The exploration of a character’s sexuality in Tash Aw’s latest novel has triggered backlash among conservatives in Malaysia, but pushing back in today’s fraught times is itself a complex undertaking.
How does one love a world that is increasingly fractured? A reflection on curating at Objectifs and participating in the artistic projects by Chu Hao Pei and Arie Syarifuddin in Singapore.
An encounter in Penang with a man named Kelvin D Loovi, who tells a story about his blue guitar.
For English language readers outside China, these translations of The Running Flame and Soft Burial help to reframe Fang Fang as a writer of more than Wuhan Diary.
Playing with nationalism is to take part in a risky game.
As an attempt to preserve what is gone, Shen Fu’s writing endures as a reminder to treasure what we still have and what we will someday mourn.
Despite enduring humiliation, punishment, and incarceration, Xi Zhongxun’s loyalty to the Party—and even his “emotional attachment” to Mao Zedong—never wavered.
Filipino Hongkongers are generally excluded from the city’s self-understanding as an Asian metropolis with a distinct cultural heritage, but the historical ties between Hong Kong and the Philippines run deep.
Stephen Simmons has produced an important record, with a wealth of historical information, that highlights the work of artists during the Sangkum era.
With both humanist insight and historical precision, Paul P. Mariani shows how Bishop Louis Jin Luxian was, above all, a Jesuit of his time.
An exhibition in Pattani brings art collectives from three countries together to create dialogue on communal work and solidarity, encouraging people to look beyond stereotypes of Thailand’s deep south.
“As Freud has said, if we don’t mourn, we’ll be trapped forever in melancholy as a violent site. That, to me, is a worldwide symptom”
In Bengali culture, ilish is deeply intertwined with identity, memory and celebration. But the fish has also been caught up in questions of trade, diplomacy and politics between India and Bangladesh.
A look into the lives of Vietnamese workers in Myanmar’s scam centres.
In a world that often overlooks the power of young people online, fan communities have emerged as an unseen engine of revolution in Myanmar
A conversation with Saigon Soul Revival, a band “on a mission to bring back the raw, live sound of 1960s and 1970s Vietnamese rock and soul music”.
In the face of funding cuts and growing oppression, Cambodian reporters cling on to hope through memories of a golden age of journalism.
The Miss Universe franchise has been dismissed as a chauvinistic relic, but Thailand’s long-standing fixation with such pageants suggests that there are deeper implications.
Neighbourhood conversations, sights and sounds in Shivajinagar.
Attempting to rebuild their relationship after her coming out, a daughter finds a momentary connection with her mother over Sanmao’s Stories of the Sahara.
Far from dismal or desolate, Lingga mornings reveal the everyday intimacies borne through connections near and far.
While Y2K’s SM Town artists reflected a new era and hopeful future, the K-pop artists of 2025 have been positioned as soft power cultural pawns.
Waves Rising beautifully commemorates Ho Poh Fun’s life’s work, perhaps feeling like it needed to smoothen out some things bubbling just under the surface.
A comic by Juliette Yu-Ming Lizeray, reflecting on her shifting relationship with hope.
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.
On not coming to terms with the past in Indonesia.
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.
A historian journeys to České Budějovice in Bohemia in search of the archive of Filipiniana left behind by Ferdinand and Friedrich Blumentritt.
If history is written by the victors, then literature is the rebellion of the defeated.
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.
A poem from Domar Batucan Recopelacion
Two group shows staged in Bangkok question mainstream Cold War narratives through contemporary art.
Poetry by Aisha Khalid.
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.
Khieu Ponnary, once called the “mother” of the Khmer Rouge, had seemingly vanished from history while the regime was at its height.
Forty years after the world’s worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, activists and survivors are still struggling for justice and accountability.
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”.
Dorothy Wai Sim Lau undertakes a nuanced interrogation of how fame, altruism and regional identity intersect in Asia’s transnational mediascape.
Rebecca Toh, the founder of Casual Poet Library, on carefree wandering and taking one’s time.
Publishing in Cambodia is still a fledgling, fragile industry, but it’s growing fast.