Mekong Review

Category: Myanmar

Cybercrime unchained

Nick J. Freeman

Cybercrime is a big business, and some of its leading perpetrators are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities in Southeast Asia.

The power of fandom

Nway and Htaike

In a world that often overlooks the power of young people online, fan communities have emerged as an unseen engine of revolution in Myanmar

Fleeing the draft

Jatuporn Susuadmo

Young people from Myanmar are being forced to choose between survival and service in a conflict they had no say in and strongly object to.

Writing Myanmar

Peixuan Xie

For San Lin Tun, writing about Myanmar in English is a way for Myanmar writers to take control or ownership of the country’s narrative.

Imagining Orwell in Burma

Joe Freeman

Theroux’s Burma Sahib is a novel about awakenings: sexual, political and literary. Filling a historical void with fiction, Theroux invents and probes every nook and cranny of Orwell’s life in Burma.
 

The stubborn shrine

Matthew Fraser

The Buddermokan shrine in Sittwe is said to have been built in 1756. It has since survived colonialism, war and Nature—a stubborn relic of history in a hostile environment that wanted it gone.

Political machinations

David Frazier

Bertil Linter’s book on the Wa isn’t merely a fascinating look at a little-penetrated hermit kingdom; it’s also a case study of how China manipulates the politics of its border zones in pursuit of global ambitions.

Off the rails

Edith Mirante

Clare Hammond, author of On the Shadow Tracks, did not love the trains she rode. But her exploration of Myanmar’s dilapidated tracks reveals the link between the railways and the military’s power, while documenting the lives on and around ramshackle trains.

Love and revolution

Amy Webber

The poet Kyi Zaw Aye once asked, “How can we encounter true love in times of war?” Since the 2021 coup in Myanmar, some couples have been trying to find their own answers.

Tales from the Shan hills

Kenneth Barrett

In Maymyo Days: Forgotten Lives of a Burma Hill Station, Stephen Simmons does not dwell on the crusty stragglers of the Raj. He chooses to focus on those who made a lasting contribution of some kind, whether tangible, cultural or political.

Mommie dearest

David Scott Mathieson

Law-Yone’s penchant for the telling anecdote, the observation of, and connectivity to, the seemingly incidental, and the insight into the public and private personality makes this book a seminal contribution.

So close, too far away

Peixuan Xie

Mae Sot, Thailand, provides the anonymity a Burmese peace activist needs, although not without guarded boundaries and precarious undercurrents to navigate

Reading Ma Sandar in Chiang Mai

Joe Freeman

It is especially important to pay attention to Myanmar right now, but the future of Burmese-language instruction in English is uncertain. Joe Freeman speaks with linguist Justin Watkins about his work.

The dog days of Burma

Daniel Benowitz

When Oliver Slow writes that the Myanmar military must return to the barracks, he presumably means they should only be in the barracks. Readers may wonder if they were ever so confined.

The road to Muse

Bryony Lau

What happens in a border town when the border is closed? Bryony Lau travels to Muse in Myanmar’s northeast and reflects on its history and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Caught in between

Rosalie Metro

While the Myanmar military is responsible for the violence, Kaamil Ahmed points out in I Feel No Peace: Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas and Rivers that more parties are complicit in the exploitation and abuse of Rohingya refugees.

K Za Win

Poetry by the late K Za Win