Author: Zoya Phan
Publisher: Pocket Books
ISBN: 9781847394262
Category : Burma
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Zoya Phan was born in the remote jungles of Burma, to the Karen ethnic group. For decades the Karen have been under attack from Burma's military junta; Zoya's mother was a guerrilla soldier, her father a freedom activist. She lived in a bamboo hut on stilts by the Moei River; she hunted for edible fungi with her much-loved adopted brother, Say Say. Many Karen are Christian or Buddhist, but Zoya's parents were animist, venerating the spirits of forest, river and moon. Her early years were blissfully removed from the war. At the age of fourteen, however, Zoya's childhood was shattered as the Burmese army attacked. With their house in flames, Zoya and her family fled. So began two terrible years of running from guns, as Zoya joined thousands of refugees hiding in the jungle. Her family scattered, Zoya sought sanctuary across the border in a Thai refugee camp. Conditions in the camp were difficult, and Zoya now had to care for her ailing mother. Zoya, a gifted pupil, was eventually able to escape, first to Bangkok and then, with her enemies still pursuing her, in 2004 she fled to the UK and claimed asylum. The following year, at a 'free Burma' march, she was plucked from the crowd to appear on the BBC, the first of countless interviews with the world's media. She became the face of a nation enslaved, rubbing shoulders with presidents and film stars. By turns uplifting, tragic and entirely gripping, this is the extraordinary true story of the girl from the jungle who became an icon of a suffering land.

Author: Emma Larkin
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 1847084559
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
In this intrepid and brilliant memoir, Emma Larkin tells of the year she spent travelling through Burma, using as a compass the life and work of George Orwell, whom many of Burma's underground teahouse intellectuals call simply "the prophet". In stirring, insightful prose, she provides a powerful reckoning with one of the world's least free countries. Finding George Orwell in Burma is a brave and revelatory reconnaissance of modern Burma, one of the world's grimmest and most shuttered dictatorships, where the term "Orwellian" aptly describes the life endured by the country's people. This book has come to be regarded as a classic of reportage and travel and a crucial book for anyone interested in Burma and George Orwell.

Author: Zoya Phan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439134731
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Once a royal kingdom and then part of the British Empire, Burma long held sway in the Western imagination as a mythic place of great beauty. In recent times, Burma has been torn apart and isolated by one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. Now, Zoya of the, a young member ofthe Karen tribe in Burma, bravely comes forward with her astonishingly vivid story of growing up in the idyllic green mansions of the jungle, and her violent displacement by the military junta that has controlled the country for almost a half century. This same cadre has also relentlessly hunted Zoya and her family across borders and continents. Undaunted tells of Zoya’s riveting adventures, from her unusual childhood in a fascinating remote culture, to her years on the run, to her emergence as an activist icon. Named for a courageous Russian freedom fighter of World War II, Zoya was fourteen when Burmese aircraft bombed her peaceful village, forcing her and her family to flee through the jungles to a refugee camp just over the border in Thailand. After being trapped in refugee camps for years in poverty and despair, her family scattered: as her father became more deeply involved in the struggle for freedom, Zoya and her sister left their mother in the camp to go to a college in Bangkok to which they had won scholarships. But even as she attended classes, Zoya, the girl from the jungle, had to dodge police and assume an urban disguise, as she was technically an illegal immigrant and subject to deportation. Although, following graduation, she obtained a comfortable job with a major communications company in Bangkok, Zoya felt called back to Burma to help her mother and her people, millions of whom still have to live on the run today in order to survive—in fact, more villages have been destroyed in eastern Burma than in Darfur, Sudan. After a plot to kill her was uncovered, in 2004 Zoya escaped to the United Kingdom, where she began speaking at political conferences and demonstrations—a mission made all the more vital by her father’s assassination in 2008 by agents of the Burmese regime. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Zoya has become a powerful spokesperson against oppressors, undaunted by dangers posed to her life. Zoya’s love of her people, their land, and their way of life fuels her determination to survive, and in Undaunted she hauntingly brings to life a lost culture and world, putting faces to the stories of the numberless innocent victims of Burma’s military

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Quartermasters
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description

Author: Maggie Lemere
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1642595543
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Decades of military oppression in Burma have led to the systematic destruction of thousands of ethnic minority villages, a standing army with one of the world’s highest number of child soldiers, and the displacement of millions of people. Nowhere to Be Home is an eye-opening collection of oral histories exposing the realities of life under military rule. In their own words, men and women from Burma describe their lives in the country that Human Rights Watch has called “the textbook example of a police state.”

Author: Charmaine Craig
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802189520
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
“Craig wields powerful and vivid prose to illuminate a country and a family trapped not only by war and revolution, but also by desire and loss.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Miss Burma tells the story of modern-day Burma through the eyes of Benny and Khin, husband and wife, and their daughter Louisa. After attending school in Calcutta, Benny settles in Rangoon, then part of the British Empire, and falls in love with Khin, a woman who is part of a long-persecuted ethnic minority group, the Karen. World War II comes to Southeast Asia, and Benny and Khin must go into hiding in the eastern part of the country during the Japanese occupation, beginning a journey that will lead them to change the country’s history. Years later, Benny and Khin’s eldest child, Louisa, has a danger-filled, tempestuous childhood and reaches prominence as Burma’s first beauty queen soon before the country falls to dictatorship. As Louisa navigates her newfound fame, she is forced to reckon with her family’s past, the West’s ongoing covert dealings in her country, and her own loyalty to the cause of the Karen people. Based on the story of the author’s mother and grandparents, Miss Burma is a captivating portrait of how modern Burma came to be and of the ordinary people swept up in the struggle for self-determination and freedom. “At once beautiful and heartbreaking . . . An incredible family saga.” —Refinery29 “Miss Burma charts both a political history and a deeply personal one—and of those incendiary moments when private and public motivations overlap.” —Los Angeles Times

Author: Mitali Perkins
Publisher: Charlesbridge
ISBN: 1607342278
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Two Burmese boys, one a Karenni refugee and the other the son of an imprisoned Burmese doctor, meet in the jungle and in order to survive they must learn to trust each other.

Author: Diya Abdo
Publisher: Steerforth Press / Truth to Power
ISBN: 1586423436
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
“A moving and timely book that strips away misleading politics to reveal the complexities of real human lives." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A provocative, conversation-sparking exploration of refugee experiences told in their own words, for readers of Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans and Viet Thanh Nguyen Forced to leave their homes, they came to America... In this intimate and eye-opening book, Diya Abdo--daughter of refugees, U.S. immigrant, English professor, and activist—shares the stories of seven refugees. Coming from around the world, they’re welcomed by Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR), an organization Diya founded to leverage existing resources at colleges to provide temporary shelter to refugee families. Bookended by Diya’s powerful essay "Radical Hospitality" and the inspiring coda “Names and Numbers,” each chapter weaves the individual stories into a powerful journey along a common theme: Life Before (“The Body Leaves its Soul Behind”) The Moment of Rupture (“Proof and Persecution”) The Journey (“Right Next Door”) Arrival/Resettlement (“Back to the Margins”) A Few Years Later (“From Camp to Campus”) The lives explored in American Refuge include the artist who, before he created the illustration on the cover of this book, narrowly escaped two assassination attempts in Iraq and now works at Tyson cutting chicken. We learn that these refugees from Burma, Burundi, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and Uganda lived in homes they loved, left against their will, moved to countries without access or rights, and were among the 1% of the "lucky" few to resettle after a long wait, almost certain never to return to the homes they never wanted to leave. We learn that anybody, at any time, can become a refugee.

Author: Mike Yankoski
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 0310565588
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Christians who are passionate about helping others—but aren’t sure where or how to focus their energy—will find much to love about Zealous Love. Authors Mike and Danae Yankoski have written just what Christians need to integrate compassion and justice into their lives. “Our hope,” they write, “is that God will work through this book … to help direct your life so that you can act on tangible concern for neighbors in need, both globally and locally. That’s the prayer knit into every sentence, every word, of Zealous Love.” Zealous Love introduces eight of the world’s most pressing challenges: hunger, unclean water, HIV/AIDS, creation degradation, lack of education, economic inequality, refugees, and human trafficking. But it does more than educate. It provides real, practical, do-able steps anyone can take to help make a difference.

Author: Herbert A. Mason Jr.
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 178625249X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Book Description
Includes 20 Illustrations OPERATION THURSDAY — A bold, unconventional use of American air power to support British ground troops in Burma, Operation THURSDAY marked a critical development in the history of modern warfare. On March 5-6, 1944, the Allies conducted an air invasion of Burma, in an attempt to push back the Japanese in the China-Burma-India Theater and re-establish the land route between India and China. U.S. airmen formed a special operations unit—the 1st Air Commando Group—to transport troops to jungle locations and resupply them, often in the line of fire. The remarkable success of this operation lives on, fifty years later, among the elite 1st Air Commando Group—a force committed to meeting the challenge of unconventional warfare any time, any place, anywhere.