Mekong Review

Category: Southeast Asia

A family’s love language

Wong Ee Xin

In a family that struggles to express affection physically or verbally, food has become a means of demonstrating connection, care, and a deep love.

Tending to wounds

Nabilah Husna Binte Abdul Rahman

Remembrance of indigenous histories and erasure is painful. But to remember politically and ethically, despite the ways memory has been dismissed or commodified, is to be hopeful and future-focused. Nabilah Husna on the power of indigenous memory.

Knowing and embodying

Faris Joraimi

Due to an outward appearance of bloodless harmony, the experience of racism in Singapore is akin to background noise that only minorities can hear. A review of Brown Is Redacted: Reflecting on Race in Singapore, edited by Kristian-Marc James Paul, Mysara Aljaru and Myle Yan Tay.

Dark cityscape

Ben Murtagh

Written in the late 1950s while Mochtar Lubis was under house arrest, Twilight in Jakarta was smuggled overseas, translated by Clarie Holt, and published by Hutchinson & Co in 1963. A revised version by John McGlynn was published by the Lontar Foundation in 2014.

Stand up

Beatrice Go

Amid the bloody war on drugs and the Covid-19 pandemic, political cartoonists in the Philippines, like Kevin Raymundo and Andoy Edoria, have produced hard-hitting work that has struck a chord with their fellow Filipinos.

New sounds for the old order

Yudhistira Agato

For those curious about Indonesian music, Padang Moonrise: The Birth of the Modern Indonesian Recording Industry (1955-69) is a fascinating portrait of a precarious young country trying to protect its cultural identity while opening itself to the world.

Do you love books?

Toh Ee Ming

A profile of Kenny Chan, who worked at Books Kinokuniya from 2001 to 2019. Today, he continues to roam the aisles of the flagship Singapore store, and talks to Toh Ee Ming about his enduring love of reading.

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