First Burmese Fiction To Be Translated into English Is a Gay Novel

Last week when Hillary Clinton made her surprise announcement that our isolationist policies against Myanmar weren't working and it was time to try something new, were you reminded that you really ought to read the first ever Burmese novel to be translated into English? Published here last fall, Nu Nu Yi's Smile as They Bow is also the first Burmese fiction to be nominated for an international literary award (a finalist for the Booker's first Man Asian Prize). And it's entirely gay.

At 146 airy pages, the simple story unfolds over a few days during the annual Taungbyon Festival north of Mandalay: Daisy Bond is an aging transvestite spirit medium, or nat, whose handsome twenty-three year-old lover and assistant Min Min is beginning to stray, possibly with other men, and definitely toward an innocent village girl who doesn't understand his situation.

Much of the novel is narrated by Daisy with a ferocious zing equally fueled by her world-weary wit and her fears of abandonment.

    Really, he sighs, I'm so tired! People wonder what's so tiring about wearing dresses and flowers and makeup just to sit around and talk.

    Amele! Talking's a curse. It's been talk, talk, talk since morning. So many different nats possessed me, I was frothing at the mouth from talking so much. People all want money. And the more froth I spew, the more money I get. But Daisy Bond has her pride. If I don't want to do something, I don't. I refuse. I just go somewhere and lie down. Even when I was young, if I was tired and somebody nagged me, Tell me about my son, tell me about my husband, I'd shout, Enough! I'm all talked out. Here's your damn money back! I came to Taungbyon for fun and sex!

    I've always been brutally honest. Call Daisy Bond a foul-mouthed shit, call me what you will. I never used to spout this Go-and-eat-now sweet talk or act possessed when I didn't feel like it. I may be getting old, but I know a thing or two about Vispassana meditation. I don't need to flatter people for money. I'm happy as I am. If I'm true to myself, people will come to me. Talking too much just means lying.

    This spirit-wife life runs us around the pot of hell.

Later, Daisy Bond reflects:

    Maybe it's just too painful to think about how all my young boys have ended up ditching me. I'm so giving, and they want the shirt off my back. Most boys I've had, when the time comes, they find a real woman and leave. All I know is, they want fresh catch, not smelly old squid. Oh, at first they prattle so charmingly, always staying so close, melting my heart so I'll give them whatever they want. I let them take me for everything--my blood, my body, the nat money I keep in the turban, everything. But then a month or two on, they start acting funny. More and more they're off somewhere fishing, which leaves me on the hook again.

    How's Min Min any different? So far so good, but now after seven years, he's stepping out with his rod.

Although Daisy and Min Min are vivid characters, perhaps this novel's greatest pleasures are the exotic locale and the mosaic of contemporary life glimpsed around the edges of the main action. In his youth Daisy tried to get arrested and jailed in order to visit his friends in prison, then outed more closeted gay people, and reunited made such a racket, the police released them. A rival nat borrows a special skirt from Daisy for one event, then doesn't return it because he's been earning money by renting it out nightly. Rich and poor women alike flock to hear Daisy's serious predictions and saucy pronouncements on sex and men. Almost everyone is nonchalant about gay life. Although the characters have zero exposure to news from the West, Daisy Bond does christen another character her Moneypenny and joke about her Bond girls.

At fifty-two, Nu Nu Yi has written fifteen novels and more than one hundred short stories, making her one of Myanmar's leading authors. She told Reuters Smile as They Bow took three years to research and write, and twelve years to get published. One of the reasons the censors gave for rejecting the book was "unsuitable for these times." When it finally appeared, all references to homosexuality were removed. As a result of such conditions, she explained, "Many authors write about the supernatural to escape from censorship because so many things are prohibited, both explicitly and by unwritten rules. One cannot write about poverty, beggars, sex, rape, and, of course, politics or anything positive about other countries."

In 2004 my partner and I traveled throughout Myanmar, from Yangon to Bagan to Mandalay, up the Irrawaddy river to remote villages of hill people. From my perspective, the novel authentically captures the street life, crowds, sounds, and smells of a town, yet oddly omits its architecture. For the curious, this little window will offer an unprecedented view.

Hat tip, Charlene.

 

Comments

[ChiChi Fargo]

Thanks, Stephen. I have requested this novel at the library. Once again, you continue to direct my reading choices. I appreciate that.

[madyjune]

Actually, this book isn't the first novel to be translated into English. I'm not quite sure which is the first one, but I'm now reading the translated version of "Not Out of Hate" by Ma Ma Lay and it was published in 1991.

[Gary Sullivan]

Not Out of Hate was indeed the first Burmese novel to be translated into English:

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/burma/mamalay.htm

[jay]

a 'nat' is a spirit or martyr that the 'natkadaw' like Daisy, channels through dancing, singing, smoking, and drinking. this book does evoke many aspects of burmese life, and to have read it and then seen a nat pwe in person in bagan was amazing.