Andrea Kempf is a Professor/Librarian at JCCC. She’s also really smart. Here’s a book + review she passed along to me a few days ago, which I’m finally posting.
Smile as they Bow by Nu Nu Yi. In the first contemporary novel from Burma, published since a dictatorial regime has virtually closed the country, Nu Nu Yi writes about a festival where spirit mediums (called Natkadaws who are usually transvestites) are paid to pray for solutions to people’s problems for steep payments. The main character is an aging medium whose young lover has become interested in a beggar girl. The novel not only explores gay life in Burma but is also a window on a little known part of the world.
