OUR HOME IN MYANMAR

This memoir details a journalistic coming-of-age in Myanmar.

The premise of Mudditt’s debut is simple, but its content proves highly complex as it details the author’s time living in Myanmar for four years from 2012 to 2016. The Melbourne native moved to the city of Yangon with her Bangladeshi husband, translator Sherpa Hussainy, to build a life and career, and she meticulously documents her experience as a journalist in one of the world’s most repressive military regimes, home to a stunning diversity of ethnic and religious groups, a sublime natural landscape, and a complex pre- and post-colonial history. The first part of the book deals with practical difficulties as well as the struggles she faced in understanding the country’s sociopolitical and journalistic landscape. A late chapter that gives the book its title marks a turning point as she experiences a budding hope regarding the country’s nascent democratic processes. The book’s last third highlights the 2015 election, which took place amid a rise in xenophobia and religious fundamentalism. Black-and-white photos shot by Mudditt enhance it throughout, and a detailed epilogue connects her narrative to the present-day human rights and political situation in the country. Thematically and stylistically, Mudditt employs a careful journalistic voice as she exposes the privileges and pitfalls of her Western European viewpoint, and her tone balances genuine emotional reactions with journalistic observations; the result is a balanced but passionate report. She excels at bringing in diverse local perspectives to constantly challenge her own, and the reader’s, expectations of Myanmar. This is particularly visible in Mudditt’s exploration of the politics of renaming the country, which was formerly known as Burma, and the citizenry’s treatment of gender. Her observation of employees in the state-controlled publication The New Light is nuanced and crucially combats more reductive depictions of people working in regimes with limited press freedom. The book’s epilogue is almost poignant in its matter-of-fact manner, as the book leaves the reader the same way Mudditt left Myanmar—on a sad note of incompletion yet enriched in knowledge and spirit.

An honest, detailed, and well-structured account of the personal and political.