Bill Richardson wiki--Richardson went to Insein Prison in 1995 and visited U Win Tin, among others.
The visit is described in U Win Tin's memoir, What's That?  A Human Hell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Richardson

My U Win Tin translation project--

My Project translating U Win Tin's memoir, What's That?  A Human Hell.
Photos and translation copyright KMKaung--
I can only work on this 2-4 hours per week.
So far am about 1/6th into the 300 page book, but it is single space in a very small Burmese font.
I also add footnotes or end notes as I go along, but it will all need to be typed up.

I can't do literary translation on a computer.

Need time to think.

Of course, I've read it all the way through the first time, but I usually read each chapter through and make notes before I translate.

Anyone who thinks they can do a good translation fast should give it a try.

I am sick of journalists asking for excerpts and so once and for all I will say here, my US-based copyright/intellectual property lawyer has advised me not to give out a single copy. 

I make hard copies as I go along and keep in different places.

So it's good I don't have a typed copy except to show the first-- pages to a prospective literary agent.

So if you are not an agent, don't ask me.

I have realized that since I read U Win Tin a lot now, I am picking up his brusque manner of speaking. 

So they can all go to hell.


KMKaung
5-6-2014
www.kmkaung.com

My She-Monkey poster from 1995--

My reading from 1995 and poster made by my friend, when my She-Monkey script was among the Pew Finalists.
Philadelphia. 

Pew Charitable Trusts give arts grants of $30,000 each in the tri-state area of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

In three tries, I was a Finalist twice.

The first and third entries were in Literature.  The second entry was a Crafts year.  I had at that point not made any crafts save for sewing, but I entered anyway.  The winner was a Hmong refugee who wrote that she had to sew quilts for money, but would like to make a big piece, "to be remembered by."

By the fourth year (1997) I had already moved to DC, and so was not eligible to apply.

For the She-Monkey finalist position (among the first 76 of about 750 entries)
my friends bought me a cake with my book title on it. 

Shee-Monkey is a book-length poem based on the Chinese folk novel Monkey, but with a female protagonist and a human rights story.

KMKaung
www.kmkaung.com
5-5-2014

Congratulations Dr Min Zaw Oo--

http://scar.gmu.edu/people/min-zaw-oo

Announcement--

Announcement--

Last night I got the idea that I would like to put out (publish) a collection of my dear cousin, Ko Ko Min Shin's short stories in English.

So if you collected some from Shumuwa 1950s "On the Road"--Lann Paw Hmar series, pl send me pdfs that are readable or a doc. in Zawgyi font.

I have Not Every Needy Poor a Thief, which is based on his idea, that he may not have had time to write it down in Burmese.  In any case it has his true authentic voice, which I can hear when I re-read it now.

The second one is of course Not Ordained by Fate--Saung Lu Lin's audio version, which I will translate into English.

I am also looking for a photo of Ko Min Shin.

I know for a fact that he wrote at least 2 other stories, as I remember reading them--

these were

--one on birth control, it really was not that graphic at all, that Ko Ko wanted me to translate very much, but my mother would not let me.

She said the subject matter was not appropriate for a young woman.  I was about 18 at the time.

--The other was about a bus driver, having a very rough day, also drawn from life.

This one, Bus Driver, I adapted into a radio play and even delivered it in an envelope at the BBS (Burma Broadcasting Service) gate on Prome Road, for Mr. Percy Loo Nee, head of the English section.

But I suppose Mr. Loo Nee was too afraid to produce it on air, so I never heard from him again.

But even when I was already in the States, he would keep asking about me with my children who took English tuition with him, "How's your mother, the playwright."

At that time I had not written a play yet, but eventually I did--Shaman.

I wrote it in two weeks for a competition.

Shaman is about a spirit spouse or nat kadaw who was abused as a child and has multiple personalities, which manifest themselves as some of the Burmese 37 nats.

When Shaman was still a one paragraph concept called Flashback, it won a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Award for $3000.

In 1996, it was a Pew finalist script and in about 2003, Edward Albee, renowned playwright Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? and other plays, read it and said, it is "lovely work."

My friend Peggy Fleming produced and directed and cast a script-in-hand reading in 2003 at her home in DC.  I provided the costumes.  I will try and scan the photos.

I currently have to convert Shaman into a novel.  I don't think it will be too difficult to do.  I have already converted it into a screenplay.

But--always short of time--
no matter, I will make myself a life extender (nyaung htauk).

KMKaung
5-5-2014

My short story collection--Dancing like a Peacock, Koel Bird-- Kindle + print editions

Kyi May Kaung

2. My short story collection-
   
   Dancing like a Peacock & Koel Bird, also includes Little Transparent Fetus Buddha.
   
   Print (soft cover) + Kindle editions
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Peacock-Bird-Border-Stories-ebook/dp/B00JWZSL3C

My novella The Lovers, Kindle edition

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lovers-Novellas-K-M-Kaung-Kaung-ebook/dp/B00JX8NZRU

My Black Rice connection--

The Black Rice connection.

My cousin, the late U Min Shin, winner of the 1962 short story collection prize in Burma, was the eldest brother of Ko Too, on whose life experience Black Rice is very loosely based.

Once I changed his skin color, everything in the story changed, thus only the in the jungle execution, and the Delta ambush (based on a real one also, in which Uncle Cho's son-in-law, U Wa Maung, a navy officer, died)

are real.  The rest is all fictional fabrication.

Here are the links where you can buy print or Kindle editions of Black Rice and my other recently published short stories.

1.    No Crib for a Bed and Other Stories, Kindle Edition
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JW2ZD40
No Crib for a Bed,  print edition
https://www.createspace.com/4768879?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026
2.    The Lovers, print edition
https://www.createspace.com/4767856?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026
3.     Black Rice, print edition
https://www.createspace.com/4232789?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026Black Rice, Kindle Editionhttp://www.amazon.com/Black-Rice-Novella-K-Kaung/dp/0615797520
4.     Dancing like a Peacock and Koel Bird
My two stories, Dancing like a Peacock and Koel Bird are also available on Create Space, print edition.  Published by Words Sounds and Images--

A seven year old girl is sent off across the border to earn a living and send money home to Burma.  A computer expert finds--

https://www.createspace.com/pub/simplesitesearch.search.do?sitesearch_query=K+Kaung+dancing+like+a+peacock&sitesearch_type=STORE

I found my late cousin Ko Min Shin's short story, Not Ordained by Fate

Wow--Big Happiness today.

I found new audio version of my first cousin Ko Ko (Ko Min Shin's) short story--Kan Ma Hpan (Not Ordained by Fate).

I did not even know he wrote it or that he won the 1962 Short Story Collection Prize till now, so I am so pleased and moved to hear it.

Big thank you to the excellent reader and producer.

http://nwaymoresaung.blogspot.sg/2013/11/blog-post.html

Of course, I always knew that my cousin was an excellent observer and writer, and in this exquisite story, Min Shin, like the best writers, shows how people change.

Here he does it in only 18 pages.

In this case it is in the negative direction, for no other reason than "it comes easy"--

I won't say more because I wish you to listen.

It's also good if you are working on your Burmese having been born and brought up overseas.

Dedicated to my cousin U Min Shin, who died too soon, his wife Daw Khin Sein, his daughter Khine Khine, who died in a plane accident of their way home from Bagan, and all my Kamayut relatives.

You lived short, colorful lives but it was sure intense.

Love,

K.K
KMKaung
Washington, DC.
5-4-2014

Women, and men? you are more beautiful than you think

http://www.trueactivist.com/gab_gallery/you-are-more-beautiful-than-you-think/

Where street art meets nature--ingenious--

http://dashburst.com/street-art-meets-nature-pictures/

Chinese economy still dominated by the state--

Still dominated by the state--

The reforms have been on since 1978.

WTO since 2001, when I remember everyone so happy abt it.

Here quote fr below:

"When China acceded to the World Trade Organization, or WTO, in December 2001, it did so after all members of the world trading community agreed that, as a transitioning economy, China still operated on nonmarket principles. Because of its prevalent anti-competitive industrial policies and the contradictions between state control and market mechanisms built into its fundamental economic institutions, China’s economy could skew the commercial competitive environment for the entire global economy. As a result, the agreement provided member countries a means to take into account China’s nonmarket economy status for the purposes of monitoring and enforcing trade rules set under the WTO and other international agreements."

Assessing China’s Economic Reform Agenda

www

Rohingya Genocide Press Release- full official text.

Rohingya Genocide Press Release-
full official text.

United Nations expert says there are “elements of genocide” against Myanmar’s Rohingya

28 April 2014, London

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Tomás Ojéa Quintana has said “There are elements of genocide in Rakhine with respect to Rohingya.”

Speaking at the London Conference on Decades of State-Sponsored Destruction of Myanmar’s Rohingya, Ojéa added “It is crimes against humanity. The possibility of a genocide needs to be discussed. This conference is very important as it does just that.”

The conference marked the first time top legal experts, academics and activists have met at the London School of Economics And Political Science (LSE) and initiated the public debate on whether the persecution of the Rohingya by Myanmar should be considered genocide under international law.

Other speakers included Professor Daniel Feierstein, President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars; and Professor Gianni Tognoni, General Secretary, Permanent People’s Tribunal, Rome.

International legal experts presented definitions of genocide, mechanisms and models for justice. Leading human rights researchers and academics as well as Rohingya refugees offered evidence of decades of systematic persecution of Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar.
Dr Zarni, chair of the conference and visiting fellow at the LSE, made a case for what he called “the slow burning genocide” of Myanmar’s Rohingya since 1978 based on three years of extensive archival research and interviews with military officers and Rohingya victims.

The conference concluded with a call for the immediate end to Myanmar’s persecution of Rohingya, which it says amounts to genocide. The message is supported by dozens of concerned individuals and organisations including: Prudentienne Seward, a survivor of the Rwanda genocide against Tutsis and Founder of PAX (Peace for the African Great Lakes), Professor Noam Chomsky of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University Professor Gayatria Chakravoty Spivak, Oxford University Professor Emeritus and founder of Refugee Studies Barbara Harrell-Bond, London School of Economics Professor Mary Kaldor and Executive Director Youk Chhang of the Documentation Center of Cambodia.

The call notes, “Every aspect of their (Rohingya) lives, including marriage, childbirth and ability to work, is severely restricted. Their right to identity and citizenship is officially denied; in other words, they are not recognized as humans before the law… Rohingya are profoundly vulnerable to all forms of oppression and atrocities.”

It points out that alone of all the country’s more than 130 ethnic groups, only Rohingya are subjected to a policy of forced population control. By denying the Rohingya legal existence, designing extensive structures of discrimination and depriving a large segment of Rohingya population even basic humanitarian services such as provision of water, food and medicine the Myanmar government and people are destroying an entire people.

“Our people have been subject to a national policy of discrimination, persecution and eventual destruction at the hands of security forces and local extremists for the past nearly 40 years. I appeal to the world not to let another Rwanda repeat for Rohingya,” said Tun Khin, President of BROUK, which sponsors legislation at the US Congress calling for the end to persecution of Rohingya.

“The United Nations has taken 20 years to apologise for its failure to recognise and prevent the Rwandan genocide; the international community should not repeat the same mistake in Myanmar,” said Prudentienne Seward.

#end text#

Contacts:
Dr Zarni : fanon2005@gmail.com
Tun Khin: tunkhin80@gmail.com

Now scramble for U Win Tin's intellectual legacy begins --

Kyi May Kaung

15 minutes ago near Washington, DC

Now the scramble for U Win Tin's (intellectual) legacy begins.

I am reminded of what my mentor Josef Silverstein wrote in 60s, that he suspected some of Bogyoke Aung San's last letters was forged by Dr Maung Maung, to say Bogyoke believed in socialism.

It is very likely, as Dr Maung Maung even forged/wrote an entire constitution all on his own, the way Ko Ko Maung (U Chit Hlaing) wrote Burmese Way to Socialism. (FYI, USA Federalist Papers were written by about 5 people, incld Madison and Jefferson, published as the writing went on and debated quite a bit in Phildadelphia and in print. Benjamin Franklin had a printing press.)
--
That article by Silverstein was in Asian Survey, look for it.

Silverstein gave all his back articles to The Burma Fund, spending a bundle on postage, but when they moved premises in 2004, they hired an intern (radio womanizer's daughter) to help tear out the articles and junk the rest. I don't know where all the material is now.

I never told Sayagyi Silverstein as it would break his heart.

Sayagyi is very yoe siin te, straight forward, and in 2011?? he was still hopeful and happy that Burma was democratizing--and as I disagreed--

but I must call him.

KMKaung
4-29-2014

From Facebook, U Win Tin got his national ID in Burma 3 days before he died!!!

•  It means he was identity or state-less before it was issued!

  20 minutes ago · Unlike · 1
• 

  Kyi May Kaung OMG--stateless in his own country he loved so much and gave so much for.!!!!!

  19 minutes ago · Like
• 

  Kyi May Kaung I really respect the families who looked after him all these years, decades, and we should say Thank you, and see that no harm befalls them--such as property being taken over, you know these guys.

  18 minutes ago · Like
• Well SPDC and the current government marked U Win Tin as persona non grata. The latter gave way only for the people's immense support.

  18 minutes ago · Unlike · 1
• 

  Kyi May Kaung they shld be sued for damages by win tin foundation -- and proceeds given to other victims of the regime. You know Terry Anderson? won millions fr Iranian frozen assets overseas--

  16 minutes ago · Like
• We were briefed at the University by S1 General KN that UWT was a Communist because he read so many Marxist books. I joked that   could also be accused like that as the RU Library has so many such books. And S1 confiscated UWT's room at Lanmadaw government qrs. It was very unfair.

  15 minutes ago · Edited · Unlike · 1
• 

  Kyi May Kaung oi shit,

  14 minutes ago · Like
• 

  Kyi May Kaung When --which year did the S1 briefing take place.

  13 minutes ago · Like
• 
  

   It may be 1990 or 1991. It occurred at the Educational Research Bureau within the Institute of Education Building.

  12 minutes ago · Unlike · 1
• 

  Kyi May Kaung Thank you. I am keeping comments on file as I am translating What's That?

  12 minutes ago · Like

Two classic Sci Fi novels and prescient futuristic visions

I finished reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

It is beautifully written and imagined, and is a bit like my other favorite, A Canticle for St. Liebowitz, which I have read twice.

Fahrenheit 451 is poetic and sparse in the writing, but not in the brutal, totalitarian, anti-intellectual world it depicts.

It's strange that I should be reading it the same week I went to see Book Thief, but these serendipidous things often happen to me.

I had F 451 a long time, but I only started reading it about 2 or 3 weeks ago.

It's definitely a classic and I am going to keep my rather large print copy forever.

KMKaung
4-28-2014

Arya from Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire--

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Arya_Stark

My review of U Win Tin's What's That? A Human Hell-

My review of U Win Tin's What's That?  A Human Hell, in Truthout

http://www.truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/89101-a-review-of-u-win-tin-whats-that-a-human-hell-in-burmese?Itemid=228article

So happy--by KMKaung

I am so happy I don't need to live my life all over again.

No more not being told of the facts of life in detail nor in a timely manner.
No more preying male servants.
No more unwelcome adolescence.
No more getting married and having children, no matter how wonderful.
No more in laws, sigh sigh, what a relief.

No more the stink of the clogged up lavatories at the Inst of Eco.
No more only one map of the world to look at my whole life.
No more stinking The Monkey Cries Tree.
No more Burmese culture.
No more pretend pretend till your dying day.

No more thinking how to leave.
No more adapting and trying to survive in a new country.
No more calculus.

No more radio station from hell with its jerks, transgendered big bust women, womanizers and air heads.

No more media and interviews and being politically correct, and truthfully incorrect and diplomatic.

Now more reaching over my right ear to touch my left one.  No more contorting myself like  a pretzel, flung around, twirled around, twisted, boiled, then baked.

No more conferences and seminars.
No more simultaneous translation of
essential junk and lies.  No more reading the news under pressure.

No more make up.
No more hair dye.
No more hair dresser.

And one day I ran into J. and asked how Pearl was, and he said, "She died last Monday."

"Oh.

I hope her passing was peaceful."

"Oh yes, oh yes," J said.

Pearl once married to such a rich Mexican, she lived in San Miguelle de Allende http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Miguel_de_Allende
Her in laws bred horses and her brothers in law and her husband rode around in red livery.

No more feeling so guilty as that day the snow just stopped for one day, and I went grocery shopping,
black crusted snow caked up in piles 3 feet high on cleared paths
one of the most affluent and well-educated
counties in the USA.

And looking over the green pineapples and the not ready yet mangoes and seeing
J hanging helplessly on his shopping cart.

And being unable to go help him as so shaky myself.

No more.

And J the head of the Cuban section, and wrote a best selling book about an earthquake that still reads well.

And J and Pearl on 9/12, setting out by Greyhound bus to take a look at newly re-named Ground Zero because,

"Well, that's his job," and both already about 80.

And Ground Zero still probably smoking and smelling of
Death and dead people.

And Pearl telling me, "Today I fired my doctor
because he does nothing but keep giving me medicines, and making me feel bad.

And now I am going to a Tibetan healer."

And you wonder why I am selective about who I will befriend.

Well, just look at them.

KMKaung
4-28-2014

Sherpas on strike at cut throat Everest business

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/27/us-nepal-everest-insight-idUSBREA3Q06720140427