Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
agitate when it is better to simply relax and let matters be. That is the
reason some believe Shangri-La is so important as the antidote. It is
a mindset for the masses—one might bottle it as Sublime Indiffer­
ence, a potion that induces people to follow the safest route, which
is, of course, the status quo, anesthesia for the soul. Throughout the
world you can find many Shangri-Las. I have lived in my share of
them. Plenty of dictators have used them as a means to quell the
populace—be quiet or be killed. It is so in Burma. But in art, lovely
subversive art, you see what breaks through in spite of restraint, or
even because of it. Art despises placidity and smooth surfaces. With­
out art, I would have drowned under still waters.
T HERE WAS NOTHING PLACID about Wendy Brookhyser. She had
come to Burma with an itch in her brain and a fever in her heart. She
wanted to fight for Burmese rights, for democracy and freedom of
speech. She could not tell anyone that, however. That would be dan­
gerous. To her fellow travelers, Wendy said she was the director of a
family foundation. And that was indeed the case, a foundation set up
by her mother, Mary Ellen Brookhyser Feingold Fong, the “marrying
widow,” as she was unkindly called in some circles. In her position as
director, Wendy had never done much more than attend an occasional
meeting. For that, she received a salary sufficient for a carefree lifestyle
with regular infusions from her mother for her birthday, Christ­
mas, Chanukah, and Chinese New Year. Money was her birthright, but
since her teens, she was adamant she would not become a party-
throwing socialite like her mother.
Here I must interject my own opinion that the aforementioned
mother was not the senseless schemer her daughter made her out to
be. Mary Ellen gave the best parties to draw attention to worthy
causes. She didn’t simply write checks to charities like other nine-
digit doyennes who had generous pocketbooks but not the time to
44