As part of the Women of Courage and Spirit Speaker Series, Khet spoke with Ellis Upper School classes throughout the day, including Dr. Suzanne “Sue” Free’s creative writing class. Khet’s life story deeply impressed Ellis students and faculty and inspired this response by Dr. Free:

“I was honored to have Khet Mar in my creative writing class this week. She is an amazing woman, as mild and soft-spoken as she is iron-willed, and a wonderful model for our girls.

She is a writer of courage as well as talent, for whom truth-telling has been liberating and life-endangering. In our class of 11 girls, every girl in the class asked at least one question (one girl asked seven), amazed by the story of her arrest (literally taken from her grandmother’s bed by soldiers in the middle of the night, causing her grandmother to have a stroke), and her time in prison (deprived of sleep for 10 days). In spite of all this Khet remained unbroken.

She described the worst years of political oppression and instability in Burma. In 1988 alone, 20,000 people were killed. All schools and universities were closed for three years. When asked what she did in those years—if they were lost to her—Khet said she went to a village to live with her grandmother and spent all her time reading and writing. It was a powerful reminder that education can be had anywhere when there’s a will.   
          
Khet spoke with no stridency, but a powerful earnestness; and was easily confiding about her struggle with depression in Pittsburgh. She was especially good at quietly correcting the idealistic naiveté of some of the students. (“Why would these soldiers hurt their own people?”)

Khet Mar is a true woman warrior—all 100 pounds of her and we were honored to have her speak here at Ellis.”
-Sue Free, Ph.D.