Mekong Review

Category: Southeast Asia

Stand and fight

Calum Stuart

The way Daniel York Loh, a London-based actor of Singaporean and British heritage, sees it, there’s no way anyone can resist rising facism simply by being ‘reasonable’ and ‘sensible’.

No one owes you a living

Kirsten Han

Singapore proudly declares itself a “pro-family” nation. But in Unease: Life in Singapore Families, Teo You Yenn uncovers a sense of unease among Singaporean parents from all walks of life.

China’s dropout generation

David Frazier

Chinese law allows the state to punish its citizens for consuming cannabis outside its borders, but many young Chinese citizens see Thailand as a safe haven for mind-altering experiments.

Power, concentrated

Theodore Pham

The General: Vietnam in the Age of Tô Lâm shows that not even foreigners or non-Vietnamese speakers have immunity from the iron fist Tô Lâm, the Communist Party of Vietnam’s general secretary.

Philippines: the dramedy

Sol Iglesias

Beyond Geopolitics: The Philippines in the New Marcos Era is a good guide to the first half of the Marcos Jr administration, and much of what is written on corruption, political dynasties, elite competition, and debilitated institutions helps to explain present circumstances.

Remembering is a political act

Atika Shubert

In contexts where public narratives are written and rewritten according to the whims of those in power, and selective amnesia is imposed upon the population, remembering becomes a political act.

What is Asia?

Isaac Neo

Is the twenty-first century an Asian one? According to former Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan, this is entirely the wrong question to be asking.

Hold sway the water

Dương Mạnh Hùng

Rather than imposing a narrative or privileging the human perspective, Jeanne Penjan Lassus’s works attune to the rhythms, temporality, and micro-activities of a place—observing plants, animals, and environmental shifts with patience and openness.

Goodness worth waiting for

Max Loh

DELAY: A Comics Anthology is a timely salve in an era where artists are facing an existential battle against artificial intelligence and digitisation.

Keeping secrets

Michael D. Barr

The publication of The Albatross File: Inside Separation is very welcome for those with an interest in the Singapore story—though less for the hitherto secret documents it reproduces and more for the hitherto secret oral histories.

Flooding the streets

Lorence Lozano

Arnold Is A Model Student shines a light on an unfair system, challenging the notion of what it means to be a “model” within such broken structures.

Haircuts

Varsha Sivaram

In Singapore, queerness is considered an aberration—it jams up the works, causes panic and confusion. Numerous accounts of in-person discrimination support this, especially when it comes to hair.

Waves of grace

Lucell Larawan

Casimiro Villas Jr lost everything in Super Typhoon Haiyan. Years later, he finds that family can be rebuilt not from blood, but from grace.

Saving the pantun

Ken Kwek

Chan Eng Thai the man may steel himself against disappointment by adopting the pose of a fatalist, but Chan the poet wields his words with a vigour that stubbornly defies the fading of the light.

The unwanted election

Aung Naing Soe

The Myanmar military hopes that an election will give their rule a veneer of legitimacy, but a vote largely rejected by the people as a sham will hardly soothe tensions.

Rocking and rolling

Pippo Carmona

The story of Philippine music post-Marcos is not one of political liberation but of a transition from the chains of censorship to the cushioned shackles of commercialism.

Power and conquest

Soham Gadre

Ferdinand Magellan was a famous explorer, but Diaz makes it clear that his film isn’t some graceful portrait of the man.

Trading words for bullets

Oliver Raw

There’s poignancy in the idea of artistic ambition sacrificed for something as fundamental as war. And Myanmar embroiled in civil war, it’s perhaps only natural that poets, like many of their countrymen, have taken up arms.

Street cries

Phạm Thu Trang

Street cries in Vietnam are more than simple calls of commerce; they form an urban soundscape—a way of sensing time, place, and season.

Pragmatic idealism

Isaac Neo

An idealistic and highly personal approach to foreign policy is what sets Tommy Koh apart from many of his fellow luminaries in Singapore’s diplomatic sphere.

Cybercrime unchained

Nick J. Freeman

Cybercrime is a big business, and some of its leading perpetrators are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities in Southeast Asia.

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.

Pol Pot’s guests

Colin Meyn

Meeting with Pol Pot adds to Rithy Panh’s resume as the most prolific maker of films about the regime that took his family and terrorised his country.

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.

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