Party membership
Thiện Việt
One does not need to understand communist ideology to become a member of the Communist Party of Vietnam. “All you need to do is to pass their test,” said one state employee.
Category: Southeast Asia
Dictionary, revis(it)ed
Ben Rost
Tracing a Khmer-language dictionary’s trajectory across the past century of Cambodian history offers insights into the ways language has been called on to construct—and to challenge—notions of national identity and community.
Sea change
Darren Wan
What sets Rachel Heng’s historical fiction apart is how she moves beyond this understanding of History (with a capital H) by showing how grand events are mediated by everyday interactions.
When grandmother’s gone
Jeric Olay
A poem by Jeric Olay.
The fate of a barrio farmer
Jeric Olay
A poem by Jeric Olay.
Entry from an immigrant’s diary
Thi Gammon
It had been four years since I last returned to Hanoi. I told myself that I’d never loved this city I had wanted to escape. But time may have helped heal old wounds.
Mommie dearest
David Scott Mathieson
Law-Yone’s penchant for the telling anecdote, the observation of, and connectivity to, the seemingly incidental, and the insight into the public and private personality makes this book a seminal contribution.
Building an archive
Emi Donald
The Anjaree Archive preserves material collected over the decades by one of Thailand’s first advocacy groups for gender and sexual rights. But can an archive also tell the story of its own messy creation?
What we see
Stephanie Chok
In Now You See Us, Balli Kaur Jaswal has created a social world that magnifies the indignities and frustrations of everyday life as a migrant domestic worker in Singapore.
Land of smiles?
Stephen Gregory
Our growing Thai family, now into its fourth generation, has given us plenty of smiles and laughter… and outbursts of anger and stubbornness and exasperation.
Apathy and nonchalance
Loh Pei Ying
This could be After The Inquiry’s intention: to rile us up and stir a sense of indignation at a system in which the truth might not win out over politics and power
Navigating 6 October 1976
Dương Mạnh Hùng
Prism of Photography is an attempt to challenge the fixity of historical account, specifically the 6 October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University, through images.
Sporting attitude
Kirsten Han
Could distance runner Soh Rui Yong’s absence from Singapore’s national team point to something bigger about how things work? He thinks this could be a “good opportunity” to ask questions.
Peering around river bends
Emily Ding
I’ve often come to forks while travelling. Do I stop where I had planned to arrive, or do I keep going? Maybe if I go on a bit further, I might find something I have never quite seen, in quite the same way, before.
So close, too far away
Peixuan Xie
Mae Sot, Thailand, provides the anonymity a Burmese peace activist needs, although not without guarded boundaries and precarious undercurrents to navigate
Ibun
Kulleh Grasi
Poetry from Kulleh Grasi
White snow, silver moon
Ngan Nguyen
A short story by Ngan Nguyen
Passport renewed
Benjamin Zawacki
Yo and Noom choose their books, in English and Thai, with care and purpose to ensure that Passport Bookshop has a clear identity and its patrons a quality read.
Reading Ma Sandar in Chiang Mai
Joe Freeman
It is especially important to pay attention to Myanmar right now, but the future of Burmese-language instruction in English is uncertain. Joe Freeman speaks with linguist Justin Watkins about his work.
Holding the line
Kirsten Han
It was hoped that social media would facilitate democracy. Today, we worry about misinformation polarising society and undermining democracy.
A professional amateur
Brendan Ryan
It’s hard to pin down exactly how to describe Đinh Nhung and what she does. Her work has spanned art installations, photography, curation and the compilation of lexicons of queerness in Vietnam.
Conservation stories
Wayne McCallum
Lifting the stone on ‘Big Conservation’, Sarah Milne’s book demonstrates how conservation is inherently political—an effort to impose meaning on to landscape and people.
The dog days of Burma
Daniel Benowitz
When Oliver Slow writes that the Myanmar military must return to the barracks, he presumably means they should only be in the barracks. Readers may wonder if they were ever so confined.
Operation Corporate
Salil Tripathi
What Philip J. Stern offers is a reflection on the nature of power—how organisations created to share risks and raise capital for economic activities ended up becoming a dominant force.
The road to Muse
Bryony Lau
What happens in a border town when the border is closed? Bryony Lau travels to Muse in Myanmar’s northeast and reflects on its history and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Merantau
Daryl Qilin Yam
Queer Southeast Asia provides a multifaceted mosaic of the region, stretching for all to see the complexities that will always simmer beneath the volume’s name.
Weaving memories
Florence Kuek
The publication of The Age of Goodbyes—the English translation of the award-winning novel by Li Zi Shu—was a celebrated event, eagerly awaited by connoisseurs and enthusiasts of Malaysian Chinese literature.
An upland fable for ailing times
Marco Ferrarese
In Melody Kemp’s debut novel, Tree Crime, a young Lao teenager turns detective as a deadly virus circulates in her village. Marco Ferrarese reviews a story about the costs of ‘progress’ at the expense of natural ecosystems.
The Claim
Akiya
A short story by Akiya, translated by Adriana Nordin Manan.
In Search of Poetry
Zakariya Amataya
Poetry by Zakariya Amataya, translated by Preeyaporn Charoenbutra and Sunida Supantamart.
A Death in Arakan (Part 3): A journey, not a battle
Edith Mirante
Buried in Burma, Clive Branson’s antifascist legacy is found in his letters and a symphony. Arakan (Rakhine State) where he died has continued to be a killing ground.
Caught in between
Rosalie Metro
While the Myanmar military is responsible for the violence, Kaamil Ahmed points out in I Feel No Peace: Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas and Rivers that more parties are complicit in the exploitation and abuse of Rohingya refugees.
The Aremania’s heartbreak
Bayu Dwityo Wicaksono and Faiz Nashrillah
On 1 October 2022, 135 people lost their lives at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, Indonesia, after police officers fired tear gas to disperse football fans. Bayu Dwityo Wicaksono and Faiz Nashrillah speak to a bereaved father and a survivor of the stadium crush.
Personal embodiments
Will Nguyen
Through his maternal grandfather’s life and his own experiences, Will Nguyen reflects on how personal stories are documented in Vietnam, and the relationship between the diaspora and mainland Vietnamese.
Choosing family
Lam Le
The ‘white saviour’ narrative is a common trope in transnational adoptions. In Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family, Erika Hayasaki tells the story of three Vietnamese adoptees, and unpacks dominant assumptions about power, privilege and the meaning of family.
Leaving a mark
Teeranai Charuvastra
Some might dismiss graffiti as “rubbish”, but street art can tell a story about a city’s history, politics and culture. A review of Bangkok Street Art and Graffiti: Hope Full, Hope Less, Hope Well by Rupert Mann.
Who is Auntie?
Kirsten Han
In Ajoomma, a Singaporean-South Korean co-production directed by He Shuming, an auntie travels to South Korea to visit the shooting locations of her favourite K-dramas… but gets far more than she’d bargained for.
Family and identity
Erna Mahyuni
In The Accidental Malay by Karina Robles Bahrin, protagonist Jasmine Leong—heiress of a Chinese family business dealing in pork products—discovers that she’s actually Malay Muslim. What ensues highlights the fraught nature of race, religion and politics in Malaysia.
Sexy and Merlion-free
Linda Collins
Eighteen Singaporean poets write with a refreshingly mawkish-free assurance about crises of identity, neo-colonialism, the place of LGBTQ people in society and mummy-daddy issues in New Singapore Poetries, edited by Marylyn Tan and Jee Leong Koh.