WHO IS AMY TAN: WHY IS SHE IMPORTANT FOR BURMA?

(Dr. David Law)

Ms. Amy Tan is a very popular Chinese-American writer who was born and raised in California. She graduated from San Jose with a Bachelor's followed by a Master's. In addition to many other writings, she has written eight best sellers, including her first one, "The Joy Luck Club" (1989) which later became a movie and another one, "The Chinese Siamese Cat" (1994) which became a regular children's television series. She has won a total of three awards and many other honors. She writes for both children and adult audiences and is well-known not only as a writer, but as a singer of a writers' music band. (all the members are famous authors)

So it is already evident that she is a famous persona but why is she important to us, to Freedom in Burma? The most of her books mainly dealt with mother-and-daughter themes with a Chinese-American background story, but her latest book, "Saving Fish From Drowning" takes a very abrupt change of style, similar to Sean Connery back in the Eighties when he announced he was quitting the role of James Bond 007 and took on various other roles on screen and became ever more famous than ever. I hope that Ms. Tan will also be like Sean Connery, but become even more famous.

In this latest (8th) book, she still writes about the main character, Bibi Chen, a Chinese lady who talks about her past as a little girl in China, growing up with her stepmother and father, narro wly escaping the Communist grab for power. Then Ms. Tan brings the reader to the present and makes her switchover from the mother-daughter theme to this new genre of adventure-writing. Her character, Bibi, dies under mysterious circumstances suggestive of a murder, but the supernatural nat spirit of Bibi continues to follow her friends and narrate their story. Before her death, she had been organizing a tour trip for twelve of her friends to China and Burma, and the story continues with how they travel in China, and encounter funny, embarrassing incidents such as one of them urinating on the shrine of a vagina made out of rock. They go through other hilarious situations like getting into trouble because of a poor interpreter, and finally go across the Chinese border into Northern Shan State.

They proceed to Lashio and then decide to go to Inle Lake and are enjoying themselves when they are kidnapp ed by Karen tribesmen who take them to their jungle mountain hide-out because they thought one of the Americans was a Holy Man who could save them from the SPDC. (This is based upon actual Karen legends) The rest of the book chronicles the perilous times they have in the jungle and how they did their best to survive.....but......but......the rest shall be left for our readers to discover for themselves. What happened next? Find out!

Ms. Amy Tan actually made the trip from China to Burma, (perhaps the among the first foreigners to make this remarkable trip) and interviewed many people for this book -- meticulously weaving all this information into her book. Although the story is fiction, the background facts she wrote about Burma are all true and hence they are very painful to read. Thus, to ease the pain, she started off her book like a detective novel, and includes romantic as we ll as steamy passages, and the twelve characters include four couples in various stages of friendship, love, and sex which make the book very enjoyable to read due to its tittilating exchanges and tantalizements. Ms. Tan then skillfully wrote in the painful truths about Burma at appropriate points of adventure and intrigue, sugar-coating the tragic facts with the fictional parts of the story. It appears that Ms. Tan not only wanted to entertain her readers with fiction, but also wanted to present the facts about Burma as a way of making the public aware of the ongoing tragedies in that devastated country.

Indeed, she has done this superbly well. The debates about whether to go as tourists or to boycott travelling present both the pros and cons of this issue, and the wider issue of constructive engagement versus sanctions. She talks about how dangerous it is for journalists and their informants, that t hey run the risk of arrest, torture and worse, how thousands of people in Burma, for various innocuous reasons, have gone to prison and never returned.

One of the characters in the story is Wendy, who is an American democracy activist and is determined to contact the NLD and secretly oppose the SPDC government.

Ms. Tan read history very well, and described how SLORC took over, the national tragedies of 1988, NLD, and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (it is evident the writer admires her), her imprisonments, the phony change of names to Myanmar, why Ms. Tan insists on calling it Burma, Rangoon (like all of us freedom fighters), the hypocritic morphing of SLORC into SPDC, the oppression of the Burmese people, as well as that of the Kachin, Karen, Shan, and other ethnic groups.

Because there are so many accounts of suffering in each of the ethnic groups, o ut of necessity, she mainly concentrates on the tragic plight of the Karen, making it representative of all others, and vividly describes porter-slavery, forcing civilians to become land mine sweepers, getting blown up, the surviving victims with limbs, eyes, body parts maimed and missing, the systematic gang rape of ethnic women by the SPDC soldiers, widespread massacres (harrowing accounts of mass shooting of villagers followed by rape and torture of the survivors), the burning, looting, and forced relocations of ethnic villagers, and the atrocities around the gas pipeline of death going into Thailand.

The plight of the refugees, the ruthless corruption of government officials, police, soldiers, the drug trafficking that they themselves are doing while maintaining an anti-narcotic state policy, the hypocrisy of the government media, news censorship, how officials distort the truth and print lies.

In addition to all the politics, she also describes about the culture, e.g., longyi versus htamein, thanankha makeup, Nat gadaw supernatural spirit mediums, smoking cheroots, eating Burmese food, myths and legends of the Karen People, including the ancient stories of the White Brother coming to save the Karens from slavery and death. She talks about the pagodas of Burma, in particular, the climbing of Mandalay Hill in detail, e.g., the sculpture of the woman who cuts off her breasts and donates them to Buddha as a holy act of merit.

The most telling aspect about Ms. Amy Tan's book is the title, "Saving Fish From Drowning." She explains how fishermen, in order to avoid killing living creatures, -- (parnarti partar) they say to themselves, "I am only saving the fish from drowning, not killing them." Yes, it is absurd, and th is absurdity is applied to the Junta. She does not mention the SPDC generals, but alludes to them, letting the readers realize that the dictators of Burma, under the pretext of saving the National Union, are really destroying all its citizens.

E.g., I must mention General Saw Maung, the first SLORC general who seized power as Ne Win's stooge, how he claimed to the Hong Kong-based newsreporters of Asiaweek in 1988, that "I Saved Burma." Yeah, right.Sure. Whatever you say, U Saw Maung, You Yoo Paw Kyaung. (foolish idiot). He later became insane in 1992, letting Gen. Than Shwe take power.

Thus, Ms. Amy Tan provided the Freedom Movement a tremendous boost through her monumental book by lampooning and satirizing the dictatorship at every turn.

She is truly a Freedom Writer. Therefore, everyone who is a Burma Freedom Fighter or Freedom Writer, should recommen d this book to as many people as possible. They, themselves, should read and discuss this book, because of Ms. Amy Tan's way of writing, her engaging technique, and her charming style through which she conveys the facts of the terrible atrocities interwoven with fictional story lines which makes it palatable for the readers.

I, myself, as a Freedom Writer, have encountered so much resistance whenever I try to tell people in the West about the sufferings of the people of Burma. This is because I simply gave them the bare facts and they turn away from my presentations with fear and disgust and I rarely succeed in my mission. It is like forcing people to swallow bitter medicine. Through Ms. Amy Tan's books, I will learn to write "attractively" while still delivering the bitter medicine. Thus, I have been able to collect five of her works and have fini shed reading and analysing two o them, and I encourage all our fellow Freedom Writers to do the same.

If anyone knows how to contact Ms. Amy Tan, please let me know. I'd love to thank her and ask for permission to translate her book into Burmese. The people inside Burma need to know that their sufferings are being broadcasted globally and how.

This is my email, drlawd@yahoo.com. For more fascinating information about her, visit www.AmyTan.net. I already tried that to contact her manager but so far, no replies.

It would be wonderful if she would like to write a tragedy-romance about Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi. That is not fiction, but a "fact"-ional story that has all the hallmarks of a successful fiction novel. Remember the saying, T ruth is Stranger than Fiction.

It could easily become a movie, too, and just needs a top-notch writer like Ms. Amy Tan. It would help Ms.Aung San Suu Kyi and all the Peoples of Burma so much.

Let me end this article with a poem I wrote in 1993 when I was a student.

Please try it slowly with rhythm. I took special pains to ensure there is a rhythm to it.

FREEDOM WRITER

"If I had a rifle near,

I'd be a Freedom Fighter!

But, there is no rifle here --

How can I help poor Burma?

With pen and ink and computers,

I could become a writer.....

When you write about our Burma,

You ARE a Freedom Fighter!

With pens and ink and computers,

We're the Freedom Writers!

(end)

Ayaydawboan Aung-yamyi !! (The Campaign Will Succeed!! )

Sincerely,

David Law (Xing Luo)

Newark, NJ