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Maybe restrained because it's ostensibly about her mother-- I knew Louisa Benson and her brother Jonathan Benson well. Jonathan was my classmate from 5th grade on, and Louisa my classmate in English Literature class in 2nd year of college at Rangoon Univ. At that time Louisa had just come back from college in USA, perhaps due to running out of funding. She looked very sad and wore the same outfit daily. I met up with Louisa and her husband again in the 1990s, when we were doing Burma activism. The first thing she told me was how her brother Johnny had died in America. That was also tragic, as in Burma I always thought of Jonathan was the one most likely to succeed, open, friendly, kind, bright. And according to Louisa, he did succeed before he became ill. Our mutual friend in CA (also now deceased) also told me about how Louisa had to flee the government soldiers come to arrest or kill her in the jungle after they had just assassinated her first husband Lin Htin. My brother knew the army officer (also graduate of the same Methodist English High School) who was in the unit ordered to chase her. He told my brother he and his men were only a few days behind Louisa. It's a very sad story, and Louisa was a lovely person. She did a lot for the Democracy Movement and for her Karen people and also found me the radio job in DC broadcasting to Burma. That I got harassed by the Burmese jerk boss had nothing to do with her. It's a pity Charmaine whom I have never met, was not able to write this story as vividly as her first novel about the Cathars, which seemed to me even to be a bit over the top. I wish she could have forgotten it was her mother she was writing about, and fictionalized more, but it must have been difficult as her father is still alive. Maybe she should have approached it as a real fiction (novel) and published it under a pseudonym if she was concerned about her family. All writers face this dilemma. I noticed it the first time I wrote a love scene with characters based on my aunt and uncle who in my view had an ideal marriage. I told my aunt what I was writing, and she did not object nor stop me. At the time I was writing this autobiographical novel, my mother and aunt and uncle were all still alive. We all should know the story of Tennessee William's play A Hard Day's Journey into Night, which was said to have remained in his agent's locker until his mother died. I did have a problem with Craig's writing. In first para she used "approximately" twice, in an unusual way--I don't know how one "approximately" sticks one's foot out, and I have photos of my mother and the competitors in that very first beauty pageant, which was on March 1, 1962, the even of the March 2 coup. The other runner up was a small woman, I mean petite in stature, Elizabeth Soe Yin-- who happened to be Ne Win's brother-in-law's younger sister. Of E. and later movie star Wa Wa Win Shwe--Miss Bright Gold Very Bright Gold, I remember they had photos taken of themselves with longyis wrapped around their breasts to look like strapless gowns. Louisa had an innate dignity and never did anything silly like that. Kyi May Kaung |
