Burmese Looking Glass: A Human Rights Adventure and a Jungle Revolution - Softcover

The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to Burma's imprisoned opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, focused world attention on a land in chains. Burma, a Southeast Asian nation the size of France, has been isolated by decades of brutal dictatorship. Few outsiders penetrate Burma's remote mountains, where rebels, opium warlords, and jade smugglers hold sway. Edith Mirante, an American artist, knows Burma's frontier war zone and has put her life on the line for its endangered people. Mirante, who has been called "one of the great adventurers of our time", first crossed illegally from Thailand into Burma in 1983. There she discovered the hidden conflict that has despoiled the country since the close of World War II. She met commandos and refugees and became a "connoisseur of corruption", learning firsthand the machinations of Golden Triangle narcotics trafficking. Horrified by the damage wrought on the rain forest and its inhabitants, she lobbied successfully against U.S. government donation of Agent Orange chemicals to the dictatorship. Mirante was the first Westerner to march with the rebels from fabled Three Pagodas Pass to the Andaman Sea; she taught karate to women soldiers, was ritually tattooed by a Shan "spirit doctor", and was deported from Thailand in 1988. She remains committed to bringing the true story of Burma to the attention of the world. As captivating as the most thrilling novel Burmese Looking Glass tells the story of tribal peoples who are ravaged by malaria and weakened by poverty yet are unforgettably brave; their will remains indomitable as they fight for peace and ethnic integrity. With deep passion, dark wit, and an artist's eye, Mirante reveals the beauty of thismysterious land that is both lyrical dream and unspeakable nightmare.

A hip and lively narrative of human-rights activism in Burma.

Mirante spent the 1970's in San Francisco, "dressed in black velvet and antelope leather," slinking "through dangerous neighborhoods with a legendary vampire guitarist." She also painted, and in the early 80's started spending longer and longer periods in Asia, where she went to refine her artistic technique. Mirante ended up hanging out with rebel Burmese tribes on the border between Burma and Thailand, making friends with some vivid characters, like Prince George, an Anglophilic rebel leader who habitually breakfasted on Mekong whiskey, and Spin, a photojournalist and drifter through Asia. After a period of increasing outrage at the regime of Burmese dictator Ne Win and at the US for supplying defoliant for use against the rebels, Mirante founded Project Maje, devoted to publicizing the plight of the ten tribes in the area--a plight that rarely found its way into the media until the widespread upheavals of 1988. Jailed twice, once for an illegal border-crossing and once without being charged Mirante is now persona non grata in Thailand. Here, her eye for setting a scene and her gift for evoking rebels, brigands, hippies, and sinister security forces pull the reader into a Terry and the Pirates world where those who tread quickly get "burnt out by wars, companion fatigue, survivor guilt, hepatitis."

A dramatic but caring book in which Mirante's blithe tone doesn't disguise her earnest concern for the worsening conditions faced by the Burmese hill tribes. -- Kirkus Reviews November 15, 1992

An American artist-adventurer has written an absorbing book about her experiences living with Shan and Karen rebels in Burma's remote mountains, where rebels, opium warlords and jade smugglers hold sway. The author founded Project Maje to publicize Burma's human rights violations. -- Foreign Affairs, Spring 1993

Human rights concerns don't automatically suggest art and adventure, yet artist Mirante draws sustenance from this heady blend. A week's tour in the exotic natural and cultural world of Burma captivated her, but she settled for painting in neighboring Thailand, avoiding the political restrictions of dictator Ne Win. She was so close to the border, however, that her curiosity, appreciation of tribal art, and high-risk style drew her into a concern about the attacks and political maneuvers against the hill tribes. Mastery of Asian politics, languages, and self-defense eventually pushed her painting aside, and she assumed the role of liaison between the scattered rebel forces, with access to generals, forbidden territories, and drug traffickers. In one border crossing she marched with rebel troops delivering arms while she collected evidence on illegal use of U.S.-supplied defoliant 2,4-D, maintaining pressure on Washington until the chemical was banned. Danger, however, doesn't dim her images--of personalities, land, dress, and temples. The artist's eye remains open, adding another dimension to concern for others. -- Booklist January 1993

Looking for adventure and finding plenty of it by Gayle Reaves

If you ever wondered what Marco Polo would do in the 20th century, if you have ever dreamed of cutting the ropes that hold down the balloon of adventure, Edith Mirante's stories will speak to you.

Looking Glass tells how Ms. Mirante, an artist and grass-roots human rights activist, survived and thrived in six years of trekking through Burma's jungle war zones. In the process, she fell in love with people who have been fighting for liberty and survival almost continuously since World War II. Those who care about Burma, a country of jungles, mountains, jade smugglers and opium warlords, will find sadness and fascination in her mirror.

Ms. Mirante tells of tribes and villages that may not be around much longer, threatened by deforestation and the fist of a dictatorship. She first visited Burma as a tourist intrigued with Asian art, a grown-up "wild child" whose New Jersey youth had been full of the relics of history and war.

The closed and battered visage of Burma, the courage of tribes such as the Shan, the Karen, the Wa, immediately caught her wanderer's imagination. "Burma whispered and wept to me," she writes, and so she returned again and again, crossing the border clandestinely from Thailand, sleeping in rebel encampments and refugee villages, She learned of the rich patchwork of people that make up the country, and about the devil's bargains struck by desperate revolutionaries and drug smugglers.

She continues to write and lecture about Burma. Despite the essential romanticism of her life and her vision, Ms. Mirante for the most part avoids overly romanticizing her subject. Her writing is clear, cool and occasionally poetic. The warts are all intact whether her subject is alcoholic generals, Thai police or expatriate artists.

Eventually, deciding she must do something to help, Ms. Mirante founded Project Mjae to publicize the struggle of the Burmese tribes.

In the end, it is perhaps Ms. Mirante's acceptance of things foreign that brings them home to Western readers. Who can say that the ritual tattoos she got from a tribal spirit leader did not keep her safe from harm? -- The Dallas Morning News August 8, 1993

While studying art in Thailand in 1983, Edith Mirante, a twenty-nine-year-old artist from the United States, makes her first of many illegal border crossings between Thailand and Burma. Curious about Burmese history, she learns that four ethnic groups have fought over land control for years and that many independent hill tribes have lived a nomadic existence on Burmese soil. Ne Win, the dictatorial, xenophobic ruler of Burma, and Khun Sa, the drug kingpin of northern Burma, have an unspoken pact to stay out of each other's way, while both benefit from conflicts between the ethnic groups and hill tribes. Outraged by the atrocities committed by the Burmese army against so many, Edith Mirante joins their battle for survival. With detailed descriptions of people and places, she takes you through monsoons and into hamlets and jungles on her quest for knowledge and the liberation of the generous, capable people caught up in a civil and economic war. She charges the Burmese government with numerous human rights violations; she indicts the Thai government, which allows the drug trade to thrive in return for money and access to Burma's rain forests; she exposes the United States government's donation of chemicals that eradicate opium poppies but also destroy the vegetation, pollute the rivers, and kill and injure the people. A powerful, rapidly moving book, Burmese Looking Glass is one of Edith Mirante's responses to her understanding that "knowledge breeds responsibility." -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith