Home Away From Home - Life Stories As Told By The Lost Generations of Burma (E-book)

8 August 1988 was a day of bloodshed in Burma’s dark history. A massacre of innocent lives led many to leave the country’s shores. They became Burma’s ‘Lost Generation’. Htut Win’s family was part of this migration. Although he one of those who fled Burma as a young child, and was raised entirely abroad, Htut never forgot his cultural roots.

Over the years, he revisited his homeland, rekindling memories, and gaining insights into how different his life might have been to his upbringing in New Zealand. When a ‘quarter life crisis’ strikes, he goes on another journey in South East Asia, seeking purpose – and finds it on the party island of Ko Phi Phi, off the coast of Thailand. Htut Win discovers his Burmese compatriots working in squalid conditions, worlds apart from the life he inherited.

Despite the differences, Htut sees common struggles of hardship, rejection and pain reflecting some of his own struggles to integrate into a Western society. Inspired by their plight, and driven to make a difference, in this book he puts together his story and shares others from various Burmese ethnic groups displaced by the ructions still shaking the troubled country. Together, these stories also paint a picture of the challenges of migration and integration that these displaced Burmese faced as they sought harmony between two vastly different cultures. This book is an honest and moving account of a lost generation’s triumphs, failures, love and loss.