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jennikreads's review against another edition
medium-paced
1.5
This clearly did not have a sensitivity reader that was actually Burmese. That was evident in so many parts of this graphic novel.
The majority of the vignettes are just the author complaining about various aspects of living in Myanmar that pale in comparison to his experiences living in more developed countries. One such example is his frequent comments about the air conditioning going out with rolling blackouts. Something which he experiences infrequently, since he lives in an expat village close to military officials, while the majority of Rangoon (Yangon) goes without electricity on a daily basis. He spends almost the entire time in his little expat bubble, and if he in real life made forays out into the general community and made an effort to understand the people of this country or their culture, he only depicted a handful of those attempts throughout the year he lived in Myanmar.
He describes a handful of customs, but in each of these instances he either depicts them in a borderline racist art style, or follows them with his opinion on the custom, which more often than not is critical and coming from a place of privilege that he seems to be unable to set aside.
He makes light of the junta and their oppressive hold on the country. On one page he makes an off-handed comment about the junta's genocide of the Karen people and then immediately follows it with LITERAL giggles about how he's going on an "adventure" into this closed zone of the country, where said genocide frequently occurs.
I gave it half a star for the fact that if you know nothing at all about Myanmar, this gives a small window into some of the things the people of Myanmar have been living through for decades. As I am probably more well versed on the situation and history of Myanmar than your average outsider, I found most of his descriptions to be surface level and inadequate.
I recognize that this was published in 2008, and so the author could never have known what was coming in the decades to follow, but given the ongoing situation in Myanmar as of 2022, this whole graphic novel felt particularly distasteful.
The majority of the vignettes are just the author complaining about various aspects of living in Myanmar that pale in comparison to his experiences living in more developed countries. One such example is his frequent comments about the air conditioning going out with rolling blackouts. Something which he experiences infrequently, since he lives in an expat village close to military officials, while the majority of Rangoon (Yangon) goes without electricity on a daily basis. He spends almost the entire time in his little expat bubble, and if he in real life made forays out into the general community and made an effort to understand the people of this country or their culture, he only depicted a handful of those attempts throughout the year he lived in Myanmar.
He describes a handful of customs, but in each of these instances he either depicts them in a borderline racist art style, or follows them with his opinion on the custom, which more often than not is critical and coming from a place of privilege that he seems to be unable to set aside.
He makes light of the junta and their oppressive hold on the country. On one page he makes an off-handed comment about the junta's genocide of the Karen people and then immediately follows it with LITERAL giggles about how he's going on an "adventure" into this closed zone of the country, where said genocide frequently occurs.
I gave it half a star for the fact that if you know nothing at all about Myanmar, this gives a small window into some of the things the people of Myanmar have been living through for decades. As I am probably more well versed on the situation and history of Myanmar than your average outsider, I found most of his descriptions to be surface level and inadequate.
I recognize that this was published in 2008, and so the author could never have known what was coming in the decades to follow, but given the ongoing situation in Myanmar as of 2022, this whole graphic novel felt particularly distasteful.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation and Classism
Moderate: Racism
Minor: Drug use and Genocide
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