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Summary
Summary
Once a royal kingdom and then part of the British Empire, Burma long held sway in the Western imagination as a mythic place of great beauty. In recent times, Burma has been torn apart and isolated by one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. Now, Zoya of the, a young member ofthe Karen tribe in Burma, bravely comes forward with her astonishingly vivid story of growing up in the idyllic green mansions of the jungle, and her violent displacement by the military junta that has controlled the country for almost a half century. This same cadre has also relentlessly hunted Zoya and her family across borders and continents.Undauntedtells of Zoya's riveting adventures, from her unusual childhood in a fascinating remote culture, to her years on the run, to her emergence as an activist icon.Named for a courageous Russian freedom fighter of World War II, Zoya was fourteen when Burmese aircraft bombed her peaceful village, forcing her and her family to flee through the jungles to a refugee camp just over the border in Thailand. After being trapped in refugee camps for years in poverty and despair, her family scattered: as her father became more deeply involved in the struggle for freedom, Zoya and her sister left their mother in the camp to go to a college in Bangkok to which they had won scholarships. But even as she attended classes, Zoya, the girl from the jungle, had to dodge police and assume an urban disguise, as she was technically an illegal immigrant and subject to deportation. Although, following graduation, she obtained a comfortable job with a major communications company in Bangkok, Zoya felt called back to Burma to help her mother and her people, millions of whom still have to live on the run today in order to survive--in fact, more villages have been destroyed in eastern Burma than in Darfur, Sudan.After a plot to kill her was uncovered, in 2004 Zoya escaped to the United Kingdom, where she began speaking at political conferences and demonstrations--a mission made all the more vital by her father's assassination in 2008 by agents of the Burmese regime. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Zoya has become a powerful spokesperson against oppressors, undaunted by dangers posed to her life. Zoya's love of her people, their land, and their way of life fuels her determination to survive, and inUndauntedshe hauntingly brings to life a lost culture and world, putting faces to the stories of the numberless innocent victims of Burma's military
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this aptly named memoir, Phan, the international coordinator at the Burma Campaign UK, lets her life story document the ongoing struggle for democracy against Burma's military dictatorship. Born in the jungles of eastern Burma, Phan is Karen, one of the country's eight main ethnic groups, a people for whom "persecution," she writes, "has been going on for centuries." Vividly told, her eventful story moves from childhood idyll in a village of bamboo huts to that of a teenage refugee running from the Burmese Army towards the Burma-Thailand border-and eventually to an academic scholarship in Great Britain. Every danger brings a lesson about the resiliency of family, the necessity for education, or the fragility of hope. As in American slave narratives, Phan gives voice to the voiceless. Not surprisingly, Phan evokes anxiety and urgency in moments of possible despair, including historical travelogue and chiding political analysis. Such tonal shifts contextualize Phan's message, but can give the narrative a disjointed feel. Still, in Phan's memories of her influential father and the logic in her expanding political awareness, readers will find a compelling wake-up call. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Phan has become the face of Burma's ongoing struggle for freedom from dictatorship, and a cessation of cultural and ethnic annihilation. Here she shares a compelling story of the persecution experienced by her own ethnic group, the Karen, and how her life changed drastically when her family's idyllic village was bombed by government troops in 1995, when she was 14. For the next 10 years she, her mother, and her siblings migrated back and forth over the Burmese-Thailand border from one refugee camp to another, each nestled deep in the jungle. Her father, a pro-democracy leader working with the opposition, was always in hiding, only visiting them sporadically. Phan earned a scholarship to a university in Bangkok, and eventually emigrated from there to the UK, where she attended university and joined the Burma Campaign UK, determined to take up her father's cause. Since his assassination in 2008, Phan has become an outspoken advocate for Burma's freedom, enlisting many supporters with her fervent call to end the ongoing genocide and terrorism, and hoping to be able to return home.--Donovan, Deborah Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Named Zoya by her father for the Soviet resistance fighter Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who was executed by the Germans in World War II, Phan, a member of the Karen people of Myanmar, has a destiny that seems fated. The daughter of the general secretary of the Karen National Union (KNU) and a resistance fighter, Phan grew up at the heart of a struggle for democracy. Forced to flee her village at the age of 14 after an attack by the Burmese army, Phan and her family lived in refugee camps in Thailand (readers will want also to read Phan's first memoir, Little Daughter, for more details on this time). Phan eventually earned a charity scholarship to study in Bangkok, then studied in the United Kingdom and claimed full refugee status. Despite threats to her life and the assassination of her father, Phan has actively spoken out about the repression of the Karen people living in Burma. She has met with senior politicians worldwide and serves as the Burma Campaign UK's international coordinator for human rights. VERDICT Her memoir will well serve readers who seek to learn about the Karen plight in Myanmar, which is covered more broadly and deeply here than in Phan's first memoir.-Patti C. McCall, Albany Molecular Research Inc., NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
INTRODUCTION There are two Burmas. One you may have heard of, where a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, leads our struggle for democracy against one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world, where monks marched for freedom but were met with bullets, and where victims of the 2008 cyclone were denied international aid by the military dictatorship. But the other Burma, the Burma I am from, is less well known. I hope that through my story you will learn about this other Burma. I am Karen, one of the ethnic groups in Burma. Out of sight in the mountains and jungles of eastern Burma, the Burmese dictatorship has been trying to wipe out my people. Millions have been forced to flee their homes. More villages have been destroyed in Burma than in Darfur in Sudan, but the world has seemed content to ignore our suffering. It's been going on for more than sixty years. Before the Burmese Army came to our land, I had a happy childhood. Karen land in eastern Burma seemed like paradise to me, a green mansion in which I played with my sister and brothers. Both my parents were activists in the struggle for democracy, and their work kept them very busy, but they loved us dearly. But when I was fourteen years old my village was attacked by the Burmese Army. I had to run for my life, knowing that capture would mean being raped, used as slave labor, and then killed. After weeks of hiding in the jungle my family ended up in refugee camps in Thailand, which seemed more like prison camps, surrounded by barbed wire. I am luckier than many of my fellow Karen. I managed to escape Burma twice after my home was attacked and to escape the refugee camps on the Burma-Thailand border, winning a scholarship to study in the United Kingdom. Though I am safer now, living in London, I still don't feel completely safe. I am on a hit list because of my political activities, and three attempts have been made on my life. The regime has not been successful in killing me, but they assassinated my father. He had been elected leader of the Karen resistance movement and was living in a small town on the Burma-Thailand border. On February 14, 2008, Valentine's Day, he was shot dead in his home by gunmen sent by the dictatorship. My father named me Zoya after a female Russian resistance fighter, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who had fought the Nazis during World War II. When I was born he prayed that I would grow up to help my people in their struggle for freedom and democracy. I have done my best to fulfill his wishes. I now work with Burma Campaign UK, an organization campaigning for human rights, democracy, and development in Burma. Burma is a beautiful country, full of people from diverse cultures and religions who want to live side by side in peace, different but equal. Like the Tibetans, whose indigenous culture is being systematically eradicated, the Karen lived for centuries in a peaceable isolation. Now we have been forced into a diaspora, our villages destroyed, our lives and traditions uprooted from the land in which they are anchored and to which our spirits are still tied. I am in constant communication with friends who still hope to return to Burma from the refugee camps on the Burma-Thailand border, with concerned humanitarians working to get aid into the interior where impoverished Karen and other minorities are still preyed on by Burmese soldiers. I return to Burma often in my dreams and thoughts, remembering my dear parents and their determination to help our people and our fight for democracy. I want to take you there, too, so you can feel the preciousness of our beautiful culture, so that you recognize in our struggle the struggle of all people for dignity, self-determination, and freedom. The generals ruling Burma don't want you to know what they are doing. They have tried to kill me to stop me speaking out. Please don't let them have their way. Read on . . . © 2010 Zoya Phan Excerpted from Undaunted: My Struggle for Freedom and Survival in Burma by Zoya Phan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
About Burma | p. xi |
Burma Timeline | p. xiii |
Introduction | p. xv |
Chapter 1 Grandfather Bent Back | p. 1 |
Chapter 2 The Almost-Dying | p. 11 |
Chapter 3 Touching the Pig | p. 23 |
Chapter 4 The Bamboo People | p. 33 |
Chapter 5 The Flower Children | p. 37 |
Chapter 6 River of Darkness | p. 45 |
Chapter 7 Victory Field | p. 52 |
Chapter 8 The River Spirits | p. 59 |
Chapter 9 The Naming | p. 64 |
Chapter 10 Paradise Lost | p. 73 |
Chapter 11 Sleeping Dog Mountain | p. 80 |
Chapter 12 The River of Burning Tears | p. 91 |
Chapter 13 Under the Big Tree | p. 102 |
Chapter 14 No Refuge | p. 117 |
Chapter 15 A Time of Darkness | p. 121 |
Chapter 16 The Journey Home | p. 129 |
Chapter 17 The New Village | p. 137 |
Chapter 18 The Mission Song | p. 147 |
Chapter 19 Running from Bullets | p. 155 |
Chapter 20 Refugees Again | p. 165 |
Chapter 21 Mae La Camp: Two Tests | p. 174 |
Chapter 22 Bangkok Daze | p. 182 |
Chapter 23 City Girls | p. 190 |
Chapter 24 Back into the Land of Evil | p. 200 |
Chapter 25 The Reawakening | p. 208 |
Chapter 26 Children of Darkness | p. 214 |
Chapter 27 London, with Bwa Bwa | p. 223 |
Chapter 28 In the Footsteps of My Father | p. 233 |
Chapter 29 In the Firing Line | p. 248 |
Chapter 30 The Road Home | p. 252 |
Chapter 31 The Final Cut | p. 260 |
Statement by Zoya Phan and Her Sisters and Brothers for Her Father's Funeral | p. 265 |
Epilogue | p. 267 |
The Phan Foundation | p. 271 |
Other Organizations Working to Help Free Burma | p. 273 |
Acknowledgments | p. 275 |
Index | p. 277 |