Where are the Malays?: Locating the Singaporean Malay in Singa-Pura-Pura
By Lily Jamaludin (1,368 words, 4-minute read) Singa-Pura-Pura boasts an eclectic collection of short speculative fiction from a minority ethnic group in Singapore, exploring worlds where robots are therapists, prayers are read from preloaded cards, and humans are migrating to…
Tender reading: A review of Loss Adjustment by Linda Collins
By Grace Foo (650 words, 3-minute read) Not many people can endure the traumatic experience of losing a child to suicide, let alone be of sound mind to write about it in a painfully self-aware manner. In Loss Adjustment, Linda…
House of Cardboard: A review of Impractical Uses of Cake by Yeoh Jo-Ann
By Nathaniel Chew (800 words, 4-minute read) Is it enough to be not unhappy? This is what Yeoh Jo-Ann’s Impractical Uses of Cake sets out to interrogate, framing the question in terms that speak to both existential crises at large…
Reading in isolation: Tiffany Tsao’s The Majesties
By Kathy Rowland (760 words, 4-minute read) This review may contain spoilers. Tiffany Tsao’s The Majesties begins with a horrific mass murder. Three hundred guests at the 80th birthday of Irwan Sulinado are poisoned, deadly fungi slipped into the shark’s…
Reading in isolation: ‘Others’ is Not a Race and Interpreter of Winds
By Kathy Rowland (913 words, 4-minute read) Last November, when there was nary a thought for social distancing, and Corona conjured up visions of lime wedges and grimy bars, I reread Rex Shelley’s 1991 debut novel, The Shrimp People. Shelley…
Creature comforts: “Creatures of Near Kingdoms”
By Kathy Rowland (650 words, 4-minute read) Zedeck Siew’s Creatures of Near Kingdoms is fashioned as a bestiary, detailing the appearance, characteristics, and habitats of 50 animals and 25 plants. Why “near”? Because like the auto-combusting Ash Swallowtail and the…
The architecture of patriarchy: The Professor by Faisal Tehrani
By Lily Jamaludin (1,650 words, 7-minute read) Trigger warning: Descriptions of sexual assault. This review contains spoilers for The Professor. I began Faisal Tehrani’s new novel, The Professor, with the hope that he might provide some new images for Malaysian…
Book Review: “The State and The Arts in Singapore: Policies and Institutions”
By Chin Ailin (734 words, four-minute read) Commissioned by the Institute of Policy Studies of Singapore (IPS) to trace the course of cultural policy in Singapore from the 1950s to the present, The State and the Arts in Singapore: Policies and…
“orbit” by Ethos Books: the gravity and pull of insignificant destinies
By Nah Dominic (1550 words, six-minute read) “I reached for those insignificant destinies again; the smallest collision of time and incident that throws life out of orbit” – “Stillborn”, Khin Chan Myae Maung A new series by Ethos Books titled…
Book Review: “Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art, 1945–1990”
By Reaksmey Yean (950 words, five-minute read) A result of a research collaboration organised by the University of Sydney’s Power Institute in partnership with the Institut Teknologi Bandung and National Gallery Singapore, Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art,…
Book Review: “Writing the Modern: Selected Texts on Art & Art History in Singapore, Malaysia & Southeast Asia”
By Carmen Nge (1300 words, five-minute read) In the vast firmament of Singaporean-Malaysian art history, no star illuminates as radiantly as T.K. Sabapathy. An art historian by training, Sabapathy initially began his career in the early 1970s by reviewing art…
Book Review: “Excavations, Interrogations, Krishen Jit & Contemporary Malaysian Theatre”
By Felipe Cervera (1600 words, eight-minute read) Excavations, Interrogations, Krishen Jit & Contemporary Malaysian Theatre, edited by Charlene Rajendran, Ken Takiguchi and Carmen Nge, is a long overdue resource that sheds light on important aspects of the cultural, artistic, and…
Book Review: “Dance, Access and Inclusion: Perspectives on Dance, Young People and Change”
By Joseph Gonzales (857 words, five-minute read) This is the book to own or read if you are in any way invested, connected and working with children as well as people with special needs. It is exactly as the title…
Book Review: Identity and pleasure, on screen (via Inside Indonesia)
This is not a book about films. It is a book about how films and other forms of popular culture point to the places where interests, positions and desires come together, especially on issues of religious, ethnic and national identity….
Book Review: “Retrospective: A Historiographical Aesthetic in Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia” by June Yap
By Loo Zihan (1670 words, 15-minute read) How does contemporary art in Singapore and Malaysia reflect an alternative to the dominant narrative of history? June Yap’s book produces a concept of ‘Malayan’ history from the 1950s till 2010s through a…
Writing the Reformasi: Bernice Chauly’s “Once We Were There”
By Sharmilla Ganesan (1019 words, 9-minute read) It is unlikely that, while writing her novel Once We Were There, Bernice Chauly foresaw the events currently taking place in Malaysia’s political landscape. Yet, the timing of the book’s publication now, set…
Same same but different: ASEAN 50 at the Singapore Writers Festival 2017
By Akanksha Raja (840 words, 8-minute read) “Language is born from imagination, and imagination is what makes language real. Without language, we have no memory: therefore, literacy (the mastery of language) is important. Our sense of language is the most…
Book Review: “Photography in Southeast Asia: A Survey” by Zhuang Wubin
By Marina Zuccarelli (550 words, 5-minute read) Photography arrived in Southeast Asia soon after its discovery in Europe in 1839, provoking contrasting reactions and developing in different ways according to the environment where it was introduced, yet having indeed an…
SWF 2016 Panel: Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction
By Akanksha Raja (608 words, 6-minute read) Speculative fiction (or spec-fic) is an umbrella term for a number of literary genres including science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, magical realism, and horror. It’s the term for all those movies and books…
Histories, Practices and Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art
Marcus Yee of RightAfters reviews a collection of Singapore art writing, Histories, Practices and Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art edited by Jeffrey Say and Seng Yu Jin.