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My Struggle for Freedom and Survival in Burma
Free Press
May 2010
On Sale: May 4, 2010
284 pages
ISBN: 1439102864
EAN: 9781439102862
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Once a royal kingdom and then part of the British Empire,
Burma long held sway in the Western imagination as a mythic
place of great beauty. In recent times, Burma has been torn
apart and isolated by one of the most brutal dictatorships
in the world. Now, Zoya of the, a young member ofthe Karen
tribe in Burma, bravely comes forward with her astonishingly
vivid story of growing up in the idyllic green mansions of
the jungle, and her violent displacement by the military
junta that has controlled the country for almost a half
century. This same cadre has also relentlessly hunted Zoya
and her family across borders and continents. Undaunted
tells of Zoya’s riveting adventures, from her unusual
childhood in a fascinating remote culture, to her years on
the run, to her emergence as an activist icon.nnNamed for
a courageous Russian freedom fighter of World War II, Zoya
was fourteen when Burmese aircraft bombed her peaceful
village, forcing her and her family to flee through the
jungles to a refugee camp just over the border in Thailand.
After being trapped in refugee camps for years in poverty
and despair, her family scattered: as her father became more
deeply involved in the struggle for freedom, Zoya and her
sister left their mother in the camp to go to a college in
Bangkok to which they had won scholarships. But even as she
attended classes, Zoya, the girl from the jungle, had to
dodge police and assume an urban disguise, as she was
technically an illegal immigrant and subject to deportation.
Although, following graduation, she obtained a comfortable
job with a major communications company in Bangkok, Zoya
felt called back to Burma to help her mother and her people,
millions of whom still have to live on the run today in
order to survive—in fact, more villages have been destroyed
in eastern Burma than in Darfur, Sudan.nnAfter a plot to
kill her was uncovered, in 2004 Zoya escaped to the United
Kingdom, where she began speaking at political conferences
and demonstrations—a mission made all the more vital by her
father’s assassination in 2008 by agents of the Burmese
regime. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Zoya has become a powerful
spokesperson against oppressors, undaunted by dangers posed
to her life. Zoya’s love of her people, their land, and
their way of life fuels her determination to survive, and in
Undaunted she hauntingly brings to life a lost culture and
world, putting faces to the stories of the numberless
innocent victims of Burma’s military
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