When the world thinks of Burma, it is often in relation to Nobel laureate and icon Aung San Suu Kyi. But beyond her is another world, one that complicates the over-determination of Burma as a pariah state and myths about the “high status” of Southeast Asian women. This book maps “Burmese women” as real and imagined figures across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. It crosses intellectual boundaries to illustrate how literary and gender analysis can contribute to discourses surrounding and informing human rights—and in the process offers a new voice in the debates about re ... More

When the world thinks of Burma, it is often in relation to Nobel laureate and icon Aung San Suu Kyi. But beyond her is another world, one that complicates the over-determination of Burma as a pariah state and myths about the “high status” of Southeast Asian women. This book maps “Burmese women” as real and imagined figures across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. It crosses intellectual boundaries to illustrate how literary and gender analysis can contribute to discourses surrounding and informing human rights—and in the process offers a new voice in the debates about representation, racialization, migration, and spirituality. It demonstrates how Burmese women break out of prisons, both real and discursive, by writing themselves into being. The book assembles an archive that includes George Orwell, Aung San Suu Kyi, critically acclaimed authors Ma Ma Lay and Wendy Law-Yone, and activist Zoya Phan. Its close readings of literature and politicized performances by women in Burma, the Burmese diaspora, and the United States illuminate their contributions as authors, cultural mediators, and practitioner-citizens. These authors creatively articulate alter/native epistemologies—regionally situated knowledges and decolonizing viewpoints that interrogate and destabilize competing transnational hegemonies, such as U.S. moral imperialism and Asian militarized dictatorship.