Ma Ma Lei

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Ma Ma Lei (Burmese: မမလေး; IPA: [ma̰ ma̰ lé]; also known as Journalgyaw Ma Ma Lei) is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest female Burmese writers of the 20th century. She died in 1982 at the age of 65.

1 Novels
2 Short stories
3 Translations
4 External links
5 Notes

[edit] Novels

Ma Ma Lei's novel Not Out of Hate addresses the impact of the West on Burmese culture was translated into both English and French.

Her novel Blood addresses blood relations forged between Japanese and Burmese during World War II. A joint production with the Japanese turned this novel into a film which had its 2003 premiere in Japan. A young Japanese woman visits Burma to find her half-brother, the child of her father, an officer in the Japanese army, and a Burmese mother. Her half-brother initially refuses to have anything to do with her because he believes that his father raped his mother. ^[1]

[edit] Short stories

Ma Ma Lei's short story collections A Slow Stream of Thoughts and Burmese Medicine Tales investigate different aspects of Burma society during the U Nu era and the early Ne Win era. As a realistic fictional depiction of society during a certain era, they bear a distinct resemblance to the work fo the French author Balzac.

In One Blade of Grass Ma Ma Lei depicts a situation where the rich wife of a military officer treats a child servant like a slave or actually more like a household appliance. There's a lot of hyperbole in the treatment of master-servant relations here, but the story does a good job at bringing out the features of oppression that one often finds in countries where income inequalities are extreme.

In Far and Near a young woman tries her hand at managing the family rice mill only to learn about every possible form that government corruption as applied to rice millers can take. There's so much realistic detail the story must be at least partially factual. By the end the government officials seem no better than the rats that gnaw through the rice sacks in search of their plunder.

In Coffee a picture of utter destitution is drawn. Like the story A Little Blade of Grass this story also deals with master-servant relations, but the elderly woman who is the focus of this story doesn't live in the master's house and consume his food. She knows how to defer to the wealth and status of the wealthy neighbors that surround her and cater to their every need, but it does her little good in the end.

A Pretty Face is a satirical story directed at those young women who abandon traditional Burmese dress for western fashions and make-up and those young men who are always working for their own advantage.

Kheimari is about a young girl whose parents die and who is drawn gradually towards life as a Buddhist nun, but once she becomes a nun she is forced into a life as a professional beggar. A popular film was made based on this short story.

This Heat is about the misery and grief of an old unmarried woman who works like a maid doing the work of a wife for her older unmarried father.

In the short story A Slow Stream of Thoughts a woman's husband and her son-in-law both take lesser wives. She writes of all the suffering that the old woman has to bear because of her daughter and grandchildren.

Danger of Rebirth (or "Samsara Danger" or "Cycle of Rebirth Danger") is the story of how an office clerk becomes a monk after his second marriage fails.

In the short story Please don't emulate this, sir a newly married husband gets trapped by all the comforts of married life. He wakes up late in the morning and eats the food that his wife prepares for him, while his wife wakes up at the crack of dawn, cooks, and goes off to work selling boiled beans and rice.

[edit] Translations

Ma Ma Lay (Margaret Aung-Thwin tr.) (1991) Not out of hate: A novel of Burma, Monographs in international studies southeast Asia series ; No. 88, Ohio: International Studies Ohio University, 1991, ISBN 0-89680-167-5.

Ma Ma Lay (Than Than Win tr.) (2006) Blood Bond [Burmese: Thway], Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Hawaii: University of Hawaii. [Also translated into French by Ma Ma Lay's daughter Khin Lay Myint]