I Can't Throw a Rock at my Bookshelf

without hitting a book about Burma.



A student gave me Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning on the last day of class. I started it on the plane. It's a book I've been wanting to read. When I was in Burma I had dinner with a tour guide who was incredibly well-read (before we left we rounded up every single book we could part with to give him as thank-you gifts) and he didn't have anything nice to say about this book. He wasn't exactly clear why he disliked it so much, but he clearly thought she had missed the mark when it came to illuminating the situation in Burma. The book is about a group of American tourists who get abducted while on a tour at Inle Lake. My impression of what was objectionable? Tourists aren't the ones who have to worry about getting abducted in Burma! They just prance around the country and go home. If they piss off the junta, the junta shuffles them off to the airport and sends them on their way. BURMESE are the ones who go missing, folks.

I'm a little more than half-way through. When I think of Amy Tan I picture her as I saw her at the PEN gala one year, in a hot pink prom dress slow-dancing with her dog. This makes me forget how serious and talented of a writer she is. The writing's good. I'm into the story. The characters are complicated. So far I'm really liking this book. But what do I know?

For whatever reason, I decided to break up chunks of novel-reading time with short pieces from the 2007 edition of Best American Nonrequired Reading, that clever anthology Dave Eggers does. Four essays in, I turn the page to Scott Carrier's "Rock the Junta," and boom, this reader's back in Burma. Is the universe trying to tell me something?

Well, stuff's going on. It's just too fucking nuts. Aung San Suu Kyi was recently accused of breaking the terms of her house arrest. Some American tried to swim onto her property. Government set-up? Very possibly. Her current sentence was up on May 27 - she was finally going to be released after 6 years. (This time.) Now she's on trial again, back in Insein prison, and every time she arranges for a lawyer to represent her, the junta's like, Oops! We're revoking your license to practice law! Sorry! Muaa ha ha ha.

I'm constantly amazed that this is still going on, that the junta can do whatever they want and get away with it. Hillary Clinton's all, "We call for Aung San Suu Kyi's immediate and unconditional release." Thanks, we'll keep that in mind. Obama's like, we will show our opposition by renewing those economic sanctions that haven't done a thing to change the power structure in Burma. Take that, junta!

Though I suppose all I'm doing is sitting here reading books.

If you like a good story, just follow what's going on in Burma.


If you want another opinion or two of mine? See what I wrote for The Smart Set just after the 2007 protests.

Exoticism and This Whole Photography Thing

I teach a class at Emerson College called Exoticism in Literature and Art. I began my academic inquiry of exoticism as a student at the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2000 because exoticism was what I did: I wrote about cultures other than my own. I exploited the charm of the unfamiliar. Is the word "exploit" nasty? How should art handle this? Meaning, if you're an artist, should you look at this issue differently than, say, a critic would? I play both sides. For more thoughts on this conundrum in the context of my travels, refer to an article I wrote for The Smart Set.

The implications of photographing "exotic" things and people - especially people - cause me concern, but that does not stop me from doing it. Sometimes, with an eye on the light-box peephole, you stop seeing people as people.

These are portraits of Dalits - "Untouchables" - in the village of Nalloor, India. They loved being photographed. The guy in the doorway followed me around all day. We had a great time. I was as exotic to them as they were to me.