Kyi May Kaung Papers

Period 1994-2007
Total size  0.25 m.
Consultation Limited

Biography

Born in Rangoon, Burma, 1943; lived in Rangoon for most of her life until she came tot the USA on a Fulbright Fellowship 1982; studied city and regional planning and afterwards political economy at the University of Pennsylvania; dissertation at the same university about centralization and totalitarianism in Burma and the harm it does to human beings 1994; applied and received political asylum in 1989 after the failure of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Burma in 1988; she lives currently as a political exile in the USA; worked as senior research analyst and international radio broadcaster at Radio Free Asia in Washington D.C. 1997-2001; during those years her weekly column 'Reading between the Lines' and het weekly dissident poetry program 'Poems of those who love their country' became well known in Burma; since 2001 she works in Washington D.C. as senior research associate at The Burma Fund, which does strategic research for the National Coalition Governement of the Union of Burma; there she co-authored a book on democratic transition in Burma and is working on the book version of her dissertation; she also has parallel careers as a writer, poet, playwright and visual artist.

Content

Draft of her dissertation Modernization, Breakdown and Structural Configurations: Retrogression in Burma (1962-1988) [1994]; draft of a speech for Daw Aung San Sun Kyi’s 57th birthday 2003; article ‘What went wrong with the Rice Bowl of Asia?’ and essay ‘In Praise of Peace, in Times of War’ by Kyi May Kaung 2002-2003; copy with childhood photos 1948; typescript of essay on human rights 2003; typescript of ‘Shaman. A Play with Puppets’ 1996 and documents on its performance in Washington in 2004; draft radio scripts for Radio Free Asia 1998-2000; some documents regarding the Burma Studies Conference in Illinois, USA 2004; tribute/obit by Kyi May Kaung in memory of Taw Myo Myint 2005; article on the Anniversary of 9/11 [2006]; articles by Kyi May Kaung and David I. Steinberg on Sanctions and Burma written for the Foreign Policy in Focus Strategic Dialogue 2007.

Papers by Kyi May Kaung 'The politics of economic destruction: Burma in 2003' and 'Forced migrants from Burma on the Burma-Thai border: Why they are here and finding solutions' 2003.