Ludu Daw Amar, Burma’s best known female journalist and social critic, and one of the country’s most respected women, died of heart disease on Monday in her native Mandalay. She was 93.
Daw Amar, whose name translates as “the strong,” was better known as Ludu Daw Amar, after the left-leaning journal Ludu (“The People”), which she founded with her husband in 1945.
Ludu Daw AmarRevered by many in Burma as a spokesperson for the weak and disenfranchised, she will be remembered as determined advocate of justice in a society that she believed was eroding under the influence of a distorted economy and the massive migration of Chinese into her hometown of Mandalay.
“She never gave up her beliefs. She couldn’t tolerate injustice. She always stood for the Burmese people,” said respected poet Ko Lay (Inwa Gonyi) when contacted by The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.
From an early age, she resisted the unreasonable demands of those who were more powerful than her. “When our mother would cane us, she would say, ‘Stop crying!’ and all my siblings would stop except me,” she wrote in her autobiography. “I cried because I felt hurt, but the more I cried the more whippings I received. How could she force me not to feel pain?”
Daw Amar was born in Mandalay on November 29, 1915. Her involvement in politics and her literary career began after she entered Rangoon University in 1936. She made her first mark on Burmese literature with a translation of “Trials in Burma,” a memoir of colonial-era magistrate Maurice Collis, in 1938.
In 1939, she married writer U Hla, who ran the monthly youth magazine Kyipwa Yay (“Prosperity”). U Hla moved his magazine to Mandalay to be with his wife, and at the end of the Second World War, they co-founded the biweekly Ludu journal. The following year they began publishing a daily newspaper of the same name.
Amidst the political turbulence that followed Burma’s independence from Britain in 1948, the couple faced new challenges. Accused of sympathizing with the communists, their publishing house was dynamited by government troops.
Throughout their careers, they were frequently subjected to publication bans. Under dictator Ne Win, the Ludu daily was eventually shut down in 1967. When her son joined the Communist Party of Burma in 1978, she and her family were detained for more than a year.
Daw Amar took her first steps on the international stage in 1953, when she joined the World Democratic Women’s Conference in Copenhagen, the World Peace Conference in Budapest and the International Youth Festival in Bucharest.
In 1964, she earned a Burmese literary award for her book, “The Artists whom People Love.” Her other famous works include the biographies of author Thakin Kodaw Hmaing, performance artist Shwe Mahn Tin Maung and cartoonists Shwe Yo and Ba Kalay. She also penned books about Burmese classical music and painting that address issues of cultural identity. Well known for her translations into Burmese, she also had a series of her articles, “Shwe Daungtaung,” translated into Japanese.
A historian based in Monywa described Daw Amar’s regret at not being able to publish her work more freely, due to the country’s draconian censors. “Daw Amar told me that she was disappointed because of the censorship board; they censor all her articles,” he said.
In her later years, her writing became more conservative. The editor of a Mandalay-based journal told The Irrawaddy that her series of articles, “Amay Shay Sagaa” (“Mother’s Old Sayings”), criticized the changing lifestyles of young Burmese women who discarded their traditional attire. Despite her great contributions to the country, Daw Amar continued to face challenges until the end of her career. Her vocal criticism of the country’s social and political situation in phone interviews with Burmese radio stations based abroad led to her work being banned on a regular basis by the censors.
In her declining years, the venerated writer spent most of her time at her residence in Maymyo, near Mandalay. She is survived by four children and six grandchildren. A funeral service is to be held in Kyarnikan Cemetery on Wednesday.
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