An exploration of the possibility of the translatability of lived experience between the personal and the political.

One of Burma's foremost poets writes daring, experimental poems that combine light-hearted word play with deadly serious subjects.

'Bones That Crow' is an anthology of contemporary Burmese poets in any language, and includes the work of Burmese poets in exile, in prison and undercover.

For decades Myanmar has been portrayed as a case of good citizen versus bad regime – men in jackboots maintaining a suffocating rule over a majority Buddhist population beholden to the ideals of non-violence and tolerance. But in recent years this narrative has been upended. In June 2012, violence between Buddhists and Muslims erupted in western Myanmar, pointing to a growing divide between religious communities that before had received little attention from the outside world. Attacks on Muslims soon spread across the country, leaving hundreds dead, entire neighbourhoods turned to rubble, and tens of thousands of Muslims confined to internment camps. This violence, breaking out amid the passage to democracy, was spurred on by monks, pro-democracy activists and even politicians. In this gripping and deeply reported account, Francis Wade explores how the manipulation of identities by an anxious ruling elite has laid the foundations for mass violence, and how, in Myanmar’s case, some of the most respected and articulate voices for democracy have turned on the Muslim population at a time when the majority of citizens are beginning to experience freedoms unseen for half a century.

"Burmese light : impressions of the Golden Land" is a photographic introduction to Myanmar, the country behind the Bamboo Curtain. Stunning images by award-winning photographer Hans Kemp, paired with a witty and insightful text by well-known author Tom Vater, take the reader on a journey through a fascinating country slowly but steadily emerging from a long period of involuntarily isolation. The 200-page book features all the country's famous sights, its colorful people and its multitude of customs, and leaves the reader with only one wish: to pay a visit to this amazing Golden Land.

One of Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2015 An epic, multigenerational story of courage and sacrifice set in a tropical dictatorship, The Rebel of Rangoon captures a gripping moment of possibility in Burma (Myanmar) Once the shining promise of Southeast Asia, Burma in May 2009 ranks among the world's most repressive and impoverished nations. Its ruling military junta seems to be at the height of its powers. But despite decades of constant brutality-and with their leader, the Nobel Peace Prize-laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, languishing under house arrest-a shadowy fellowship of oddballs and misfits, young dreamers and wizened elders, bonded by the urge to say no to the system, refuses to relent. In the byways of Rangoon and through the pathways of Internet cafes, Nway, a maverick daredevil; Nigel, his ally and sometime rival; and Grandpa, the movement's senior strategist who has just emerged from nineteen years in prison, prepare to fight a battle fifty years in the making. When Burma was still sealed to foreign journalists, Delphine Schrank spent four years underground reporting among dissidents as they struggled to free their country. From prison cells and safe houses, The Rebel of Rangoon follows the inner life of Nway and his comrades to describe that journey, revealing in the process how a movement of dissidents came into being, how it almost died, and how it pushed its government to crack apart and begin an irreversible process of political reform. The result is a profoundly human exploration of daring and defiance and the power and meaning of freedom.

Here are the voices and visions from a world having need of an angel—most of all an angel of reality to help us see the Earth again, its people, and objects, to hear its tragic drone, and to recognize what it is to be human. The writing ranges from Burma/Myanmar to South Asia, China, Central America, Africa, and the U.S. From the oration of Frederick Douglass in the 1850s and the reportage of Walter F. White in the Jim Crow South during the 1920s. From the Apache genocide in the American Southwest, to the displacement of Rohingya in Burma, and the massacre of Tutsi in Rwanda. Despite the dark reality that the authors record, we recognize, as artist Claudia Bernardi says, “that life is worth living, no matter what." In the Silence is the Winter 2022 (34:2) issue of Mānoa. It features photographs of the Rohingya people by George Constantine. Alok Bhalla is a scholar, translator, and poet based in Delhi, India. He is a fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, and editor of the four-volume Stories about the Partition of India. Penny Edwards is professor of Southeast Asian studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include Kingdoms of the Mind: Burma’s Fugitive Prince and the Fracturing of Empire. ko ko thett is a bilingual poet and author of collections of poetry and poetry translations in Burmese and English. Kenneth Wong teaches Burmese language at the University of California, Berkeley. His short stories, essays, and poetry translations have appeared widely. Frank Stewart is a writer, translator, and founding editor of Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing.