Letters From Burma, Post 2

Title: Letters From Burma
Author: Aung Sun Suu Kyi
Genre: Autobiography (Letters)

     My last post described how Aung Sun Suu Kyi described Burma and told a bit about the book itself. Well, now it's getting very intense. The letters are getting far more desperate, like letters should when you've been under house arrest for 15 years. She is calling for a revolution, she knows that it can be done and that it will happen. She sends a letter to one of her closest friends, the high monk of her childhood temple. He receives the letter and rallies all the people he can find. The protest is a simple march down Rangoon's main square to the Capitol building, but it does not go well. Out of the million that rallied, 10 000 were killed brutally. Those that fled to Thailand were also killed, bringing the death toll to 300 000 people, all innocent. Aung Sun Suu Kyi's letters after this are sad, disappointed, and she personally writes letters to all the families that lost someone.
     Aung Sun Suu Kyi's upbringing was quite interesting. She was born to the man who negotiated Burma's independence from Britain, Aung San. She knew her father until the age of four, when he was killed by Junta troops in a public demonstration of power. Also, when she was born, her parents (even her mother) was horrified that she was a girl. In Burma, the birth of a girl is almost a sin against humanity, unless they are born on the month of the new year (April). Her names are derived from three people. Aung Sun from her father, "Aung San," Suu is her family name and Kyi from her mother "Khin Kyi."