From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey
by Pascal Khoo Thwe
Overview
From Bookcloseouts.com
Overview:
In 1988 Dr. John Casey, a Cambridge don visiting Burma, was told of a waiter in Mandalay with a passion for the works of James Joyce. Intrigued by this unlikely story, he visited the restaurant, where he met Pascal Khoo Thwe. Pascal grew up as a member of the tiny, remote Kayan Padaung tribe. Pascal was the first member of his community ever to study English at university. But in Burma, English books were rare, and independent thought was discouraged. Photocopies of the few approved texts would be passed from student to student, while tuition consisted of lecturers reciting essays that the students learned by rote. Within a few months of his chance meeting with Dr Casey, Pascal's world lay in ruins. Successive economic crises brought about by Burma's military dictatorship meant he had to give up his studies. The regime's repression grew more brutal. Pascal fled to the jungle, becoming a guerrilla fighter in the life-or-death struggle against the government and seeing many of his friends and comrades die in battle. At a moment of desperation, he remembered the Englishman he had met in Mandalay and wrote him a letter, with little expectation of ever receiving a reply. Miraculously, the letter reached its destination on the other side of the world. Not only that, it would lead to Pascal's being rescued from the jungle and enrolling to study English at Cambridge University, the first Burmese tribesman ever to do so.
My thoughts
This is a fascinating book to be sure. Very well written, very informative and interesting. The book starts with the childhood of the author and is told in a way that is spellbinding. I felt like I was there as I read each page. I particularly enjoyed the way the spirit world mingles in their modern day lives. I was a little hesitant to get to the part of the book where the guerilla warfare begins because I'm so happy to live in my peaceful, quiet, sheltered world, but the book is so well written I was hanging on every word even in the most unsettling parts of the book. Even after the book is finished, I cannot believe what this man went through for the sake of principle. Good for Pascal Khoo Thwe!
This is another one of these books that has a powerful impact on me. The author grew up in the same day and age as I did, and yet we had completely different lives. While I was bouncing off to school in my patent leather shoes, he was fighting for his life, for his rights, for his freedom. I didn't even know what freedom was at that age. I didn't know of his struggles half way around the world while I ate oreos and played with my Barbie dolls. It doesn't seem fair that some of us are so richly blessed and others have to suffer so through no fault of their own. And yet the author is such a strong man with iron clad convictions that he fought on even when it would have been easier to give up or give in; even when others around him gave up. He is an amazingly courageous man, and I'm impressed beyond words with what he's done with his life. A book very much worth reading.
Favorite Passage
The teacher's face was now suffused with barely suppressed rage. 'You have been thinking too much, comrade -- but to no purpose. All you are doing is repeating the lies spread by the colonial minions. I think you need a holiday. Meanwhile, shut up and learn your Party principles.'
The student did indeed take a holiday -- which is to say that he disappeared from classes for several months. Later, I learned he had been sent to a hard labour camp. He never came back to the university, for in the camp he lost his reason, and ended up in an asylum...Not only was the student neither mad or pro-colonial -- he was not even anti-socialist. He was simply arguing an historical fact, and wanted to generate a discussion. But perhaps, in the circumstances in which we studied, that was a mad thing to do.
Troubled, I went to an English teacher, whom I had come to trust, in order to learn about the argument in private. He said: 'Remember what your grandfather said about the earth's being round at school and flat at home. He was a wise man, and taught you what you need to know in Burma. It is the same in politics. Learn the arguments for socialism in the textbooks, parrot them, pass your exams. Never, never argue. But keep within your own head and heart what you and everyone really knows -- that in the real world it is a system of incompetence and corruption, and a project for ruining the country.'
