Charmaine Craig is the only person who could have written Miss Burma. Why? Because "Miss Burma" was her mother, Burma's first beauty queen before the country's civil war resulted in a dictatorship. The narrative begins with Benny and Khin, a couple who survive Burma's Japanese occupation in World War II, before focusing on their daughter Louise, whose beauty title is both a blessing and a curse as she navigates her ethnic heritage and the ongoing struggles within her own country.