For centuries, the Chin people, who now live in the hills that border Bangladesh and India, were animist, tracing their own oral histories that began when they left their original chinram, or homeland, a dark cave. When the Christian missionaries came, following the British imperial invasion of the Chin Hills in the last decade of […]
Hakha is the capital of Chin State, Myanmars least developed region and a restricted area for foreigners without permits until 2012. With very few roads, and many of the villages clinging to remote hillsides, it is detached from the literary centres of the country …
The Chin, who live in the hills that border Bangladesh and India, like to say that Burmese literature was born from peace, while Chin literature was born from war. The first known Burmese text is the 12th Century Myazedi stone in Bagan, which lists the deeds and donations of a prince in memory of the […]
Travel in Chin State and you are most likely heading towards the major towns, Falam and Hakha in the north, Mindat in the south (and if you are fortunate, Matupi in the centre). But these are mostly imperial constructions, enlarged by Christian missions and colonial trade with the valleys in Burma Proper below. The original […]
If ever there was a book which showed the world how to publish a translated work in minority, national and international languages, this is it. Written originally in Lai Hakha by the ethnic Chin poetess and creative polymath Anna Biak …