Ten years of Mekong Review
Kirsten Han
A reflection from Mekong Review’s Editor-in-Chief on the occasion of our tenth anniversary issue.
Category: Free to read
The murder of Affan Kurniawan
Sylvie Tanaga
Indonesians were already furious at their government, seen as out-of-touch at a time of economic hardship. After an armoured police vehicle ran over a young delivery rider, they became unstoppable.
Into the fray
Aie Balagtas See
Returning to politics, Leila de Lima says, is the only choice if she wants to keep fighting for justice, the rule of law, and truth.
The ink that never dries
Alfian Sa’at
By writing poetry from death row, Pannir Selvam Pranthaman sets out to prove that he’s more than just a condemned prisoner.
Scars of victory
Robic Upadhayay
Every decade or so, Nepal endures upheaval, then dusts itself off—a cycle of destruction and reconstruction. But, maybe this time, the cycle will finally be broken.
Bringing Iwao home
Kirsten Han
Hakamata Iwao is believed to have been the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner. For more than half a century, his sister Hideko has never given up on him.
Hope in the everyday
Tshechu Dorji Wong
Hope doesn’t always come in grand gestures. Hope, I have come to believe, is less about optimism and more about practice.
Writing nearby, gathering hope
Lenette Lua
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.
Lying flat in Qing China
Sebastien Smith
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.
In search of ilish
Mohsina Malik and Ashish Kumar Kataria
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.
The power of fandom
Nway and Htaike
In a world that often overlooks the power of young people online, fan communities have emerged as an unseen engine of revolution in Myanmar
Memories of a golden age
Sokummono Khan
In the face of funding cuts and growing oppression, Cambodian reporters cling on to hope through memories of a golden age of journalism.
Flight Plan
Juliette Yu-Ming Lizeray
A comic by Juliette Yu-Ming Lizeray, reflecting on her shifting relationship with hope.
A world that no longer exists
Victoria Audu
If history is written by the victors, then literature is the rebellion of the defeated.
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.
Bhopal, forty years on
Claudio Avella
Forty years after the world’s worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, activists and survivors are still struggling for justice and accountability.
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.
Growing readers in Cambodia
Tom Marshall
Publishing in Cambodia is still a fledgling, fragile industry, but it’s growing fast.
Personal/Political struggles
C.J. Anderson-Wu
You Must Take Part in Revolution combines powerful imagery with a compelling plot to convey the political turmoil we’ve experienced and might face in the near future.
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.
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?
K-pop boys for the end of the world
Kirsten Han
We’re all just finding ways to relieve the anxieties of living in a world that’s spinning out of control.
Encounter and exchange
Marj Evasco, Lily-Rose Tope, Michelle Aung Thin
Scenes and reflections from Bohol.
Points deducted for
Sreedhevi Iyer and Balli Kaur Jaswal
How to score points when the score-board always changes?
The hardliner
James Crabtree
Matt Pottinger doesn’t much like the term “China hawk”. Even so, he’s become one of the most prominent voices in the United States pushing for a tougher line against Beijing.
Racism and repression
Andreas Harsono
Indonesia’s National Library may not contain a lot on West Papua, but five books, reviewed by Andreas Harsono, describe its tormented history.
Elsewhere than Here
Brandon K. Liew and Daryl Lim Wei Jie 林伟杰
Poetry from Brandon K. Liew and Daryl Lim Wei Jie 林伟杰
Grey, all grey
Haresh Sharma
Like many in Singapore, artists exist on a strange monochromatic spectrum—the lighter side provides access to opportunities and awards, the darker potentially leading to loss of employment. How should one navigate this space?
Ekphrasis
Michelle Aung Thin and Khin
Using the photographic archive to rethink Myanmar’s past.
Living otherwise
Kirsten Han
The works featured in Joanne Leow’s monograph, Counter-Cartographies: Reading Singapore Otherwise, are examples of (mostly) Singaporeans who refuse to conform to top-down formulations of how to live on this island.
The massacre America erased
Timothy McLaughlin
Americans like to think that the most cruel excesses of colonialism are reserved for the histories of the British or the French, but Kim A. Wagner draws connections between American behaviour in the Philippines and the tactics of other colonial powers.
Tongue-tied
Divya Vaze
Hong Kongers from the Indian subcontinent, the Philippines and Indonesia have lived in the city for a long time. Yet Asian minority Hong Kongers often end up segregated from ethnic Chinese children in the education system.
The sea within
Mahen Bala and Gerhard Hoffstaedter
When rising sea levels threaten to submerge the gravesite of his father, a young man is forced to return to his hometown and confront the dilemma between honouring his father’s dying wishes or to give in to nature.
The third dog / Space bound
Peta Murray and Maggie Tiojakin
“Einstein saw space and time as an intrinsically linked existence: how the passing of time is relative to the space we inhabit, which is to say, how we find meaning in our lives depends greatly on where we stand.”
Dear Archie
Peixuan Xie
A letter to a friend, on thoughts of ‘home’ prompted by the Thai dream-pop duo, HYBS.
The power of queer humour
Seulki Lee
A conversation with Korean queer author and contemporary artist Ibanjiha on their art of humour and succeeding through the heteronormative and hyper-capitalist social order of South Korea.
Political nostalgia
Sylvie Tanaga
Decades after the end of Suharto’s New Order regime in Indonesia, a collective nostalgia for the supposed ‘good old days’—driven by historical revisionism and propaganda—is influencing contemporary Indonesian politics.
By the canal
Linda Collins and Noelle Q. de Jesus
A piece of flash fiction by Linda Collins and Noelle Q. de Jesus. Commissioned as part of a collaboration between RMIT’s nonfiction/lab and Mekong Review.
Complex inheritance
Ann Ang
The Second Link curates writing that moves beyond the “exhausted metaphors and dusty tropes” of the longstanding rivalry between Malaysia and Singapore.
Silos / Renga
Mariyam Haider and Emilie Collyer
A renga by Mariyam Haider and Emilie Collyer. Commissioned as part of a collaboration between RMIT’s nonfiction/lab and Mekong Review.