Yangon Weather Forecast, Burma

Short stories in review

THE modern short story is a wonderful way of expressing life concisely and in all its varieties. In our age, where people seem to prefer “life-style” to living real lives, the short story is a way of bringing people back to reality. It is therefore a pity that in many countries today, a decline in the reading of short stories has occurred as television and cinema has replaced monthly and weekly magazines for many people. This is happily not yet the case in Myanmar where the short story still thrives.

The two volumes of Myanmar short stories: Stories from Her Heart (2009) by Khin Hnin Yu and Selected Myanmar Short Stories (2009), translated by Ma Thanegi are a mere taste of what is available. But for those of us who cannot read Myanmar with facility they are essential entrees into this vast literature.

They provide insights into Myanmar life that are unavailable in other media and show sidelights of life in villages and towns that many readers will never visit or experience.

Ma Thanegi is a skilled translator. It takes someone with a mastery of colloquial English as well as everyday Burmese adequately, indeed, accurately, to transfer the liveliness of Burmese prose into genuine English idiom. This she does extremely well.

Selected Myanmar Short Stories is a compendium of 22 different authors and includes 25 stories, originally published between 1933 and at least the 1990s, if not more recently.

Hence, they provide interesting insights in to changing social mores and manners as people have faced the challenges of living in a country transformed from a capitalist colony through socialist autarky to today’s market economy.

However, many of the stories do not concern the consequences of social and economic change, but the continuities of life as it is lived regardless of circumstances. The fact that Ma Thanegi can fit 25 stories into 244 pages is testimony to the parsimony of the Myanmar short story genre. Like the best of American or British short story writers, such as the great O. Henry, they are pithy, precise, concise, and often come with an unexpected twist.

Take the first story translated in the Selected volume. Theikpan Maung Wa’s “Marriage” will be familiar to anyone who has ever been married, whether happily, unhappily, or most probably like the curate’s egg.

In a mere three pages he captures the essence of many a marriage encapsulated in the Myanmar expression that the holy bands are like “lips and teeth”, rather than the blander “partnership” as is usually described as the ideal of Western marriage.

“The Trial” by Pe Myint, originally published in 1988, could happen to any man who has spent too many hours in idle, addled, speculation on a tourist beach, or by any lady tourist who failed to observe the due necessity of a bit of appropriate modesty.

Selected Myanmar Short Stories is handsomely produced. Between each story there is a splendid illustration by various Myanmar painters that evoke aspects of what is to follow. These pictures are worth the price of the book alone.

Ma Thanegi has also provided short biographical sketches of each of the authors she has chosen and these serve as a useful introduction to those who want to read further.

One is that of Khin Hnin Yu, a prolific writer who published 67 novels and over a hundred short stories between 1947 and her death in 2003. She won prestigious state-sponsored literary prizes in 1954, 1961 and 1995.

Like many Myanmar short stories, one can read a typical story by Khin Hnin Yu in various ways. “Maid of the Manor”, first published in 1954, and printed in both volumes under review, is about the different life choices made by two sisters, one who flaunts family and security for an independent life with a new husband and household, while the other clings unhappily to security and perhaps boredom. The stories collected in Stories from Her Heart were selected by the author’s daughter, Mi Kyaw Thaung, who provides an affectionate and informative introduction to the volume. Several of the stories provide sharp insights into familial relationships and the implications for closely knit families as they come up against the distractions and diversions of the larger world. They also deal with the challenges of coping with social change.

Given Khin Hnin Yu’s active life in the midst of some of the most important periods of modern Myanmar’s history, including as an assistant to former Prime Minister U Nu, her stories are worth close study.

Some readers might find the structure of the Myanmar short story puzzling. The translator has done a good job of explaining some terms and phrases that are unknown or perhaps untranslatable into English.

However, occasionally these stories jar because the authors, writing in Myanmar for a Myanmar audience, have assumed the reader understands the conventions of Myanmar social life.

For example, in some stories individuals wander in and out unannounced and unheralded. In an English short story, the author would probably provide an explanation. That is not considered necessary to a Myanmar author or reader who are familiar with a more informal, and some would say less structured, social world.

However, these stories are all worth reading not only for the insights they provide about life in Myanmar, but about the human condition in general no matter where it is lived.

Stories from Her Heart also reprints the original stories in Myanmar in addition to Ma Thanegi’s translations. For those foreigners undertaking the endless challenge of reading Myanmar, the book can be used for study as well as enlightenment and pleasure. Both books will provide good reading for a long monsoon eve. —

Robert H. Taylor is Visiting Professor at the Department of Asian and International Studies at City University of Hong Kong

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