BURMESE FAMILY

Bombay: Longmans, Green and Co.. Very Good in Very Good- dust jacket. 1946. First Edition. Hardcover. Autograph; 138 pages; SIGNED on ffep by "Kermit Roosevelt / Rangoon, 1950". Laid in is a small drawing of a house signed by Jonathan Roosevelt (Kermit's son who was about 9 in 1950). Contents clean and tight in original turquoise cloth binding (tiny bit of fading at spine ends) with printed spine label and nice dustjacket with some edgewear and chipping (now in protective mylar cover). Numerous monochrome illustrations by E. G. N. Kinch throughout. One can imagine how this book must have entertained and informed its owner Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. when he visited Burma after the Japanese had been expelled. He has noted two items in particular: one regarding a monastery and a spittoon and the second noting the funeral practice of giving the spirit of the deceased notice that it should vacate its current corporal vessel. The author's reflective memories of family life in Moulmein, Burma which were written during her families' wartime exile in India during 1942, when Burma was still occupied by the Japanese. Mo Mo Khaing writes with a natural directness of the places and people she knew well in her Burmese homeland, as well as of those same people and places seen through the eyes of her parents and their generation. Her vivid descriptions of various aspects of life from civil service and educational practices to local sports to marriage and courting to funeral customs to foods and cooking to music and customs of dress delight the reader with the lively evocation of another place in another time. Included is a useful Glossary of the Burmese words that make occasional appearances throughout the book. PROVENANCE: Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, Jr. (1916 - 2000) was the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. He was a career intelligence officer who served in the Office of Strategic Services and was the mastermind of the Central Intelligence Agency's Operation Ajax, which orchestrated the coup against Iran's democratically-elected Mohammed Mossadegh administration, and returned Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, to Iran's Peacock Throne in August 1953 for the purpose of returning Western control of Middle Eastern oil supplies. ; Signed by Notable Personage, Unrelated .