Undaunted: My Struggle for Freedom and Survival in Burma

In this aptly named memoir, Phan, the international coordinator at the Burma Campaign UK, lets her life story document the ongoing struggle for democracy against Burma’s military dictatorship. Born in the jungles of eastern Burma, Phan is Karen, one of the country’s eight main ethnic groups, a people for whom “persecution,” she writes, “has been going on for centuries.” Vividly told, her eventful story moves from childhood idyll in a village of bamboo huts to that of a teenage refugee running from the Burmese Army towards the Burma-Thailand border—and eventually to an academic scholarship in Great Britain. Every danger brings a lesson about the resiliency of family, the necessity for education, or the fragility of hope. As in American slave narratives, Phan gives voice to the voiceless. Not surprisingly, Phan evokes anxiety and urgency in moments of possible despair, including historical travelogue and chiding political analysis. Such tonal shifts contextualize Phan’s message, but can give the narrative a disjointed feel. Still, in Phan’s memories of her influential father and the logic in her expanding political awareness, readers will find a compelling wake-up call. (May)