Zoë West's book includes interviews with former soldiers, journalists, monks, migrant workers, an LGBT/human rights activist, and a rape victim
Zoë West boarded an airplane to Thailand the summer after graduating Rutgers in 2007. Her plan was simply to experience South East Asia for a year and work on her writing.
“I had no friends there, no job set up – it was kind of crazy,” West says. “But I knew I would find something and turn it into a huge learning experience.”
Forward to spring of 2011, and West, now 25, sits at a conference table in Columbia University’s Butler Library before an audience of academics, activists. and students. It’s one of the first stops on her book tour for Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime (McSweeney's Books 2011) a collection of first-person narratives she compiled and edited with colleague Maggie Lemere.
West reads a portion from the story of one narrator. Ma Su Mon, who joined the National League for Democracy at 22, recounting the day 20 uniformed and plain-clothed men arrived at her house, to search the rooms and go through all her papers.
Ma Su Mon’s tale of interrogation and 11 months in solitary confinement is one of 22 personal testimonies in Nowhere to Be Home that chronicle life in a police state. The book was published this month by Voice of Witness, the San Francisco-based nonprofit division of McSweeney's Books, founded by author Dave Eggers and physician/human rights scholar Lola Vollen.
West, who majored in comparative literature at Rutgers, started out as journalism major, but dropped it when she realized today’s journalism doesn’t allow for the kind of in depth, long-term work she wanted to pursue. She credits Rutgers’ student newspaper, The Daily Targum, for hooking her on reporting and a former political science professor, Michael Shafer, for instilling in her a commitment to activism and building community organizations.
After graduating, West moved to Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand surrounded by lush mountains and dotted with ruins and temples, about four hours from the Burma border. As she learned about Burma’s 50 years of civil war, ethnic fighting, coups, and repressive military regimes, she was inspired to work with various NGOs, and wrote curricula, primarily about social justice issues, for use in schools in Thailand, the Thailand-Burma border, and even inside Burma. At a local bar she was introduced to Maggie Lemere, who was working at a school, where West eventually volunteered as a mentor.
The idea for a book originated with Not On Our Watch, an advocacy group spearheaded by Hollywood notables, such as George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon. Not On Our Watch, which focuses on human rights issues in Darfur, Zimbabwe, and Burma, approached Voice of Witness about publishing a book of Burmese oral histories. West and Lemere were soon located as people working on the ground, and both eagerly took the project on.
For the project, West and Lemere interviewed 70 Burmese in Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia, the United States, and Burma, representing a cross section of ethnicities, religions, and ages. Narrators included former soldiers, journalists, monks, migrant workers, an LGBT/human rights activist and a rape victim.
The interviewees took enormous risks. “Narrators living inside Burma could be arrested, thrown in jail, or worse, for doing an interview with us,” explains West. Yet many took the risk because they want the world to know what is happening inside Burma.
At times, West found herself overwhelmed by their harrowing tales, but honored to be bearing witness. She felt such a deep sense of responsibility toward the narrators, who trusted her and Lemere. “It’s what gave us the stamina to finish this project,” she says.
This spring, West will be traveling back to Oxford where she is earning an M. Phil. in Social Anthropology. She and Lemere also plan on bringing Nowhere to Be Home to the next level. They are currently looking to have the book translated into Burmese and published in South East Asia.
West expressed hope that Voice of Witness narratives will help people understand “the nuances and gray areas” behind the complicated situation in Burma, rather than the often one-sided perspective reported in the media.
The book includes a foreward by Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and United Nationals High Commissioner for Human Rights.