Elizabeth Shick’s debut novel The Golden Land is a significant achievement. In it, the microcosm of one family’s experiences gestures toward the macrocosm of Myanmar’s complex history. Long called “the golden land” for the golden pagodas and stupas dotting the landscape, Myanmar has endured beyond name changes and shifting political tides. In The Golden Land, Shick portrays a family that is similarly complex and enduring. 

This family is helmed by Ahpwa, a domineering woman who fell in love with her American husband while he was stationed in Burma during WWII and subsequently moved with him to the United States. The novel unfolds two generations after Ahpwa’s exodus through the eyes of her granddaughter, Etta, who tightropes between nostalgia and fatigue as she comes to terms with her own identity. In one particularly vivid moment from Etta’s childhood, Ahpwa teaches her the proper pronunciation of her name: “she’d pull the coil of hair out from behind her back, positioning it upside down in front of her lips. ‘AhHHHHpwa,’ she’d say, blowing the loose lock of hair as she spoke.” As an adult, Etta appreciates the deep treasure of her cultural heritage but remains uncomfortable with memories of how rigorous her indoctrination felt at the time.

 Immediately after Ahpwa’s sudden and unexpected death in 2011, Etta’s younger sister, Parker, announces that she’s taking their grandmother’s ashes back to Myanmar. Parker swears that this return was Ahpwa’s dying wish. Etta doesn’t buy it. Her doubts underline the mysteries the rest of the book seeks to solve: “I can’t believe this is what Ahpwa would’ve wanted. And what does Parker know of Burma? She’d been only six when our family visited in 1988, too young to know about the protest march, or what I’d witnessed before we so hastily left.” 

Shick effectively employs family tension to make her characters’ plights vivid and real to the reader. There is, for instance, the family’s surprisingly foreshortened Burma trip in 1988. Before the trip, Ahpwa “viewed her heritage with pride, dedicating much of her spare time—and all of mine—to ensuring that I never forgot my background.” Afterward, Ahpwa “stopped wearing traditional clothes, stopped cooking Burmese dishes, stopped speaking the language, embracing instead her adopted country with a new, wild abandon.” The ensuing domestic discord spurs Etta’s father to move out, further splintering the family. 

Shick’s skillful use of contrast helps to excavate Myanmar’s nuanced history. The novel’s dual timeline provides structural contrast, with narrative segments alternating between 1988, when Etta’s family embarked on what was meant to be a year’s stay with extended family in Burma, as it was then called, and 2011, when Ahpwa’s death impels a return trip. This interplay between past and present pits Etta’s old assumptions against new questions. What brought her family to Burma in 1988? What prompted their quick retreat? What role did Ahpwa’s brother’s play in the violent conflict Etta witnessed right before they left? Above all, Shick explores what these questions and answers mean to Etta’s family, then and now, within Myanmar and within the bounds of their most intimate relationships. 

With direct, descriptive prose and careful pacing, Shick eases the reader into Etta’s large and intricate world. Even without prior exposure to Myanmar’s troubled history, readers will connect with  the relatable tensions of her family story and come away with a keen sense of their losses and struggles along with a broader understanding of the political forces that wrought them.

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A longtime American expatriate and international development consultant, Elizabeth Shick lived in Yangon, Myanmar from 2013 to 2019. She holds an MFA from Lesley University and a MA in international affairs from Columbia University. She lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and West Tisbury, Massachusetts.

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Jody Hobbs Hesler lives, writes, and teaches in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her debut story collection, What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2023, and her short fiction, articles, essays, and book reviews appear or are forthcoming in The Millions, Atticus Review, The Westchester Review,  Arts & Letters, Gargoyle, Pithead Chapel, CRAFT, The Rumpus, Charlottesville Wine & Country Life, and elsewhere. She earned her fiction MFA from Lesley University, teaches at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, and reads for The Los Angeles Review.