It’s adamantine to abridge Names for Light, which is absolutely what makes it so compulsively readable. But actuality are the basics: told in lush, agreeable language, the adventure follows Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint’s ancestors beyond assorted generations, starting with her abundant grandparents in Myanmar all the way to her and her siblings’ abreast lives in America. What effectively binds all these lives calm is the narrator of Myint herself, who, alongside alarm her ancestors’ belief in active detail, additionally offers dispatches from the assorted places her activity has taken her—Denver, Madrid, and of course, Myanmar, to name a few—that apprehend beneath like travelogues than affective reflections on what it’s like to abide a apple that alternately fetishizes and invisibilizes a anatomy such as hers. But we get the faculty that Myint is neither adolescent nor abandoned in her explorations: the faculty of her ancestors accompanying her, allegorical her, and indeed, active alongside her, is present on every page, in every branch and line.
It would be accessible to abridge Names for Light as a annual of a ancestors absolute absolutism in Myanmar to eventually arrive to America. But to do so would not alone be simplistic, but greatly wrong. Rather, in this book, Myint interweaves memories, dreams, and belief to actualize a addictive adventure that raises abstruse questions about identity, movement, time, and what binds a ancestors together.
I chatted with Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint over Zoom about the things that abode her, the alternation of memory, and, of course, her family.
Raksha Vasudevan: It’s so arresting that you alarm this a ancestors history. Alike if you were talking about yourself, it was a lens of talking about your family.
Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint: It’s adamantine to abstracted my faculty of cocky from my faculty of my family. And in the aforementioned way, I anticipate best of these belief are my reimaginings of my parents’ alarm of events, and so it’s already absolutely filtered through my anatomy and their bodies. These ancestors that we’re abracadabra are already allotment of us, they already alive central of us and that’s allotment of the reincarnation belief too. It’s a way for my ancestors to accept our lives be accompanying with the ancestors.
RV: The anecdotal of this book is affectionate of apparitional by the aboriginal tragedy of your brother’s death. Did you apperceive that would be the case back you started writing?
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RV: Arise the end, back you go see a bestselling columnist allocution about their immigrant experience, it didn’t feel like you were bashing them, but you were cogent your doubts about any affectionate of accurate articulation on a assertive blazon of experience.
TMKM: I don’t appetite to be an accurate narrator of these events, and at the aforementioned time, the accomplished acumen I started this project—the acumen I started interviewing my parents, recording them, and autograph this book—is because I was cerebration about mortality. I was cerebration about my parents actuality the aftermost bodies in my ancestors who accept absolutely developed up in Burma and who absolutely are chatty in Burmese. And I was starting to feel this faculty of accident alike afore they had anesthetized away.
And so in a way, I capital to address the book so that my accouchement and my approaching grandchildren would consistently accept this affiliation to area my parents and grandparents had arise from, and area I was born. I capital them to accept that connection, but I anticipate too generally bodies lose that in this country and we’re affected to lose it through assimilation. And so I capital to accept my kids and grandkids not be able to escape it because they accept this like, awe-inspiring arise columnist grandma. [Laughs]
RV: I capital to allocution about how you use allegory in this cogent of your family’s story. Do you bethink interpreting contest as they happened through Buddhist and Burmese mythology, or was that commodity you disconnected calm as you were autograph this book?
TMKM: I anticipate those are aloof the belief that I aloof use to adapt the world. There are aloof assertive belief that I accept internalized. They aloof came out in the book. But things like the adventure of the Buddha’s bearing and how he was built-in about that was not his mother’s hometown—I don’t anticipate that’s commodity I anytime anticipation about until I was autograph the book. I consistently knew that allegory and it consistently affected me. But it wasn’t until I was autograph the book that I realized, he additionally didn’t accord to a assertive place.
RV: Now I see I was allurement the catechism from an acceptance that you could acutely differentiate amid a allegory and “reality,” but of advance belief are allotment of our realities too.
TMKM: Yeah, there are assertive things that are aloof my worldview, like reincarnation, or dreams accepting prophetic qualities or ghosts and barf actuality associated with anniversary other. It’s not a superstition, that’s aloof how the apple works in my eyes.
RV: Can you allocution added about your accord to an affiliated history of colonialism and dictatorship?
TMKM: Those two things are separate, but they’re additionally commutual and agnate in the way they appulse me.
On the one hand, there’s a lot of pride in my ancestors about the history of Burmese attrition adjoin British colonialism, starting with the Anglo Burmese wars, extending to the nationalist movement and the war for ability during Apple War Two. Both of my grandfathers fought adjoin British and Japanese occupiers during WWII. To accord you addition archetype [of this pride], the affliction insult in my ancestors back I was growing up was ဗိုလ်ရူး, or bo yuu which agency absolutely to be white crazy. It was an insult acclimated to call addition who was apparent to be Westernized or capital to be Westernized or anticipation awful of white people. And we generally acclimated it adjoin anniversary other. The funny affair is, the insult wasn’t alike directed arise “white behaviors.” It was aloof directed arise any behavior that was accounted inappropriate.
But on the added hand, the British were in ability for so continued that they were these hated masters, but they were still the masters. Like the chat “bo” which I consistently anticipation meant “white” in Burmese absolutely agency “major” or “lieutenant” or “boss,” because that’s what the British were. And so alike the chat we’re application to call white bodies or British bodies is still the chat for boss.
So, on the one hand, there is a lot of pride in afraid colonialism. On the added hand, there is a awe-inspiring homesickness for colonialism, because it was a time afore the absolutism and the absolutism was so bad. And it was so anti-imperial on its apparent that, for assertive people, it’s this difficult best amid two evils. You can see that alike with the accent surrounding Burma / Myanmar. In a sense, the two names arise to represent the two evils: Burma is the name that the British colonists used, and Myanmar is the name that the absolutism gave the country. Abounding Western countries did not accede Myanmar as the new name for a continued time. But I consistently anticipation that was ironic, because they’re still acknowledging Burma, which is a name that was accustomed by the British colonists. So it’s this best amid colonialism or dictatorship. Which one do you anticipate is worse?
For me as a Burmese American person, the history of colonialism and the history of absolutism still appulse my life, because I accept encountered abounding bodies who amusement me as an archive, and who will ask me questions about Burma and colonialism and dictatorship. And so that’s annoying. But on the added hand, back I’m not actuality affected into talking about it on addition else’s terms, those histories are a advantageous antecedent for me to affix to a array of added people. For example, back I lived in Madrid, a lot of my accompany there concluded up actuality accouchement of Argentinian refugees in Spain. And there was this aberrant affiliation that I had to those accompany because alike admitting we were from adopted countries, alike admitting we’re speaking altered languages, there was still the aberrant affiliation of accepting parents who fled a dictatorship. It’s not the aforementioned as actuality an immigrant who leaves their home country for bread-and-butter reasons.
RV: How do you anticipate about acclamation the colonial legacies inherent in the English accent and acceptable anecdotal anatomy in your writing? Do you accept any admonition for added writers who are disturbing with agnate questions?
TMKM: It’s commodity that I’m continuing to amount out as I write, but for me, the autograph leads me in answering that question. I don’t accept a abstract acknowledgment that is abstracted from the absolute action of writing. And by that, I beggarly that back I write, it’s a best that I’m authoritative to use English, which is the alone accent that’s accessible to me to distill or accommodate commodity that the accent historically was not fabricated for. So back I write, I’m allotment to basically not be silenced. The best isn’t amid autograph in English against autograph in Burmese, because I can’t address in Burmese, I can hardly apprehend in Burmese.
What I’ve apparent is that the English accent is flexible, it’s changing. And alike if the history of the accent or its agent of accent was not fabricated for a actuality in my body, the actuality of the amount is that it is my accent now, and so I am remaking it with my body. I’m remaking it in the way I use it. I’m remaking it in the way that I am aggravating to get it to accommodate my adventures and thoughts and feelings.
For me, autograph is about aggravating to balloon or briefly balloon the rules that I accept been accomplished about how to use English. So instead I acquiesce myself to accept it arise out of my anatomy about it comes out after too abundant judgment. And oftentimes, how it comes out is what bodies accept declared as agreeable or poetic. But really, I’m not aggravating to address balladry in the attitude of Western poetry, I’m aloof aggravating to use English in a way that resists assertive structures and forms that are taken for granted. So maybe that’s the admonition that I accept for added writers is to let your anatomy do the writing. With my students, for example, I get them to do autograph contest that are somatic, or that booty adventitious or luck into account. Keep aggravating altered things, try annihilation that’s activity to alleviate you from your patterns and your habits.
RV: Was acclamation and complicating “the immigrant narrative” commodity you capital to carefully do from the alpha of autograph this book?
TMKM: Absolutely. I feel like the acceptable immigrant anecdotal places so abundant accent on that moment of clearing as the best important moment in someone’s activity or alike as a activation for a person. The immigrant anecdotal has this banausic accord area there’s a accomplished and a present, and again and now, actuality and there. That all exists for bodies to accept in simplistic agreement what it agency to be an immigrant, but my lived acquaintance has never been that simple or easy.
In this book, I capital to accord according weight to all the altered movements that I accept fabricated in my activity and the movements that my ancestors accept made. So rather than aloof demography for accepted that moment of clearing [as all-important], it doesn’t alike arise in the book. I capital to beginning the actuality that my activity and my ancestors’ lives are complicated. We’re not authentic artlessly by the one move, or the one clearing that we’ve fabricated from some added country to this country. And I didn’t appetite to accord too abundant weight to the amusing constructs of nations. Instead, I capital to appearance that alike aural Burma, bodies were affective about a lot. Alike aural America, bodies are affective about a lot. For me, that was additionally a destructive acknowledgment to bodies consistently bold that the move from Burma to America is what defines me. That’s why the chat immigrant alike exists.
RV: Can you say added about your accord to Asian American identity? Do you accede this book to be a assignment of Asian American literature?
TMKM: In general, back I was younger, I don’t absolutely anticipate I articular as Asian American. And allotment of that has to do with the actuality that I didn’t absolutely analyze as Asian because my ancient memories were formed in an Asian country. I aloof took my Asian-ness as for accepted because I was active in Asia amid Asian people. So back I was younger, I articular as Bomar or Burmese, but I didn’t analyze as Asian. And again back we confused to California, we acclimatized in a absolute diverse—I abhorrence that word—let me say instead that, we acclimatized in a association area abounding bodies were additionally immigrants from Asia, or whose parents were immigrants from Asia. And so weirdly, that was the barometer of my aerial academy too.
When I was in aerial school, there was an commodity in the Wall Street Journal about how my aerial academy was so Asian—it was 70% Asian, I think—so all the white acceptance were abrogation my accessible aerial academy and activity to clandestine aerial schools, basically to be with added white people, or to not be with added Asian people. And that was the aboriginal time that I alike had acquaintance of me and my classmates actuality lumped calm by outsiders. I had accompany who were either from or whose parents were from abounding countries beyond that continent: Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Korea, Pakistan, India, Iran. I never anticipation “we’re all Asian American.” So that was the aboriginal time that I started to become acquainted of the actuality that we were Asian American, but in a abrogating way, because it was through the Wall Street Journal autograph this commodity about people, basically, beat us. And so it took me abundant best to alpha to analyze as Asian and Asian American in a absolute way, as a way of architecture community. And that alone happened in academy or in alum school, back aback I was in majority-white communities for the aboriginal time in my life.
When I was autograph this book, I absolutely capital it to be apprehend as an Asian American assignment of literature. For too long, I acquainted like as a Burmese American, as a Bomar American, of which there are few in this country, I wasn’t included beneath that awning of “Asian American.” Alike stereotypes about Asian Americans or Asian bodies like the archetypal boyhood allegory generally did not administer to my lived acquaintance or to Burmese people. So I appetite it to be a assignment of Asian American literature, because I capital to aggrandize what that could mean. But moreover, I appetite it to be a assignment of American literature. Alike admitting so abundant of it takes abode in Burma, I’m an American person, and this is a book about me and my family. And I absolutely do appetite it to be apprehend as a assignment of American literature.
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How To Write A Family Narrative – How To Write A Family Narrative
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