Annotation
Ma Thanegi spent almost three years in Yangon’s infamous Insein Prison for the crime of being Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s personal assistant. This is her account of those years. This is not only an account of life in one of the world’s most notorious prisons. Ma Thanegi tells how a wildly diverse group of women, from political prisoners to prostitutes and pickpockets, banded together to buoy up each other’s spirits and to maintain a semblance of normal life. “We were supposed to be miserable and we were damned if we’d oblige,” says the irrepressible Ma Thanegi. She describes the inner bravery and joie de vivre that served her and her fellow-prisoners well, in an account that provides a moving example of how to withstand times of crisis.
