I’m mixing movie metaphors here, but you either die a hero or live long enough to watch yourself become a villain. It was weird buying a book a few years back for two bucks at goodwill to better understand the situation in myanmar/Burma written by a Nobel peace prize winner and now read that same book that’s by the ruler of a country that denies its military acted with undue force and that turns a blind eye to the genocide of the rohingya people.
I had to grit my teeth as I read tender descriptions about babies with their lives a blank scroll, unfurling with potential, knowing that the rohingya are literally not seen as people in Myanmar, and that has been used to end lives just as filled with promise. Suu Kyi was supposed to bring peace and fair government, and that promise was denied to an ethnic minority in need.
Even apart from the author’s frustrating failure to live up to her political ideals and the difficulty in reading those promises knowing they’ll be unfulfilled, the book is a bit confusing, using political party abbreviations chapters before defining them and their ideologies, and spending fairly little time discussing the conflicts that lead to her house arrest. I had to do research to get context for the book, rather than the book itself acting as the clarification I hoped it would.
The descriptions of Burma are lovely, but man I wish her love of country and countrymen extended to all of its citizens.
