Smile As They Bow

Book Reviews

Author: Nu Nu Yi Translators: Alfred Birnbaum and Thi Thi Aye Publisher and Year: New York: Hyperion, 2008 Price: US$21.95 Reviewed by: Lena Behr The debut of one of Burma’s leading writers, Nu Nu Yi, into the English-language literary arena has been met with critical acclaim. Soon after Smile As They Bow was published, her first novel to be translated into English, Nu Nu Yi made it to the shortlist along with five other novels by Asian writers for the inaugural 2007 Man Asian Literary Prize.   Although Nu Nu Yi has written over fifteen novels and a hundred short stories over the past twenty years, until now her work has been largely confined to the Burmese-reading public. While a few of her short stories have been translated into Japanese and English, most remain available only in Burmese. This recent English translation that allows for a little more access to Nu Nu Yi’s work, at least to English readers, is a welcome one.   Smile As They Bow offers a rare and richly textured representation of contemporary Burmese society. It manages to disclose the paradoxical tensions between religious practices and capitalist tendencies, as well as reveal the challenges of individual identity and social belonging that affect traditionally marginalized groups including women (young girls and grandmothers), transvestites, and the poor (beggars and pickpockets). The novel’s story unfolds against the backdrop of Burma’s most famous nat festival, held annually at the end of August in Taungbyon, a town near Mandalay. This weeklong festival celebrates two spirit Brothers, Shwepyingyi and Shwepyinge. People from all over Burma come to celebrate these spirits, known as nats, through spirit mediums, natkadaws, also known as the spirits’ wives. Typically, these natkadaws (sometimes referred to as nats for short) are gay men dressed in women’s clothes and makeup. Nats occupy a powerful place in Burmese tradition since these spirit mediums purportedly can help people attain their wishes by speaking for them to the gods. To secure the nats’ favor, people offer money or other material goods to them.   With this Taungbyon festival as its focal point, the novel offers not only a revealing look at the hold religion, that some might at best deem cultural traditions and at worst dismiss as superstitious beliefs, has on Burmese perspectives and social life. Nu Nu Yi, for her part, in an interview with Gillian Murdoch for Reuters Life! relegates the practice of spirit solicitation first to the “largely pre-modern” condition of Burmese society, and only secondly as a popular cultural practice of coping with the inequalities and injustices of everyday life. She tells Murdoch, “Myanmar is largely pre-modern and such beliefs are very traditional. As the situation inside the country gets more and more dire, people grasp for quick desperate solutions, they want to believe in some kind of hope, anything.”   Nu Nu Yi’s equation of religious belief with pre-modernity in her interview surprises one since her novel presents such a carefully nuanced critique of capitalist (and thus typically “modern”) culture in these same supposedly “pre-modern” religious practices. The devotees that flock to the festival and consult with the spirit mediums often come wearing their best and bringing their best earthly goods. The nats do not consult for free, but expect payment. There is an underlying sense from both the devotee and the spirit mediums that communication with the gods will prove more beneficial if one can offer more ostentatious material goods. The novel repeatedly shows that the culture of conspicuous consumption (typically associated with modern capitalism) is both alive and well in Burma. One sees these consumerist values in the lavish spectacle of the Taungbyon festival, the business the nats perform and the prayers and purposes of the festival attendees, both devoted believers and opportunistic pickpockets. All parties are seeking improved worldly fortune and motivated by desires conventionally associated with modern capitalism. The protagonist of the novel is Daisy Bond, a 60-something-year-old nat with a sharp tongue and a demanding disposition. Or at least that is how his young assistant and lover, Min Min characterizes him. From Daisy’s perspective, he is only keeping Min Min on his toes, and making sure he earns his keep. Min Min, Daisy feels, has started to take advantage of their relationship: he has become less caring and more bossy. After living together for many years, Daisy doubts Min Min’s loyalty and love. Min Min, however, he is often humiliated and hurt by Daisy’s verbal and physical abuses and unreasonable expectations.   This fraught love and work relationship between Daisy and Min Min reflects, and is compounded by, Daisy’s increasing sense of insecurity as he becomes older, and Min Min’s growing desire to lead his own life as he matures into a man. The tension between the old transvestite and the young lover escalates as Min Min falls in love with a young singer/beggar girl, Pan Nyo, who first captures his heart with her melancholic songs and captivating singing voice. The climax of the narrative occurs when Daisy finds out of Min Min’s plans to leave him and marry Pan Nyo. Daisy confronts Min Min just as he declares his love to Pan Nyo and his intention to live with her. Pan Nyo is shocked to discover that Min Min has lied to her about being Daisy’s lover and runs away in tears. Min Min breaks his ties with Daisy and goes off to find Pan Nyo, but to no avail. Delirious with fever and exhausted from the stress and strain of wandering the streets in search of his new love, Min Min finds himself back at Daisy’s house.   The novel closes with a weak and feverish Min Min lying with his head on Daisy’s lap as they drive out of Taungbyon. Along the way, they pass a train and Min Min catches strains of Pan Nyo’s voice singing the refrain from the song he had requested when they first went out: “To whom it may concern/ I send my love and yearn/ For your swift and safe return…/ I parcel out my heart and care/ It may take months may take years…/ After all/ So far, so long/ Will you recall/ My voice, my song…” One of the strengths of this novel is the insight it gives to the social world of various sub- or counter-cultures in Burmese society including nats, gays, and transvestites. Daisy is not the only spirit medium in the book. One also meets other nats with whom he competes for clients, models his own practices, or seeks out for information. One learns about the pains, conventions, and etiquette of being a nat from an insider’s perspective – Daisy’s – and an outsider’s viewpoint – Min Min’s. Similarly, when Daisy recounts his attempts to secure his gay identity – his first public performances as a woman, his first taste of freedom in Mandalay to dress in women’s clothes and wear makeup once he moves away from his village, and how he stages his own arrest by dancing in the grounds of the palace and loudly declaring his sexual orientation – when he relates these performances of gay identity, one finds out the discriminations, pleasures, limitations, and freedoms of being gay as a budding 20-year-old and an aging 60-year-old from the straight standpoint of Min Min and gay position of Daisy.   Aside from depicting the social fabric of life for nats, gays, and transvestites in contemporary Burma, the novel also captures the similarities and differences in thought and outlook between people of different generations, and women of different social classes. These two themes are especially prominent in the second chapter of the novel. In this chapter, one character, Grandma Shwe Ein, a frail but determined woman, who goes religiously to the Taungbyon Festival to pray for her family, is juxtaposed with another festival-attendee, Maung So Lwin, a young male pickpocket, who goes to the festival to fleece old people who come in from rural villages like Grandma Shwe Ein. The contrast between the worldviews of this old woman and young man are underscored by the clever juxtaposition of the blessing Grandma bestows on Maung So Lwin and his response:       “‘May you be strong and safe from all danger. May you be free from obstacles and impediments. May your every plan succeed ten times over.’ The old lady intones blessing upon blessing as she totters down the steps.       No, Granny, I don’t wanna be safe from danger. I’ll pass on strong and free, too. No glorious long life for me. I just wanna pinch something worth my time whenever I work…” The wishes of the old for the young are not the desires of the young for themselves. Instead of the long-view of life, a life that builds towards a future, captured in Grandma Shwe Ein’s blessing, Maung So Lwin is only concerned by the immediate life of the present.   While this vignette of Grandma and the young pickpocket exemplifies the generational differences in Burmese society, many of the other vignettes in this chapter portray the similar concerns of health and wealth that Burmese women have no matter what their social class. This point is well captured in the figures of Ma Sha Khin, a poor female pickpocket, and Daw Tin Mya Han, a rich businesswoman who comes to the festival with an entourage of servants and lavish offerings of turbans, longyi fabric, tins of Chinese cookies, and fruit for the nats. Ma Sha Khin prays that she would be willing to be as fat as Daw Tin Mya Han if she could be as rich as her because then she would have no worries and could eat rich foods. Unbeknownst to Ma Sha Khin, Daw Tin Mya Han has worries of her own. She prays for the gods to save her marriage (her husband is about to leave her for his mistress) and to preserve her health (she has high blood pressure and is in danger of getting diabetes or heart disease). The chapter then closes with the following passage: “Daw Tin Mya Han puts her palms together and raises them to her forehead again, then exits slowly, mouthing interminable invocations. Meanwhile on all sides of the shrine hall, countless women, men, and gays hold up flower offerings to their closed eyes and repeat fervent wishes just like hers.” Unlike the story of Grandma and the young pickpocket that highlights the differences in worldviews between social groups, this tale of the rich and poor women underscores the similar problems faced by people regardless of their social group.   These similarities and differences of experience, perspective, and desires are featured prominently throughout the novel, not just in the characters Nu Nu Yi chooses to highlight but also the way in which she writes about them. Besides snippets of dialogue between characters, the novel is largely comprised of various stream-of-consciousness passages by each character: readers are invited into the head of the characters as it were and are told the characters’ thoughts in the first person. These passages of the characters thoughts are typically sandwiched between descriptions by the omniscient narrator: this all-knowing narrator usually introduces the character and sets the scene in an introductory passage and then closes the stream-of-consciousness passage with a definitive comment on the vignette.   The narrative strategy employed in the novel successfully conveys the disjuncture between stereotypical understandings of certain social groups and the internal thought, feelings, or perspectives for individuals in these social groups. In other words, there is more than one side to individuals in a particular class or generation. But the closed-nature of these first-person passages (the other characters are not privy to these self-revelations) also reveal the misunderstandings different people have about others from inside and outside their social groups, especially their preconceptions about the rich, the poor, gays, transvestites, beggars, and nats. This narrative technique of combining an omniscient narrator and first-person stream-of-consciousness writing emphasizes the novel’s prevailing concern with the limited understanding individuals have of each other and sometimes of themselves. Overall, Smile As They Bow has much to recommend itself. Potential readers might include those interested in Burmese cultural studies (especially issues on women, gender, and sexuality) or religion, traditional practices, and contemporary literature of Burma.   If one is just looking for an interesting read, this novel should also eventually meet that demand, even if it does not do so immediately. It is not till chapter three that one meets Daisy and the central story truly takes off. From there on, however, the narrative develops confidently, with only an occasional lag here and there, to a swift and striking climax and a short, poignant end. This particular development of the novel likely owes much to the way it was originally published – as a serial. The work was first published in Burmese in the monthly magazine Shwe Amute in serial form from March 2006 to February 2007.   Smile As They Bow took Nu Nu Yi three years to research and write, but it would not be published for another twelve years since the Burmese government banned it on the grounds that it was “unsuitable for the times.” In the same Reuters Life! interview mentioned earlier, Nu Nu Yi explained that the censors believed the references to the two Taungbyon Brothers, young and elder, in the novel represented Secretary One and Secretary Two of the Military Council. The censors also objected to references to homosexuality and the beggar character of Pan Nyo (both these aspects have remained in the English version of the work). Other scenes were deleted from the Burmese version, including one that showed rich people driving by in big cars passing children begging by the roadside since the big cars were presumed to refer to the privileged position of the military, and thus taken as a critique of the military government. The translation into English and publication by a U.S. publishing house of Smile As They Bow has caused some dissatisfaction among more politically-inclined Burmese writers since it is Nu Nu Yi’s less overtly political writings that are gaining international attention. While this novel may not be a bold polemic on Burmese politics or a forceful critique of the dismal role by the so-called international community to engage productively with Burma, the cross-cultural relevance of this novel for political work at the quotidian level should not be underestimated. The translation and publication of this novel enables this work from a country little known and even less understood to reach a larger readership across the world. Moreover, with the nomination for the Man Asian Literary Prize, Nu Nu Yi also becomes the first individual living in Burma to be nominated for an international literary award.   These two actions that garner international attention, however sporadic, for the author and the novel also places Burma on the international radar in two more ways than were available to the country before. There is now the possibility for a little more information and insight into contemporary Burmese society and culture for the English-reading public wherever and whenever this novel may be bought, borrowed, read, or taught. Such small, but significant, cultural interventions have helped pave the way for overt political communication and social change in other contexts before. One only hopes the debut of Smile As They Bow might be the start of a similar change for the better for Burma. < Prev   Next >