“Banishment from certain states is a form of salvation” By Silvia Duarte Wendy Law-Yone identifies herself as “half Burmese, a quarter Chinese, and a quarter English.” However, Burma, the country where she was born, is the common denominator of her three novels: The Coffin Tree (1983), Irrawaddy Tango (1993), and The Road to Wanting (2010). The daughter of a notable newspaper publisher who was imprisoned by the military regime during the sixties, Law-Yone was banished from her country and came to the United States in 1973, where she lived for more than 30 years. She speaks German, Burmese, and English, but the language of her novels is English. Her book reviews and articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly, and Time magazine, and she is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship, a Harvard Foundation award, and a David T.K. Wong Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in England. Although an American citizen, Law-Yone is now a permanent resident of the United Kingdom, where she answered this interview via email. Here, she discusses her new book, her exile, and her fear of returning to Burma. headlong journey from the village to the world, and the more sober, more halting, journey from the big world back to the lost village. To trace the provenance of a fictional character is to make a spurious sort of genealogical claim and the truthful answer to You know the old saying, “In order to under- your question is that I don’t really know stand the village, you first have to know the where Na Ga came from. world?” Well, for much of my early adult life I was hell-bent on escaping the ‘village’ of The difference is that Na Ga became Burma in order to know the wider world. another victim of the sex slave industry When you stop to think of the energy and in her trip from the village to the world. drive involved in acquiring this worldly How has prostitution affected Burmese women? knowledge, you wonder that you’re still alive. But it also strikes you at a certain point If official figures mean anything, something that in your endless quest to know the world, like 40,000 Burmese women work in the you have let go, or simply lost, your knowl- brothels of Thailand. Most of them are from edge of the village. I suppose the character of ethnic minorities. Most of them are underNa Ga came partly from that tension, that age. And more than half of them are infected Your new book The Road to Wanting tells the story of Na Ga, a young Burmese woman who fled Burma and suffers poverty, slavery, prostitution, and abandonment. Where did you get the idea for this character?
Photos of Law-Yone: Courtesy of Author
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