A Gentle Kind of Poverty by Mu Mu Winn: book review

A Gentle Kind of Poverty (2015) is set from 1994-1996 in England and Myanmar (Burma) in three parts: (1) Reconnection, (2) A World of Affluence, and (3) A Gentle Kind of Poverty.

Narrator Lwin Lwin is 39 years old, living in England for the past 14 years. She returns to her birthplace Yangon, Myanmar, for a holiday to see her relatives and friends. The visit has a great impact on her, and when she returns to England, she begins to reflect on the quality of life in her adopted country and the simply, but poorer, life of her family in Myanmar.

Lwin Lwin’s shyness and lack of confidence makes it difficult for her to have a male relationship, although she has friends through her work at the BBC. Forty-year-old Richard enters her life, but people advice her against a cross-cultural relationship.

A year later, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the leader of the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest on-and-off from 1989 to 2010, is released in 1995, giving Lwin Lwin some hope that she could return to an improved democratic country. As her relationship with Richard deepens, it makes her decision to leave England more difficult.

The writing style is simple, making this a quick and easy read. The author touches gently on politics in Myanmar, but mainly focuses on the lives of her parents, poverty, food, cultural sites, and social issues. Lacking description, tension, and ambience, it is more of a gentle approach to love, and coming to terms with her heritage and identity.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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