Hello from New York, or technically, Union City, New Jersey, but given the trip is around/about New York, I think it’s fair to say hello from New York. Unfortunately that means this will be quite short (and won’t have pictures, since I don’t think Buttondown will let me upload from an iPad), but keep an eye out in two weeks for ~ reflections ~. I’m also working on some short essays that may or may not ever see the light of day 🤐 so keep an eye out for those too.
What I’m Reading
First up on the docket this week is Thant Myint-U’s The Hidden History of Burma. It’s a fascinating little story that tells, well, the hidden history of Burma (aka Myanmar, although as he points out, that was an ethnonationalist move by the junta akin to making English speakers call Germany “Deutschland”—not to mention the Myanma are only one of Burma’s ethnic groups, which is of course very much a part of the story). Basically: Burma, and the Rohingya crisis, is very complicated and sad! There’s long-running guerrilla wars with various ethnic militias, a military junta that has only reluctantly loosened its grip over the past decade (causing, of course, massive shifts in political allegiance even within the junta), a long-running suspicion of the West stemming from colonialism, a region (Arakan) that was invaded not even two centuries ago, and of course a nascent Buddhist nationalism in conflict with a Muslim minority. I almost needed flowcharts, but Myint-U steadily guides readers in; its a miracle the book is as readable as it is. He does have a weirdly biased viewpoint; of course, all non-fiction is biased in some sense, especially when the author is a figure in the events described, but I did get somewhat annoyed somewhere around the fifth time he said something along the lines of “and literally nobody else cared about the economy, which was the problem, except for me.” But overall, I’d say it’s a nice current-events-are-more-complicated-than-you-think book in the vein of or ; read if interested.
