Mulania Bathin

Mulania Bathin was five years old when she understood that her family name carried weight among her people. Her grandfather was a leader in the Karen National Union, a man highly respected for his service and leadership. This man, whom people lowered their heads to when they greeted him, highly adored Mulania. He was at her beck and call. Because of all the love she was surrounded by, she remembers her childhood as peaceful, despite the politics and danger that loomed. During this time, the Myanmar Military was actively working to assassinate Karen leaders to quell the resistance. Despite this Mulania says she only remembers her childhood as very peaceful. Long days playing with her cousins and eating yummy snacks. 

That peace did not last. Mulania’s mother received a death threat in Thailand because of her association with their family. She made the difficult decision to leave home. In 1999, twelve-year-old Mulania arrived in America with her mother and older brother, resettling in Connecticut. They lived in a condo with a big TV and had kind neighbors. Her mother was taught English at a young age and could already speak some English. This made things easier for their family but still they faced hardships as they started over in a new country.

By eighth grade, her mother had remarried an American man who would become one of the steadiest presences in Mulania’s life. The school she attended had no ESL classes, no interpreters, nothing built for a girl who was learning a new language, new culture, and navigating a growing intersection of identity. Her brother had already moved on to high school, and Mulania was left to navigate alone. She calls it resilience but resilience by necessity rather than by choice. What she did have was her stepfather, who spent time with her, advocated for her, and made the loneliness more bearable. 

Looking back, Mulania reflects on what her mother had to carry: being a single mother, in a new country, having survived an assault and attempts on her life, and making the impossible decision to leave everything behind after learning her family’s lives were at stake. “I think with any family that has gone through trauma or experienced war and hardship,” Mulania says, “there’s always going to be something that’s dysfunctional.” She has noticed how rarely Karen families talk about what happened to them. There is too much trauma and even when people do talk, she learned, “the truth is subjective and it depends on who you ask.” Not everyone can speak truthfully about their past. 

For years, Mulania carried something too: shame. Not shame about who she was exactly, but shame born from existing in a world that had never recognized her identity and her people. She grew tired of explaining over and over who she was and where she came from. “There is nothing like the feeling of people not knowing you exist,” she says. She became, by default, the “first Karen person” many people in her life would ever meet. She was constantly the one educating, translating, and bridging.

It was not until college that she felt the desire to learn where she came from and unearth her roots. She traveled back to Thailand for her grandfather’s funeral, where she also reconnected with her biological father, who had encouraged her to keep learning the Karen language. Seeing him again humbled her. She recalls, “I remember thinking it was so emotional, I just wanted to cry,” she says. She understood he was trying, in his own way, to make up for what his absence had cost her. Through their reconnection, she opened her heart to learning the ways her mother and father were raised and the values they carried with them. 

That trip, along with the years of wondering where she belonged, left her questioning her identity. To some, she seemed too American because of her stepfather and the way she was raised, leading people to assume her life had been easy. They pointed out she did not have any visible scars, as if that defined someone’s status. She felt judged for her appearance and her family’s status, and she felt alone in it. And although she learned that comparison is the thief of joy, whenever she sees footage of Karen people in Burma living through displacement, it is hard not to question, “Why me? Why do I get to survive?”

Through all of it, her grandfather remains her anchor. In a culture where it is unusual to say “I love you” aloud, he said it to her anyway, openly and comfortably, in their native language. He called her “Pa Deh (bunny),” and now, whenever a rabbit crosses her path, she thinks of him, watching over her. “I never felt less than because I wasn’t a boy,” she says, because her grandfather loved her deeply. 

Today, Mulania lives in Minnesota, home to a much larger Karen population than the hometown she grew up in. “It feels nice to be known,” she says. She works as a court interpreter in the state’s justice system, one of the few doing this work in a language that still has no formal certification. She is hopeful that in five years, there will be an official certification. She is actively recruiting other Karen speakers willing to learn the dense, technical vocabulary, so more of her community can do this work too. 

She describes herself as “my ancestors’ wildest dreams,” and she means it. She cannot point to one person who made her who she is. It was all of them, as a whole. What she wants now is to prove that Karen people are capable, smart, resilient, and deserving of space. “In order for people to know us,” she states, “I think we have to give them the bridge to cross over.” Mulania is exactly that bridge.