Mekong Review

Malaysia’s reading riddle

Susan Loone

Banning books might bring the Malaysian government short-term political gain, but this restriction of access to different perspectives could have serious long-term repercussions.

Malayness

Rowena Abdul Razak

Dina Zaman brings a lot from her past to Malayland, but she’s also firm in looking forward and seeking the humanness in Malaysia’s obsession for categories and othering.

Singapore’s utopia of rules

Naima Morelli

David Graeber’s notion of “total bureaucratisation” isn’t just a fitting analytical tool for global contemporary life; it also mirrors, with uncanny accuracy, the paradoxes of Singapore’s cultural policy.

Bringing back the dead

Leong Kar Yen

When families affected by extrajudicial killings in the Philippines speak and shed tears of sorrow and anger in front of legislators and flashing cameras, they’re finally able to transform shame into outrage.

Far and away

Connla Stokes

Andrew Lam had never set out to be the preeminent chronicler of the global Vietnamese diaspora, but realised that “when I spoke up for those that couldn’t, I found my tongue”.

Star power

Mathieu Berbiguier

Dorothy Wai Sim Lau undertakes a nuanced interrogation of how fame, altruism and regional identity intersect in Asia’s transnational mediascape.

Detoxification

Kirsten Han

A review of two books on finding—or perhaps ‘freeing’ is a better word—one’s voice through acts of creation, whether it’s prose, poetry, painting, drawing or cooking.

My brief career as a propagandist

Andreas Pohl

“Apart from illustrating how invested the authorities still are in shaping the official story of Vietnam’s wars of liberation, my experience at Thế Giới also revealed an almost religious faith in the power of the written word.”

Foreign influence

David Frazier

While the voices and expressions in Chinese rock have come from Chinese musicians, outsiders have consistently injected know-how and resources into the country’s marginalised underground musical movements.

Activist imagery

John Mateer

In a new banner by Taring Padi and Noongar artists, the Noongar figures and Australian fauna and flora integrate with images from an rebellious Indonesian proletarian class in a bold synthesis, creating a dream-like, political logic.

Real men eat tofu

Nick J. Freeman

Despite tofu’s lack of structural integrity, Russell Thomas notes that its versatility has given it the resilience to “stand up in a range of figurative and real-life settings”.

Persistence

Debra Carney

Luise Ahrens, a Maryknoll nun and education innovator from the US, worked with seismic stamina for twenty-six years to build up higher education in Cambodia.

Fleeing the draft

Jatuporn Susuadmo

Young people from Myanmar are being forced to choose between survival and service in a conflict they had no say in and strongly object to.

Shades of the same colour

Taeyeon Song

Kornel Chang, a diasporic Korean historian and author, paints a picture of a post-Second World War Korea searching for a singular vision of what independence looks like.

Preserving Cantonese

Chong Ja Ian

Simin Li’s book is a reminder that continuing assertions about the singularity of Chinese culture and politics belie the pluralism and diversity of the Sinophone tradition.

Architecture in context

Troels Steenholdt Heiredal

Shifting Horizons: The Generation of Emancipatory Architecture in Taiwan is a unique exhibition including the many aspects that make up architectural production and attempting to locate the formation of contemporary Taiwanese architecture.

Lessons in fragility

Radhika Oberoi

Nature provides expressive backdrops for Han Kang’s fiction; while she chronicles human frailty and barbarity, she also allows the light to seep in through the foliage.

When Gilbert & George went to China

Paul French

Among a post-Tiananmen flurry of activity, Gilbert & George, the British duo who’d been a dominant force in the UK’s 1980s art scene, made a trail to China and inspired many looking to break free of their constraints.

Making protests fun

Seulki Lee

How does one save the world against evil with little more than one’s own imagination? When faced with hopeless nonsense from the political leadership, what can one do with their writing?

Political theatre

Calum Stuart

Singaporean actor Lim Kay Siu on the differences between acting in Hollywood and in Singapore, the power of theatre to raise public awareness of important issues, and getting political on live streams while playing a ukulele.

Too much for the lens

Sabahat Ali Wani

Through their exposure in front of the camera—as well as their work behind it—the faces and bodies of Kashmiri women not only become visible but also assert themselves on their own terms.