A review by literaryinfatuation
Not Out of Hate: A Novel of Burma by William Frederick, Margaret Aung-Thwin, Journal Kyaw Ma Ma Lay

3.0

Before you get married, people will tell you stuff like “marriage is complicated”, “marriage is compromise” or “love is not enough”. About love, we often hear the warning “Love someone who loves you”. But no one really warned Way Way. When the next door neighbor, Westernized businessman U Saw Han confessed his love, and Way Way’s sister advised her to marry him, Way Way didn’t protest. She went along. She liked him, she was attracted to him, she loved that he was crazy about her... but she wasn’t ready to marry him. She was shy and lacked the confidence to have the serious conversations that need to precede a marriage to someone from a different culture and background. U Saw Han was Burmese, but he might had been born and raised in London for all the difference it made. She assumed a lot. She assumed she’d be able to visit her family everyday. She assumed he would join family breakfasts and dinners. She assumed she’d be able to go about her life as normal. And, it happens. We assume a lot of stuff we do and how we interact with others is “normal” and possibly, how everyone goes about it. But it really varies greatly from our culture to the other and it is a great source of tension. And “Not Out of Hate” Ma Ma Lay is a story about an unhappy marriage between two very different people with different cultural expectations. More than that, it’s about love in all its varieties: selfish and possessive love, self-love, love for your country and religion, and unselfish, always giving love. U Saw Han saw his wife as a doll, his prized possession. He loved her dearly but didn’t see her. Way Way loved her family, but felt obligated by traditions and moral to obey her husband even against her own happiness. The book is set in Burma before WWII and a very interesting exploration of colonialism, Burmese history and culture, but more than anything our universal problems with love and marriage.