Khin Myo Chit - Journalism

Journalism

After the 1300 Movement, Khin Myo Chit started writing in many patriotic Burmese papers, including the Deedoke Journal.

She graduated from the University of Rangoon in 1952, and served as an editor for The Guardian Daily, when she began writing short stories and articles in English. Her story, The 13-carat Diamond, which appeared first in The Guardian Daily was featured in Fifty Great Oriental Stories, published by Bantam Classics. Other stories, including "Her Infinite Variety" and "The Four Puppets" won acclaim in Asia. During her career, Khin Myo Chit wrote many English publications, including a historical novel on King Anawrahta.

Khin Myo Chit also served as an editor in the Working People's Daily, voicing her political opinions and also her nationalistic spirit. She also wrote many books on Burmese culture - such as the Wonderland of Burmese Legends, where she documented famous myths, legends and folktales of Myanmar, and the Colourful Burma series.Besides serving as Prime Minister, U Nu was also an accomplished novelist and playwright. In a work from the colonial period titled Yesset pabeikwe or It's So Cruel (Man, the Wolf of Man) U Nu describes how during the colonial period rich landlords were able to get away with just about any crime they wished to perpetrate.

The play The Sound of the People Victorious (Ludu Aungthan) that U Nu wrote while he was Prime Minister is about the havoc that Communist ideologies can wreak in a family. Strangely enough the first production of the play seems to have been in Pasadena, California. It later became a popular comic book in Burma, was translated into English, and made into a feature film at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s. The older generation in Burma can still remember having studied the play in their schooldays.

In the play Thaka Ala, published just before the 1962 coup, U Nu paints an extremely ugly picture of corruption both amongst the high-ranking politicians in power at the time as well as among the communist leaders who were gaining ascendancy. This is a play in the vernacular, a genre that hardly exists in Burmese literature. A translation into English was published in instalments in the Guardian newspaper. The play was critical of the current state of politics in Burma at the time (around 1960) and in this critical stance it resembles Thein Pe Myint's The Modern Monk (Tet Hpongyi in Burmese). Like The Modern Monk, it deals with scandalous sexual liaisons not much in keeping with traditional modes of Burmese behaviour.One of the greatest female writers of the Post-colonial period is Journal Kyaw Ma Ma Lay. Khin Myo Chit was another important writer, who wrote, among her works, The 13-Carat Diamond (1955), which was translated into many languages. The journalist Ludu U Hla was the author of numerous volumes of ethnic minority folklore, novels about inmates in U Nu-era jails, and biographies of people working in different occupations. The Prime Minister U Nu himself wrote several politically oriented plays and novels.