So I’m reading this book by Amy Tan, Saving Fish From Drowning. It has an odd premise: Tan met a psychic who was channeling a woman named Bibi Chen… Odder still because that whole intro was fictitious as is the whole story. It’s always weird to me when an author does things like faked intros and such. It seems plausible that the story could be from a ghost, but as it goes along, you begin to feel the fantasy aspect of it as well and you start to doubt the premise. I’ve not finished it yet, but I’ve only got a few pages left. No spoilers here!
I will give you a short outline: Bibi puts together a trip for her friends to Burma (aka Myanmar). She has clout and could deal with the myriad government agencies to do this. Then she dies, hence her omniscient point of view for the book. The friends still take the trip down “Burma Road” and bizarre things happen along the way. They end up with one of the Burmese tribes (the Karen tribe) that have been beaten down by the new government of Myanmar. That’s all you need to know for this post. Read the book, it’s very entertaining.
What brings this up is today is a tiny little article in the AJC about the Karen tribe “refugees” in Myanmar (Burma) – or rather, their NOT being in Myanmar. They escaped to Thailand or have been put there by the Mayanmar government since 2005. Now Thailand is farming them out to other countries. This is the largest resettlement of refugees in the world according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. They have tossed over 30,000 Karen first from Myanmar and now Thailand. They are people without a country, literally. Estimates are that over 20,000 of these people have come to the United States.
Who knew?
If it weren’t for Amy Tan’s book, I’d have never even known about this situation. Don’t think that reading fiction won’t teach you things.
Now go to your neighborhood used book shop and get your read on. You just might learn something. :-)