American writer based in Bangkok and the author of Finding George Orwell in Burma.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Strangers in the Night
Chapter 2: Turning Point
Chapter 3: Spreading Socialism
Chapter 4: Lessons in Literacy
Chapter 5: Inside the Bureaucracy
Chapter 6: Signs of Unrest
Chapter 7: Cleaning the Ranks
Chapter 8: Reporting as a Woman
Chapter 9: Mounting Costs
Chapter 10: Political Training
Chapter 11: Confrontation
Chapter 12: Bullets at the Pagoda
Chapter 13: Reprisals
Chapter 14: Displacement
Chapter 15: Relocation
Chapter 16: Corruption

Editorial Reviews

Now an expatriate, the author chronicles her fight for personal and political independence in a repressive nation almost completely sealed off from the rest of the world. Born in 1950 to a family with a history of battling for political independence against colonialism, Tin attended university and did what she could to carry on the family tradition, contending with Burmese military repression rather than the British. At age 49, she decided it was time to expose the junta's brutality from a safer place and moved to the United States. She studied at the University of California with Wakeman (Journalism/Berkeley), director of the university's Asia Pacific Project. This text, written by Wakeman but presented as Tin's first-person narrative, relates her story up to the time of her departure from Burma. Accounts of personal and societal horrors alternate with vignettes of bravery, but Tin never manages adequately to explain how an entire population numbering in the millions has allowed relatively few oppressors to remain in power decade after decade. Once prosperous and rich in natural resources, Burma (rechristened Myanmar by the junta in 1989) has become one of the world's most impoverished nations. Tin provides examples of daily deprivations and government repression. The detailed narrative provides a rich education about Burmese life. For those without a prior knowledge of Burmese society, however, the specifics are sometimes overwhelming. Freedom to speak in the United States has not brought Tin unalloyed happiness; she bemoans being labeled a traitor by the government of her homeland and understandably misses the family members she left behind. Educational but relentlessly depressing.

Kirkus Reviews