Ma Ma Lei

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Journalgyaw Ma Ma Lei
Journalgyaw Ma Ma Lei
Born	13 April 1917 Kamkalu, Bogalei Township, Ayeyarwady Division , Myanmar
Died	6 April 1982 Yangon, Myanmar

Ma Ma Lei (Burmese: မမေလး; IPA: [ma̰ ma̰ léi]; 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 Personal Life
2 Life as a Writer
3 Short stories
4 Translations
5 External links
6 Notes

[edit] Personal Life

She was born in Karmaklu Village, Ayeyarwady Division, Myanmar. Her birth name was Ma Tin Hlaing. She started her writing career in 1936 with an article named "To become Knowledgeable Women" in the The New Light of Myanmar newspaper. She married U Chit Maung(the editor of The New Light of Myanmar in 1938. After her marriage, she started writing short novels. Her husband died in 1946 and she was left with two sons and a daughter.After her husband's sundden death,she did not give-up publishing "The Journalgyaw Newspaper".In fact,she decided to publish another one which is named "Pyitthu Hittaine" or "The People's Voice Newspaper" which was her husband's last wish. Ma Ma Lei was known widely among her collegues as having a diligent,calm and kind personality. She was also known as a tough person.She never gave-up during harsh times. Her publishing company was onced destroyed by the Burmese socialist students accusing her of publishing a communist newspaper around 1949-50 because of their family acquainttance with Thein Pei Myint and other leading Marxists.

U Nu's government helped her by paying about six thousand kyats. But the total loss caused more than eighty thousand kyats. A wealthy Chinese family loaned her about thirty thousand kyats. While her publishing company in 40th Street was completely destroyed,she decided to continue to publish her newspaper in other printing houses. Sometimes,she worked all night to pay her debts.At the same time,she wrote "Thu Lo Lu"(Biography of her late husband,U Chit Maung) for straight fourteen days without sleeping. After completed,she fell down from her stairs and injured her head. But later she was completely recovered from the injury. The book was a success and she paid back some of the government's debt. But she was summoned by the court accusing her of not giving back the rest of the money and her house in Baukthaw was taken by the government.She bought a small flat in Phayre Street after her house was auctioned by the government. Meanwhile,her jewelleries in the bank were stolen by her sister's friends. Her brother working in the bank gave the jewelleries to the two friends because they told him that Ma Ma Lei had ordered them to get her jewelleries. It was a huge loss including about fifty pieces of diamonds and some rubies.

One of U Nu's ministers loaned her money to establish a company in the early 1950s. She imported foods and clothes but the company was not very successful. She later declared that the company was in bankruptcy. She was again in the printing business and she bought a building near her flat.And she was now printing orders from other people like publishing small pamphlets. Since her two newspapers were stopped publishing,she decided to write novels around 1954-55.She married U Aung Zaya in 1959.She died in Rangoon,Burma on April 6, 1982.She was 65.

[edit] Life as a Writer

She first started writing articles in her husband's newpaper,"The New Light of Myanmar" in the 1930s.In the early 1940s,they published "The Journal Gyaw Newspaper".She wrote many articles in it.And after the Second World War,she continued to wrote articles in her newspaper and later she wrote articles in "The Shumawa Newspaper"(One of the famous newspapers which ceased publishing aroud the mid-1980s). Her famous works are

Thu Lo Lu (Like him , Biography of U Chit Maung) (1947)
Mone Ywa Mahu (Not out of Hate ) (1955)
Twe Ta Saint Saint (A Slow Stream of Thoughts and Burmese Medicine Tales ) (1963),
Thway (Blood Bond) (1973)
Images of My Life (2002) (Collections of her articles about her life,republished by her son)

Ma Ma Lei won the Burmese Literature Prizes for her novels "Not out of Hate" and "A Slow Stream of Thoughts and Burmese Medicine Tales" . Some of her novels are translated into English and others languages . Her masterpiece is “Not out of Hate” and it has been translated into 4 other languages (English, Chinese, French and Russian).

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.

Ma Ma Lei's "Not out of Hate" bookcover (English Translation)

Her novel Blood Bond 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]