Tash Aw: My Malaysian Writer [cont.]

The Harmony Silk Factory

In The Harmony Silk Factory, the story is divided into three parts, all narrated by different people. The central figure in this novel is a guy named Johnny Lim whose life stories are accounted by the people around him. The first part of the story is narrated by his son, Jasper. It is noteworthy at the beginning of the story Johnny is already deceased. So, his son Jasper knows for a fact that his late father was not the man that he seemed to be in the eyes of the public. He was a conman, and traitor, soliciting himself with the headquarters in Harmony Silk Factory to escape the despicable torture of the Japanese. Jasper’s account ended when he received a parcel from a man during his father’s funeral. Contained inside the parcel is a personal journal, written by his mother named Snow Soong’s from 1941. The readers soon will realize from her diary that the marriage that she had with Johnny was not a happy one. Moreover, it seems that the focus is not on Jonny’s character when she is narrating and this parallels with the third narration of the novel, which is an Englishman named Peter, the man who handed Jasper the parcel at the funeral. All three characters try to give their sides of stories in terms of experience with encountering Johnny when he was still alive. The further details of the novel revolve around how Johnny Lim made it to where he was before dying, a rich and influential guy and also the conspiracies with the Japanese.

Map of the Invisible World

In Map of the Invisible World, the story opens with the 16-year-old Adam helplessly looking on as his adoptive father Karl is seized by soldiers at their remote island home in the eastern Indonesian archipelago. Karl, a Dutch Indonesian artist who pledged himself to the new country after its independence was recognised in 1949, has nurtured Adam, a boy of “neutral Indo-Malay features”, whom he took from an orphanage aged five. Yet this is the summer of 1964, as the army confronts communists and politicians whip up xenophobia, with blanket repatriation of Dutch from the old colonial power, and the bellicose policy of Konfrontasi – a territorial dispute with the newly independent but British-backed Malaysia. The novel is driven partly by Adam’s search for Karl as civil war looms. The other spur is a psychological quest. Adam is an orphan three times over. He and his brother, Johan, were abandoned by their mother as children. Adam’s elder brother was adopted before him, and the separation haunts both their lives, which are narrated in parallel. Johan, now part of a wealthy Malaysian family in Kuala Lumpur but self-destructive with guilt at abandoning his sibling, speeds around the young city in his daddy’s Mercedes, with the sense that “your life is not your own … that your real life is somewhere else”. Yet as Adam slowly recovers memories of his lost brother, the search for his father – though no blood relation – comes to assume greater urgency. Adam seeks out an American anthropologist, Margaret Bates, whom Karl captivated as a young painter in 30s Bali. Now a university teacher in Jakarta who downs cocktails in the Hotel Java, Margaret hunts for her lost love with the aid of the US embassy official Bill Schneider, and an Australian journalist. Margaret’s portrayal is curiously poised between affection and irony. A self-styled “expert in non-verbal communication”, she misunderstands Din’s reserve as the “respect of hierarchy that (she had noticed) seems to plague all Asians”. She fancies herself good at “spotting what lay behind this Asian mask of inscrutability”. Yet with westerners, “she had not really even been able to understand her parents”. Woven hauntingly into this page-turning story is the voice of Johan, who is living a seemingly carefree, privileged life in Malaysia, but one that is careening out of control as he struggles to forget his long-ago betrayal of his helpless, trusting brother.

Huzir Sulaiman: Where Politic Meets Bull-itic

“The World Fellows Program is reality on steroids: turbocharged and jam-packed, dense and intense, relentless and life-changing. The Program doesn’t end here; it ends in how it has nourished and shaped our lives, in how we will continue the story.”

Huzir Sulaiman was born in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, in 1973. He originates from the Indian part of the population of the multi-racial state and studied at Princeton University. His father is Haji Sulaiman Abdullah, who was born G. Srinivasan Iyer, a Tamil Brahmin who later converted to Islam. Sulaiman is a veteran lawyer who served as Malaysian Bar Council president. His mother is Hajjah Mehrun Siraj, who has served as a professor, lawyer, consultant for United Nations agencies, NGO activists and a Commissioner with the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia.

In 1996 he founded the now firmly established Straits Theatre Company in Kuala Lumpur. The theatre enjoyed early success with Sulaiman’s first piece, the one-man show Lazy Hazy Crazy (1997). With the second production, Atomic Jaya (1998) Sulaiman confirmed his reputation as one of the leading and most interesting playwrights of Malaysia and Singapore.  Rich with tempo and punchlines, the satire of political aspirations at becoming a nation of great power and the craze of nuclear armament was compared to Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Love the Bomb. Some of the fourteen roles in the play – among which can be found a megalomaniac politician, an unscrupulous soldier, a scrupulous scientist and a criminal arms dealer – was performed by the author himself during the third production.

The Smell of Language (1998), Sulaiman’s third theatre piece, is a postmodern play which questions the role of the author and focuses on the scandalous events in the Malaysian state of Malacca in 1995, when the Chief Minister was alleged to have raped a fourteen-year-old girl who was then taken into police custody. The grotesqueness of the misuse of power reached its peak when an opposition politician inaccurately labelled the latter incident as “imprisonment” instead of “detainment” – a choice of words which led him to be thrown into jail himself. Sulaiman wrote six more plays in swift succession.  The most recent ones appeared in 2002, in his anthology “Eight Plays”. That same year Sulaiman was commissioned by the Singapore Arts Festival to write a piece about the Japanese occupation of the country during World War II.  The resulting work, Occupation (2002), depicts this period through the prism of the author’s own grandparents – and links the national trauma of occupation with an episode in which the grandmother falls in love with her future husband and becomes “occupied” by this love.

One of the most critically acclaimed dramatists in Southeast Asia, and a 2007 Yale World Fellow, Huzir Sulaiman writes for theatre, film, television and newspapers, and is a consultant on public policy issues for the arts and heritage sectors. Sulaiman, who also writes for film and television, moved to Singapore in 2003.  He has worked as an actor and director and was one of the co-founders of Checkpoint Theatre, based there, of which he is now Joint Artistic Director.  Following the completion of an epic historical play about Singapore’s failed attempt to gain independence from Great Britain in 1956, Sulaiman is currently at work on a novel about the artistic counterculture in Malaysia and Singapore at the turn of the millennium.  The author holds at present the 2005 Writing Fellowship by the National University of Singapore and The Arts House.

His plays are frequently performed in Malaysia and Singapore and have been presented in Tokyo, Berlin, New York, and London. His work is collected in Eight Plays(Silverfish Books) and his plays – 14 to date – are studied in universities in the region. They range from Atomic Jaya (1998), a classic satire on what would happen if Malaysia decided to construct an atomic bomb, to Cogito (a commission of the 2007 Singapore Arts Festival), a lyrical exploration of grief, memory, and what it means to be human.

Wide Angle, his fortnightly column in Malaysia’s leading English newspaper, The Star, covers diverse topics in culture, politics, and society. He currently teaches playwriting at the National University of Singapore, and is working on a novel.

Huzir Sulaiman: Collected Plays 1998 – 2012 

–          Lazy Hazy Crazy (1997) – not published

–          Atomic Jaya (1998)

–          Hip-Hopera (1998)

–          The Smell of Language (1998)

–          Election Day (1999)

–          Notes on Life & Love & Painting (1999)

–          Those Four Sisters Fernandez (2000)

–          Occupation (2002)

–          Whatever That Is (2002)

–          One Plot (2002) – not published

–          They Will be Grateful (2003) – not published

–          Colony of Singapore (2005) – not published

–          The Weight of Silk on Skin (2011)

–          Cogito

–          Opiume: The Narrator’s Tale

References:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huzir-sulaiman

http://www.todayonline.com/blogs/forartssake/we-rat-checkpoint-theatres-huzir-sulaiman-and-claire-wong?page=1

http://www.literaturfestival.com/participants/authors/2005/huzir-sulaiman

http://worldfellows.yale.edu/huzir-sulaiman

https://platypusflatus.wordpress.com/tag/huzir-sulaiman/

Lloyd Fernando: Breaking the Racial Barrier

Biography

Lloyd Fernando was born to a Sinhalese family in Kandy, Sri Lanka in 1926. In 1938, his family migrated to Singapore. Mr. Fernando was educated at St Patrick’s in Singapore, with the Japanese occupation interrupting that education from 1943 to 1945. This early migration across the Indian Ocean had an enriching influence on Fernando, the writer and scholar, as it was to plant the seeds of a transcultural, diasporic imagination in him at an impressionable age. During the Japanese attack on Singapore, Mr. Fernando’s father was killed. During the Japanese occupation, Fernando worked in a variety of manual labour jobs.

Lloyd Fernando thereafter graduated from the University of Malaya in Singapore, and subsequently served as an instructor at the Singapore Polytechnic. Lloyd Fernando became an assistant lecturer at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur in 1960. Mr. Fernando was awarded a scholarship at Leeds University, UK where he received his PhD. Lloyd converted his novel, Scorpion Orchid, into a play, which was first produced in Singapore in 1994. In the next year, 1995, the play had its premiere in Kuala Lumpur. It was first anthologised by the Singapore Institute of Management for the Open University in a collection of poems, short stories and plays by Singaporean and Malaysian writers, meant only for student consumption, and, therefore, was not for sale.

In 1967 Fernando was appointed to serve as a professor at the English Department of the University of Malaya, where he served until his retirement in 1978. Subsequently, Mr. Fernando studied law at City University in the United Kingdom and then at Middle Temple, returning to Malaysia with two law degrees, whereupon he was employed by a law firm, and thereafter started a separate law practice business. Fernando was admitted as Advocate and Solicitor of the High Court of Malaya in 1980, at the age of 54. In 1997, Mr. Fernando had a stroke and ceased his professional activities. The stroke was a pretty major one which happened in December of 1997, but in 1998, he was able to write an answer to a questionnaire by Daizal Samad who was a lecturer at the time at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Lloyd wrote some very interesting things about his work and his life for this particular piece, something he had never done before. In 1998, just a year after the stroke, he was able to write coherently, and he was, in fact, working on a third novel previous to that. But he just couldn’t pick up the threads of the story again. He tried very hard, but he just couldn’t do it. So, he has the first three chapters of it, but it’s hardly completed and he had to stop.

 List of Works

• Scorpion Orchid, 1976
• Cultures in Conflict, 1986
• Green is the Colour, 1993
• Twenty-two Malaysian Stories: an anthology of writing in English (editor)
• “New Women” in the Late Victorian Novel, 1977

Source:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Fernando
• http://asiatic.iium.edu.my/v2n2/article/Pauline.pdf
• http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/804502.Lloyd_Fernando

 

Scorpion Orchid (Summary)

In Scorpion Orchid, Fernando uses the racial and political riots in Singapore in the early 60’to explore the demands on four youths (Sabran, Guan Eng, Santhinathan, D’Almeida), each of different race, as the face the challenges of a commitment to the forging of a new society which can be called home after the violence of the riots. Although a lot of hard work lies ahead, Fernando hints of the possibility of a genuine dialogue across racial lines so that commonalities rather than differences are emphasised and adaptations take precedence over puristic racial stands.

The four young men were united by the bonds of friendship, brought together in the uniquely multicultural society of Singapore. About to graduate from university, they are caught in the political upheavals of the 1950s. There are uncertain times: still recovering from the Japanese Occupation, Singapore is now ready to fight for Independence from the British. As they watch their countrymen confront each other, tearing the country apart, they face up to the reality of their multicultural society. Against a backdrop of violence and hatred, each embarks on an arduous journey of self-discovery, to reconcile deep-seated cultures and traditions with a new emerging society. In their quest for their true selves, the bonds of their young manhood are sorely tried.

The author’s vision of the flowering of a new, post colonial society (multi-lingual, multi-traditional) is crystallised in the image of the orchid of the novel’s title. Like this piece of orchid, the new society is a wonderfully adaptable hybrid created by a nationalistic, postcolonial generation out of the collective past. But its survival can be threatened by hidden venom. Scorpions lurk among the roots of the orchid waiting to sting and poison.

Written in a dynamic and evocative style, Scorpion Orchid takes us back to those tumultuous days in the early 50s when a nation was trying to assert its identity.

“Fernando’s text energizes [Lord] Jim’s story, providing the “other words” that Jim lacked, and thereby paving the way for a more optimistic prognosis for intercultural contacts.” – R. Kurtz in Conradiana

• Source: Fernando, Lloyd. Scorpion Orchid. Shah Alam: Times Books International. 1992. Print.

 

Cultures in Conflict: Essays on Literature & The English Language In South-East Esia

How do we adapt to the bicultural phase in human affairs in which we now live. Our world confronts us with conflicting life-styles, ethical criteria and notions of racial superiority. The last fifty years have confirmed this new dimension in the evolution of all cultures. These essays are explorations in a field which has remained obstinately difficult to define precisely. In discussing such authors as E.M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Patrick White, Raja Rao, Han Suyin, Wong Phui Nam, and many others, the essays probe the disturbed personalities of those confronted by cultures in conflict.

Other essays explore the bilingual challenge presented by the English language, the threat posed to traditional forms of culture by the electronic media, and the emotional toll on the individual psyche adapting to change. This collection of essays provides provocative reading on such topics in the context of South East Asia, and is a pioneering work in a complex field where literature, culture, linguistics, philosophy, and social history intermingle.

The issues discussed are listed in the below:

1. Open and Closed Cultures in Literature: A Note from the Third World towards the Re-Definition of Culture
2. The Imperial Theme in British Fiction
3. Conrad’s South East Asian Expatriates
4. The Soul of Colonial Man
5. Joyce and the Artist’s Quest for a Universal Language
6. English, Literature and Bilingualism in South East Asia
7. The Social Imagination and the Functions of Criticism in Asia
8. Literary English in the South East Asian Tradition
9. Sectional and National Literatures in a Multi-Cultural Context
10. Picture of the Artist as a Eurasian
11. Malaysian Short Stories of the Sixties
12. Malaysian Short Stories of the Seventies
13. New Drama in English in English
14. Three South East Asian Comedies
15. Standard English in Asia
16. Sense and Science in English Language Teaching in South East Asia
17. Literature and Language Teaching
18. On Re-Defining the Self in South East Asia

• Source: Fernando, Lloyd. Cultures in Conflict: Essays on Literature & The English Language in South East Asia. Singapore: Graham Brash (Pte) Ltd. 1986. Print.

 

Green is the Colour (Summary)

In Green is the Colour, fresh violence erupts in the racial riots in Malaysia (13^th May, 1969). Again, a set of multi-racial characters is used to develop the novel’s ideas. Yun Ming, the Chinese who has been ‘absorbed’ into the system as a government official is beginning to question the dominant discourse, in particular, ideas on unity which the authorities are touting. Dahlan, once his university mate, and now a lawyer, looks with contempt on Yun Ming’s affiliation with the political powers. Dahlan himself tries to bait the conscience of the authorities by speaking out on the need for religious tolerance after the members of a Chinese religious sect and their leader Ti Shuang are arrested, not because of any crime they committed but because they appear to the authorities to be a threat to public security. Omar, the second important Malay character, fed up with what he deems the decadence of Western ways which have tarnished the race, seeks a return to the spiritual protection of a fundamentalist Islam. Important as these male characters are, it seems that Fernando gives prominence to the woman character, Siti Sara. A large portion of the last segment of the novel is told in her first-person narrative or seen through her consciousness.

When the novel opens, the violence engendered by the riots has not ceased. Roadblocks necessitate detours; tension is so high that it does not take much to ignite fresh eruptions. The country itself appears to have been divided into zones even as its multi-racial populace huddle into ‘safe’ spaces. Against such a scenario, we are not surprised that some of the main characters (Siti Sara, Dahlan) undergo the horrors of rape, incarceration and torture. But over and above this physical violence, is the more insidious violence that is done to men’s minds and their powers of clear and sincere expression. Language has been debased into counterfeit coinage in order to mask lies or purvey half-truths. As Dahlan sees it, “I have lived all my life by words. I have seen men make them do anything they wanted. That is the evil I have fought.”

No real connection between people can be possible when there is so much muddle and so little willingness to be clear. Fernando skilfully evokes an atmosphere of fear and suspicion in which many prefer to be listeners rather than risk voicing deeply-felt truths. These self-imposed silences are volubly filled by other voices such as that of Wan Nuruddin, the Secretary General in the Department of Unity, discoursing confidently on Confucian ethics and loyalty to the government. In the post May 13^th ambience, an artificial togetherness has been created to prevent more painful soul-searching. Siti Sara admits that she developed and clung to the use of the plural personal pronoun because it stirred feelings of love for her fellow citizens whether Malay, Chinese, Indian, or Eurasian. In fact “she had embraced a specious feeling of togetherness with people in the abstract to cloak her unease, to disguise her semi-instinctive need not to know.” Like Yun Ming, she begins to see that official rhetoric merely covers the fact that racial lines are clearly drawn so as to reinforce a sense of ‘them’ and ‘us’. In this context, the shadowy figure of another woman, Neelambigai alias Fatimah binti Abdullah whose body neither her relatives nor the Religious Department would claim, haunts the reader as a sad reminder of intolerance and bigotry on all sides. Her family considers her an outsider because of her traversing of religious and racial barriers and the Religious Department will not accept her as being of the faith since there is no proof of conversion. Dahlan himself discovers that it is not so easy to simply say, “I don’t care for your beliefs, I will bury her.”

The individual in such a society is constantly under surveillance. Nearly all the main characters have a sense of being watched. The leitmotif of eyes is skilfully manipulated to reinforce an Orwellian sense that one’s every move is known, noted and filed away for future reference. Panglima, Political Secretary to the Minister, whose basilisk stare unsettles even as it mesmerises, has files on everyone. Such an atmosphere breeds paranoia, even madness. The more sensitive members of the society chafe against the tension and strain of having to choose one’s words before speaking. Dahlan, we learn, had already had a nervous breakdown while still an undergraduate. Siti Sara, the returnee from an American university, who now lectures in a local institution of higher learning, feels as if she is under the close scrutiny of colleagues, students, and even her own husband, Omar who wants her to quit her job, follow her to Tok Guru Bahaudin’s community in Jerangau. That her internal turmoil threatens to spill over is conveyed in various instances. Looking at a flower in the compound of her kampung home to which she has returned to seek some respite. She feels as if “the hibiscus exploded in her field of vision… One flower glowed so intensely bright that it seemed a flame and she gazed at it thunderstruck. She stood before a molten furnace door… It was inexpressibly wonderful to the point of being terrifying and she steered away from the disquieting splendour, fearing madness.”

The novel’s many scenes of violent sexual encounters, for example, between Yun Ming and Sara, and Sara and her husband showed the desperate coming together of people whose inner lives are intensely disturbed. Yun Ming’s violent possession of Sara is like an urgent effort to transcend loneliness and the consciousness that one has been a pawn in the political games of the powers that be. Omar takes Siti Sara with unseeing eyes in a narcissistic frenzy. A refusal to see other points of view propels him towards the confined space of Tok Guru Bahaudin’s domain where one can be away from tarnishing contact with Western ways and those not of the faith. He does not see that to do so is to deny his dream, both colonial and migrant. It is a retreat into an unreal world, a space that assails Siti Sara, who follows him half-heartedly to Jerangau, with its dissolution and its retrogressive, almost primeval atmosphere.

Other reviewers have found the ending of the novel optimistic. Yun Ming resigns his post, is ostensibly his own man at last, and he and Siti Sara come together to forge a new destiny. But the Kafkaesque quality of the last portion of the novel where Siti Sara is the center of consciousness fuses the quotidian and nightmarish, and suggests that all is not well. To Siti Sara, the watches in the form of Tzeto, Vanar are terrifyingly present still. The only safe place is the “little room in her head.” Without dismissing the physical scars of her ravage body, it is the wounds inflicted on her nerves that reinforce our sense of the power of the penaungs and dalangs (puppet-masters).

Are there, therefore, no glimpses of hope? Fernando records simple acts of kindness between people of different races in a meal shared or a fruit given at a market place. In pockets of rural seclusion, which have miraculously escaped political manipulation, families live side by side “their bonds strong as they are unspoken.” The novel is not only peopled by grosteque figures of nightmare such as Panglima, Lahab and Tzeto; others such as the simple, warm-hearted Safiah and Lebai Hanafiah, Siti Sara’s father, renew our belief in the decency of common people. Although, as Orwell says, this decency is seldom brought into the corridors of power, that it is still there is reassuring. The Lebai, on his deathbed, gives his blessing to Siti Sara’s conjoining with Yun Ming: “I tell my beloved child there is nothing to forgive, only love to be given.” Accepting the legacy of a multi-racial history, the Lebai will not allow zealous groups “to come between me and love for all humanity.” And the land too, in spite of the scars it bears of trees felled and hills levelled for sundry development projects, is still able to renew itself in fresh, green vegetation.

Green is the Colour is clearly conceived as a novel of ideas and this is the source of its weakness and strength. The author has to deal with a range of characters of different races without privileging any one except perhaps, Siti Sara who is given more attention. He does not stay long enough with any one character for us to know that character well. Although his characters are memorable collectively, no one individual arrests our attention. The strength of the novel is its uncompromising look at the past and its legacies for the present. It articulates with keen insight some deeply-felt but unexpressed truths about the way we see each other in this multi-racial land. When so much rhetoric is today directed toward the future, it is timely that a work invites us to pause and ask what has been and what is.

 (First published in: The Pen is Mightier than the Sword, Skoob Pacifica Anthology No. 2, Skoob Books Publishing Ltd. 1994).

• Source: Fernando, Lloyd. Green is the Colour. Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish Books. 2004. Print.

Zawiah Yahya: A Post-Colonial Critic

The following thoughts and opinions are made in reference to Zawiah Yahya’s article, Nation and Narration: The Problematics of Writing in English. (2003)

     The main issue debated in this article is the use and functionality of English language towards nation-building in Malaysia. To begin with, it is interesting to note that Yahya alludes the condition that we, the citizens of Malaysia have as schizophrenia. The logic behind such metaphorical term is that we are living in this “tug-of-war” of languages in our country; oscillating between the two main languages which are Malay and English. 

     The main reason of the dilemma is due to the “global communications system (where) English once again reigns supreme, (…) as a result of the primacy of the USA in the affairs of the world.” In other words, English proves to be a language one can’t live with and can’t live without. In this ever-growing world, the necessity to master and having a solid grasp of English language proves vital to retain a certain standard in order to compete with other nations. But at the same, there is also the notion of how we should develop our nation by utilizing the Malay language, the official national language (as contained in National Language Act 1967) in terms of producing works of literature. The nationalists would argue that they, as well as their descendants, have been participating in national development through age and time. (exaggeration intended) Meanwhile “the English- Language writers have often been accused of being the carriers of colonialists attitudes, (…) and of not being committed enough to the kind of literary and political activism of indigenous writers.” However, it is also important to take into consideration that not all English language writers chose to be who they are and the kind of environment they were brought up upon. What then? They too are suffering, because in this world of labeling and categorization, they find that they don’t belong. Their works are neither fully Europeans (doesn’t have the same kind of literary sentiments) nor accepted by our country due to the act embossed in the Parliament. ‘The Margin(s)” soon resorted to several options: ran away and become diasporic, stayed back and express their discontent and even stopped writing altogether. It is rather sad to see how country cannot seem to look eye to eye on this issue and try to figure out some similar grounds that can help perpetuate and propel our nation forward.

In addition, Yahya also notes the difference of nationalism and nationism. Nationalism, according to her,

“is to write the nation’s diverse identities on the basis of a single language and literature that must represent continuity with the past. The nationalist view is that language literature are inherent in both self and national identity. This is the road taken.” Meanwhile, “nationism is a more pragmatic approach that takes on board the realities of plural setting. It believes in minimising ruptures by maintaining the socio-cultural status quo and achieving unity, not through a unitary language, or literature, or culture, but through the sharing of common political values. Political identity and cultural identity are 2 separate entities that can co-exist independently. This is the road not taken.” (Yahya 12)

     To conclude, I do feel that as an English Literature major, nationism is the way to go. True, any linguist in the world would tell you that language IS culture itself and to separate the two is to shatter the nation as well as the people living in it. But in this case, my heart truly sides content over medium. It is the content: themes, settings, and meanings attached to the piece, that truly matters. To further consolidate my point, Yahya points out that we have ourselves a dual system in our country since the passing of Private Higher Educational Institutions Act 1996. Some improvements of the act include the allowance of using English language in private institutions and also the establishment of Malaysian University English Test (MUET), as a prerequisite for entering local ivory towers.

“If only the Malay Language writers could understand the problematics of writing in English with more sensitivity and the English language writers would be more accepting of their place in the general scheme of things, they might begin to view each other with less suspicion.” (Yahya 14)

Yahya ends her article on a rather positive note cheering “ROLL ON!” to her fellow countrymen in hopes of putting our country out there on the global scale as a proud and distinct nation in terms of language and literature. 

Sybil Kathigasu: The “Florence Nightingale” of Malaya

About her

Sybil Kathigasu was born Sybil Medan Daly to a Eurasian planter and a Eurasian midwife on September 3, 1899 in Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia. That accounts for her middle name, Medan. She was the fifth child and the only girl. She was trained as a nurse and midwife and spoke Cantonese fluently. Sybil and her husband, Dr Abdon Clement Kathigasu, operated a clinic at No. 141 Brewster Road (Jalan Sultan Idris Shah) in Ipoh from 1926 until the Japanese invasion of Malaya in December 1941. Days before Japanese forces occupied Ipoh, the couple moved to Papan. The predominantly Chinese community of Papan was so fond of Dr A.C. Kathigasu and gave him a Hakka nickname, ‘You Loy-De’. Residing at No. 74, Main Street in Papan, Sybil Kathigasu secretly kept shortwave radio sets and listened to BBC broadcasts. The couple quietly provided medical treatment, much-needed medicines and information to the MPAJA (Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army) soldiers operating in the Kledang jungles.  Due to treachery they were eventually arrested by the dreaded Kempeitai, the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army, in 1943. Despite being interrogated by her captors, Sybil revealed little or nothing and was incarcerated at the Batu Gajah prison for her defiance. Sybil suffered all kinds of torture while in captivity, including the infamous “water-treatment”. After the end of the Japanese Occupation in August 1945, Kathigasu was flown to Britain to be treated.

Sybil was awarded the George Medal for Gallantry months before she succumbed to her wounds in June, 1948. She was the only known local woman to have won the medal, which was instituted in September 1940 by King George VI. The medal is presented to civilians who perform acts of bravery in, or meriting recognition by, the United Kingdom.

Source: http://www.ipohecho.com.my/v2/2013/09/01/remembering-sybil-kathigasu/

No Dram of Mercy by Sybil Kathigasu

What it’s about: It is a story of a woman’s courage, told simply and unassumingly in her own words. Sybil Kathigasu was the wife of an Ipoh doctor who along with her fellow Malayans became caught up in the horrors of the Japanese occupation of Malaya during the Second World War. Her selfless concern for the sick and wounded anti-Japanese guerillas who came to her house secretly for treatment ended inevitably in her betrayal and her arrest and imprisonment by the Japanese authorities. Sybil was held in the Batu Gajah prison, while awaiting trial against 3 charges:

1. acting as a spy on behalf of and in cooperation with the enemy agents in Malaya;
2. giving medical attention and other assistance to the Communist guerrillas and outlaws; and
3. possessing a radio set, listening to enemy broadcasts, and disseminating enemy propaganda.

The tale of fortitude and endurance under duress and torture which follows is testimony not so much to the ruthlessness of a conqueror as to the indomitability of the human spirit informed by faith and belief in God. A such, the story of Sybil Kathigasu, reprinted here after a lapse of five decades, is a tract for our times as much as it is a reminder of the tribulations experienced by a former generation of Malayans.

Source: http://malaysiafactbook.com/Sybil_Kathigasu

Tan Twan Eng: The Pride of Penang

Here I am with another update of my blog. So we were instructed to read up on two Malaysian writers namely Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng. However, based on our second task, I was assigned to read up and find out anything and everything about Tash Aw. So that automatically covers half the job for this task. Having said that, this particular post will highlight some details about Tan Twan Eng; ranging from personal life to his greatest achievements.

Tan Twan Eng was born in 1972 in Penang, but lived in various places in Malaysia as a child. He studied law at the University of London and later worked as lawyer in one of Kuala Lumpur’s most reputable law firms. He also has a first-dan ranking in aikido and is a strong proponent for the conservation of heritage buildings. His first novel, The Gift of Rain, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007. He has spent the last year traveling around South Africa and currently lives in Cape Town. His second novel The Garden of Evening Mist was released in January, 2012.

The Gift of Rain (2007)

     Old and sustained only by memories and regrets, Philip Hutton finds his ordered life disturbed by the unheralded arrival of a dying Japanese woman, who brings him a sword he has not seen for fifty years, and who is determined to find out the truth of his past, and of that of the man she loved. For the first time, he is able to tell his complex and painful story to someone who will both understand and forgive. In 1939, 16-year-old Philip – the half-Chinese youngest child of Noel Hutton, head of one of Penang’s great trading families – feels alienated from both the British and Chinese communities. He discovers a sense of belonging in his unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat who rents an island from his father. Philip proudly shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and Endo teaches him about Japanese language and culture, and trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. The enigmatic Endo is bound by obligations of his own; and too late, as the Japanese invade Malaya, Philip realises that his sensei – to whom he owes absolute loyalty – is a Japanese spy. Forced into collaborating with the Japanese to safeguard his family and their interests, Philip turns into the ultimate outsider, trusted by none and hated by many. Tormented by his part in events, by deaths he is powerless to prevent, he risks everything to redress his moral balance by working in secret to save as many people as he can from the savagery of the invaders, and in so doing finds out who and what he really is.

     Driven by the prophetic words of an ancient soothsayer, THE GIFT OF RAIN explores the opposing ideas of predestination and self-determination, as Philip traces a perilous and sometimes unclear path through the terrible years of the war. It takes the reader from the final days of the Chinese emperors to the dying era of the British Empire, and through the magical temples, exhilarating cities and forbidding rainforests of Malaya. THE GIFT OF RAIN is epic, haunting and unforgettable, richly shot through with themes and ideas, a novel about agonizingly divided loyalties and unbearable loss. But it is also about human courage and – ultimately – about the nature of enduring love.

The Garden of Evening Mists (2012)

      Newly retired Supreme Court Judge Yun Ling Teoh returns to the Cameron Highlands of Malaya, where she spent a few months several years earlier. Oncoming aphasia is forcing her to deal with unsettled business from her youth while she is still able to remember. She starts writing her memoires, and agrees to meet with Japanese preofessor Yoshikawa Tatsuji. Tatsuji is interested in the life and works of artist Nakamura Aritomo, who used to be the gardener of the Japanese Emperor, but moved to this area to build his own garden. During the Japanese occupation of Malaya, Yun Ling was in a Japanese civilian internment camp with her sister, Yun Hong. Yun Hong did not make it out alive, and after the war was over, Yun Ling decided to fulfil a promise made to her sister: to build a Japanese garden in their home in Kuala Lumpur. She travelled to the highlands to visit family friend Magnus Pretorius, an ex-patriate South African tea farmer who knew Aritomo. Aritomo refused to work for Yun Ling, but agreed to take her on as an apprentice, so she could later build her own garden. In spite of her resentment against the Japanese, she agreed to work for Aritomo, and later became his lover. During the conversations with Tatsuji, it comes out that Aritomo was involved in a covert Japanese program during the war, to hide looted treasures from occupied territories. The rumours of this so-called “Golden Lily” program were widespread, and Magnus was killed trying to save his family from the Communist guerilla, who came looking for the gold. Aritomo never talked about the treasure to Yun Ling, but gradually it becomes clear that he might have left a clue to its location. Before he disappeared into the jungle, he made a horimono tattoo on her back. It now appears this tattoo might contain a map to the location of the treasure. Yun Ling decides that, before she dies, she must make sure that no-one will be able to get their hand on her body, and the map. In the meantime, she sets out to restore Aritomo’s dilapidated garden.

                                                            

        

Tash Aw: A Malaysian Writer

In a Glance

Name: Aw Ta Shi @ Tash Aw

Born: Taipei, Taiwan @ October 4^th 1971 (43years old)

Gender: Male

Website: http://www.tash-aw.com

Twitter username: Tash_Aw

Genre: Literature & Fiction

Influences: Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Anthony Burgess, William Faulkner and Gustav Flaubert.

Biography

Aw Ta Shi, or better known with his other alias, Tash Aw is an expatriate Malaysian writer who is currently residing in London now. Born in Taiwan; October 1971 to Malaysian parents, Aw moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the age of four. He then moved to England at the age of 18 to pursue a law degree at University of Cambridge and University of Warwick. He ultimately settled in London to kick-start his writing career by completing a creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. In the process of his very first debut novel, he worked a number of jobs, including as a lawyer for four years. Based on royalties as well as prizes, Aw can be considered as the leading Malaysian contemporary writer. Following the announcement of the Booker longlist, the Whitbread Award and his Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, he became a celebrity in Malaysia and Singapore, and is now one of the most respected literary figures in Southeast Asia.

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/140377.Tash_Aw

 

Works

 Novels

• The Harmony Silk Factory (2005)
• Map of the Invisible World (2009)
• Five Star Billionaire (2013)

Short Stories

• “To The City”, Granta, 100 (Winter 2007)
• “Sail”, A Public Space, Issue 13 (Summer 2011)
• “Tian Huaiyi”, McSweeney’s 42 (December 2012)

Essays

• “Look East, Look To The Future“, Granta.com, May 25, 2012
• “My Hero, Rudy Hartono“, The Guardian, August 9, 2013

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tash_Aw

 

Awards

2005  –  Whitbread First Novel Award, The Harmony Silk Factory

2005  –  Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best First Book), The Harmony Silk Factory

 Source: http://literature.britishcouncil.org/tash-aw

 

Quotes

1. “People talk about race divisions and they ignore class divisions.”

2. “All writers are outsiders to some degree or another. Even the ones who are strongly identified with a place, they are always outsiders in some way. […] you can’t write about a place if you’re completely an insider.”

3. “Malaysia wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the immigrant experience. The fabric of our society is built on hybridity.”

Source: http://poskod.my/features/where-im-coming-from-tash-aw/

 

 

 

List of 5 Malaysian writers

1. Rani Manicka (Novel)

         Rani Manicka

Rani Manicka is an International Best-selling novelist, born and educated in Malaysia. She grew up in Terengganu and attended the University of Malaysia, where she received a business degree. She currently divides her time between Malaysia and the United Kingdom. Infused with her own Sri Lankan Tamil family history, The Rice Mother is her first novel, and it won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2003 for South East Asia and South Pacific region. Her second novel, Touching Earth, was published in 2005 followed by The Japanese Lover released in 2009. She is currently putting the finishing touches to her latest work titled Black Jack.

          Works:

• The Rice Mother (2003)
• Touching Earth (2005)
• The Japanese Lover (2009)
• Black Jack (2013)Award:

–          Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for The Rice Mother (2003)

2. Stella Kon (Short Story)

Stella Kon

Stella Kon (b.1944, Edinburgh, Scotland – ), playwright, novelist, short story writer and poet, is best known for her monodrama Emily of Emerald Hill, which has been performed locally and internationally. She is the winner of several playwriting competitions in the early 1980s and her works are studied in local and foreign universities. Stella currently resides in Singapore.

Early life
Stella came to Singapore in 1948 at the age of three. Her paternal great grandfather was Dr Lim Boon Keng, while her maternal great great grandfather was Tan Tock Seng. As a child, she lived in a mansion called Oberon at Emerald Hill. She was educated at Raffles’ Girls School, and later on, at the University of Singapore.

Stella began creating stories when she was very young, at the encouragement of her mother.  Her mother used to write down the stories that Stella dictated to her and she went around showing her daughter ‘s stories to the aunts and teachers. Stella affectionately calls her mother her first ‘publisher’. Her first play that was performed in school was The Fisherman and the King. It was written when she was a Standard Three student in Raffles Girls’ School. Her amateurish works at this stage were influenced by Enid Blyton and J.R.R. Tolkien which formed her staple reading.

Stella’s love for and early exposure to theatre came from her parents. As a child, she watched her father, who was involved in King Edward Hall productions, directed plays. Her mother was a leading amateur actress in the local theatre in the 1950s, going by the stage name, Kheng Lim. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts of London (RADA), where Stella would accompany her mother to the theatre to watch the latter’s performances.

During her university days, Stella wrote short stories which appeared in university publications, for instance, Focus. Her first published work, Mushroom Harvest, appeared in Lloyd Fernando’s collection of 22 Malaysian Stories in 1962.

Stella left Singapore for Malaysia in 1967 after her marriage. In Malaysia, she started writing plays, for children and adults. In 1975, she wrote a collection of school-children plays, including The Immigrant. She was in Malaysia for about 15 years and then in Britain for about four years where her children studied. In 1987, she came back to Singapore.

Her writings
Stella’s works centre on themes that are distinctly Singaporean, such as national awareness, moral values, cultural and social heritage, and personal integrity. Readers will be able to identify with the Singaporean lifestyle in her plays. Stella writes in order to re-create, in words, the feelings of living in Singapore and being a Singaporean. Thus, she portrays the consciousness of what it is like to be a Singaporean.  Stella derives her sources from the literary tradition of China, India and Malaya. The Ramayana and Chinese legendary figures are reflected in her works. Her Catholic heritage and strong interest in fantasy are also evident in her writing. Through her works, Stella has managed to express her Asian cultural, religious and mythical roots and heritage.

Emily of Emerald Hill
A classic which has already seen more than 40 different productions in Singapore and Malaysia, and is arguably the most performed play in both Malaysia and Singapore since it was first performed in 1984. It is one of Singapore’s most loved creations with many parts intrinsic to Singapore identity: the search for true self, the celebration of our heritage, the fighting spirit to overcome odds through sheer perseverance, and the gritting of teeth, but all couched in universal truths. Malaysian actress Pearly Chua has played the part of Emily more than 60 times since 1990. Leow Puay Tin, Margaret Chan and Ivan Heng have all reprised the role of Emily.

From 2000 to 2001, the play went global, with performance in the arts festivals in Hong Kong, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Auckland, New York, Hamburg, Berlin and Munich. In 2002, the play was staged by Tan Tock Seng Hospital, with director Chin San Sooi, and actress Pearly Chua, to raise funds for the hospital’s AIDS programme.

Awards
1979 : Winner, Singapore National Playwriting Competition, for The Bridge
1982 : Winner, Singapore National Playwriting Competition, for The Trial and Other Plays
1983 : Winner, Singapore National Playwriting Competition, for Emily of Emerald Hill
1994 : Merit Award, Singapore Literature Prize, for Eston

Published Works
1975 : The Immigrant and Other Plays
1977 : Emporium and Other Plays
1982 : The Trial and Other Plays
1982 : Dracula and Other Stories
1986 : The Scholar and the Dragon
1989 : Emily of Emerald Hill
1990 : Dragon’s Teeth Gate
1992 : Portrait of a Nonya
1992 : Silent Song
1992 : The Bridge
1995 : Eston
2000 : A Breeding Pair
2002 : The Human Heart Fruit
2003 : Exodus (A Journey of Faith): a musical

3. Azalia Suhaimi (Poetry)

Azalia Suhaimi

. Born in Kuala Lumpur, Azalia Binti Ahmad Suhaimi grew up and went to school in a small town known as Ipoh. She enjoyed writing ever since her younger schooling days and began majoring in English Literature at high school. She first experimented with the art of photography when she bought her first compact camera before flying off to Sydney, Australia for her tertiary education. Her love for photography grew when she went travelling around Australia during her university years. This led to her signing up for a proper course on photography at the College of Fine Arts, the creative arts faculty of the University of New South Wales, Australia. Despite studying photography in a short course, she claims to prefer taking photographs with an artistic outlook instead of concentrating on a camera’s technical functions. As quoted from her site:

Her photography centers upon arty elements, some vintage touch and a lot of emotions. Tools involved are a small compact digital point-and-shoot camera, a Polaroid camera, a Diana F+ lomo camera and mainly, her heart.

Her love for both writing and photography was made public when she began to frequently create photopoetry works on her blog. Her blog is ranked as part of the 100 Best Poetry Blogs by the Accredited Online Colleges website.

4. Rani Moorthy (Drama)

Rani Moorthy

Rani Moorthy is a Malaysian playwright, actress and artistic director of Rasa Productions. Her family tried to immigrate to Singapore in 1969 following the May 1969 tragedy, but were unsuccessful for a time. Moorthy then began her acting career, involving in drama play and hosting a television comedy, ‘The Ra Ra show’ when they eventually managed to emigrate to Singapore. She got her degree at the National University of Singapore. Among her works are:-

• Pooja (2002)
• Manchester United and the Malay Warrior (2002)
• Curry Tales (2004)
• Too Close to Home (2006)
• Shades of Brown (2007)

In Brief

Shades of Brown is a one-woman play which is written and performed by Rani Moorthy. The play uses three characters to express the effects that different skin colour has on each person and exposes how this is not just an issue of black and white racism but also it has underlying issues such as self-hatred, rejection and identity loss. All three characters together bring a humorous side to the serious issues raised in this powerful storyline.

• Citizen Khan (2012)

5. Hilary Tham (Autobiography)

A poet, painter and teacher who viewed the world from the perspective of a Chinese-Malaysian converted Jewish wife and mother in suburban America, died June 24, 2005, of metastatic lung cancer at her home in Arlington. She was born in Klang, Malaysia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and was educated at a convent school taught by Irish nuns. She received a master’s degree in English literature in 1969 from the University of Malaya and immigrated to the United States in 1971 after her marriage to a Peace Corps volunteer in Malaysia. She lived in New Jersey before moving to Arlington in 1973.

• Lane with No Name: Memoirs and Poetry by a Malaysian-Chinese Girlhood (1997) – The reason why this book is under this category is because Hilary Tham reveals the many images, cultures, myths, and memories. Tham recalls a life of many textures: her Chinese ancestry, her family’s life in Malaysia, her early education and conversion to Christianity, her university studies, marriage to a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, and more.