Sunday 27 January 2013

A New Chapter for Burma’s Literary Life | Cila Warncke

“In a country no stranger to censorship and incarcerating writers, the Irrawaddy Literary Festival comes at a crucial moment in Myanmar's cultural history. Writer and journalist Cila Warncke investigates what a celebration of writers and writing means for a country in transition.

In Great Britain, literary festivals can conjure comfortable images of middle-class audiences chatting over glasses of Chardonnay. But travel 5500 miles to the banks of the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar (Burma), and the phrase “literary festival” gains new significance. Because in a nation whose recent history is so contentious people can’t even agree on its name, words are a potent force for change.

The Irrawaddy Literary Festival [http://www.freewordonline.com/content/2013/01/burmas-literary-life/] takes place in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, on 1-3 February. Over two dozen international writers including Jung Chang, Pascal Khoo Thwe, and Vikram Seth, along with more than three dozen local authors, will take part in a celebration of writing and writers that was, until recently, unimaginable.

“We couldn’t have done it three years ago,” says Giles Fitzherbert, who co-organised the festival with Jane Heyn. “The political situation would have made it impossible.”

That’s how fast things are changing in the former British colony that spent most of the last half-century isolated from the rest of the world and under the thumb of a military junta. Most of what the West knows about Myanmar comes from those years: unarmed monks confronting soldiers, student protests, and the determined figure of one woman: Aung San Suu Kyi – freedom fighter, politician, and patron of the Irrawaddy Literary Festival.

Contemporary Filipino theater–between book covers


“One fine day, Nanding Josef, the articulate artistic director of Tanghalang Pilipino (TP), resident drama group of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, called up to announce that TP’s 25th anniversary was fast approaching. And would I like to write a book about the organization and its accomplishments?

Hmm. Definitely I was interested. I hadn’t written a book for several years, and was tired of living in genteel penury like some aging character in a Henry James novel.
So initial meetings were set up, an outline was drafted, a budget was prepared, and the go-ahead signal eventually came from the TP chair, Tonyboy Cojuangco, and its board of trustees.
Immersion

For about a year I would go almost daily to the TP offices located behind the CCP and immerse myself in their archives, which were more or less in good order. I pored over the bound volumes, souvenir programs, historical background, notes from the directors and production designers, press releases, preproduction information, photos and illustrations of set designs, and musical scores.”

Tuesday 22 January 2013

A Deluge of New Vietnamese Poetry — Hai-Dang Phan | Book Review | Asymptote


‟You won't find many of the poets collected in this anthology in bookstores in Vietnam, but this should hardly come as a surprise for anyone familiar with the nature of writing and publishing in Vietnam—where independent presses and journals are nonexistent, public poetry readings are broken up, Vietnamese literature written overseas unacknowledged or derided, and where you can write whatever you want so long as you avoid politics.

On a recent trip back to Vietnam, I combed through the Poetry and Literature sections of all of the bookstores I visited in Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang, making mental notes of who and what was on the shelves. In every bookstore, big or small, new or used, you can find slim, pocket-size editions of selected poems by popular poets such as: Tan Da, The Lu, Han Mac Tu, Xuan Dieu, Nguyen Binh, Xuan Quynh, Te Hanh, Luu Trong Lu, Ho Dzenh, Vu Hoang Chuong. Also readily available were shiny, attractively repackaged editions of a number of revolutionary poets such as To Huu, Xuan Dieu, and Che Lan Vien, each buttressed by literary biographies and criticism. For the few high school and college students studying literature, there were affordable, critical editions of modern Vietnamese poets and poetry.

More interestingly, I found reprint editions of Vietnamese Poets, 1932-1941, Hoai Thanh's groundbreaking anthology of influential poets of the 1930s. Published in 1942, with critical introductions and annotations by Hoai Thanh, the anthology showcases a number of poets associated with the Tho Moi or 'New Poetry' movement, including Xuan Dieu, Luu Trong Lu, Huy Can, The Lu, and Che Lan Vien. These and other poets at the time began departing from the poetic forms and traditions inherited from China. Influenced by the French Romanticists and Symbolists taught in colonial schools and available in translation, and spurred by the Romanized, national script of quoc ngu coming into widespread use, they set out to adapt Western ideas for the modernization of Vietnamese literature, culture, and society. No longer bound strictly to the values of Confucian society, this New Poetry turned inward to express, in lyrics of gentle rhythms and memorable lines, individual experiences of love, suffering, and loss. Popular and readable, this was the kind of poetry young Vietnamese would commit to memory, copy down into private notebooks, or set to music. By the August Revolution of 1945, however, many poets formerly associated with the New Poetry movement, Xuan Dieu and Che Lan Vien most notably among them, rejected their so-called reactionary, decadent, and bourgeois poetic selves, and embraced the cause of revolutionary struggle by taking up the new standard of socialist realism.”


Sunday 20 January 2013

Festival reflects Myanmar's novel freedoms | Sian Powell The Australian




‟FIVE years ago it would have been unthinkable. International literary festivals, where writers and readers speak freely and exchange ideas, were not permitted in shuttered Myanmar. Censorship had blighted the nation for four decades.

Military despots blinkered the population with iron rules on what could and could not be published. People were jailed simply for making a speech or writing a pamphlet. The press was shackled and many books were blacklisted. The bans led to fear and self-censorship, and crushed any real market for dissident titles.

Then, remarkably, Myanmar's generals began to change. A quasi-democratic election was held in 2010. Hordes of political prisoners have since been released, including Aung San Suu Kyi. Foreigners were welcomed to the long restricted nation; the US, the EU and Australia eased sanctions - and finally, last August, the stringent censorship laws were relaxed.

The arts began to flourish again; a rock concert was held in the grounds of the revered Shwedagon Pagoda. Suddenly, long-banned books were in the bookshops and Myanmar's people again began to read widely.”

Now Myanmar is set to have its first international literary festival. Suu Kyi has agreed to be the Irrawaddy Literary Festival's patron, and a long list of distinguished local and international authors has been recruited, including the Chinese-born British writer Jung Chang, who wrote Wild Swans, the Indian novelist Vikram Seth, perhaps best known for the massive A Suitable Boy, and Briton Josceline Dimbleby, who wrote the family memoir A Profound Secret.”

Reading contest promotes love for Myanmar books — Zon Pann Pwint | Myanmar Times

A contestant answers questions from a panel of judges about
Daw Ma Ma Lay’s novel ‘Thu Lo Lu’. (Zon Pann Pwint/The Myanmar Times)
‟“We asked questions related to character traits, descriptions of events, and a line of dialogue from the novel, which would prompt the candidates to think about different aspects of the story,” said U Myo Myint Nyein, one of the judges.

Others on the judging panel included writers Ma Sandar, Chit Oo Nyo and Lynn Thite Nyunt, and actress Swe Zin Htike.

“After the contest they will learn to pay close attention to historical facts in novels, to discover the meaning that lies beneath the characters’ traits and to evaluate the story after finishing the book rather than reading only for pleasure,” said U Myo Myint Nyein.”

Saturday 19 January 2013

Local literature needs well-intentioned analysis — Daphne Lee | The Star, Malaysia

‟REGULAR readers of this column will be familiar with my rants about badly written and poorly illustrated Malaysian children’s books. An acquaintance said to me that I have never written a good review of a local children’s book. His definition of “good review” was one that was totally positive. He said, “You say you want to promote local writers and encourage them to produce children’s books with Malaysian content, but you contradict yourself by constantly criticising what is locally published.”

Can support only be shown through glowing reviews? I’ve been told that a well-known Malaysian columnist doesn’t review local lit because it just doesn’t make the grade and he doesn’t think he should be wasting column inches on work that is merely good enough by Malaysian standards (I didn’t read the column so I’m not sure how accurate this is).

I read local literature because I’m interested in all literature and I love reading. I remember being a kid, reading Enid Blyton’s The Five Find-Outers and changing all the characters’ names to Malaysian ones. I wanted to read stories about other Malaysian children having exciting adventures and I want my children (and all Malaysian children) to be able to do that.

As an editor and a writer, I want to see the local publishing industry grow and blossom. I want to see effort made to produce good books of all genres. Yes, I support and encourage local publishers and writers. I don’t often write glowing reviews but I don’t think that’s the only way to show support. In fact, I don’t think it helps anyone much if a glowing review is written merely for its own sake. I don’t believe in misleading the public, publishers or writers. If something isn’t good enough, I believe in saying so and saying why I don’t think it’s good enough.”

Ovidia Yu: from “Authors pick thriller, detective genres for debutbooks” | The Hindu — Business Line

“Ovidia Yu a novelist, short-story writer and playwright whose debut detective novel “Miss Moorthy Investigates” first published in 1989 was released in India recently by Westland books says that be it fiction or nonfiction the genre has all the elements which an author or a reader could ask for.

“Death, murder, crime, curiosity, fear all of them blended together with focus on minute details offers unmatchable thrilling experience to the author. Once a debut author gets that kind of satisfaction it boosts his confidence to experiment with other genres as well,” she says.

However, Ovidia believes that writing detective and thriller stories for books is a different experience than writing for plays.

“While writing plays the author has to keep in mind that the curiosity and fear has not be generated from the writing alone, there is a director too to take control of the characters and the plot, whereas while writing a book its only between the author and editor, so there is more creative freedom,” she says.”

Saturday 12 January 2013

Nu Nu Yi: The Writer, the Role Model, and the Bird by Khet Mar


“Long ago, I was surprised and overwhelmed to learn that a well-known writer who I admired also happened to be my neighbor. At that time, I was a teenager who dreamed of becoming a writer, and my early attempts to test my ability were inspired by this writer’s short story, “A Little Sarong,” which I liked very much. This writer’s name is Nu Nu Yi.

In mid-1989 a friend of mine told me, “Nu Nu Yi is your neighbor.” As soon as I heard, I asked him if I could visit her. When I met Nu Nu Yi she was friendly and welcomed me into her home. Of course, I didn’t forget to bring my early attempts at short stories, which she read, giving me her advice and comments in return. Over time, the encouragement that Nu Nu Yi and her husband gave me as a young writer provided the strength and confidence I needed to submit my stories to magazines.

One day Nu Nu Yi asked me to visit her home, so I went there with my friends. I remember that day well. She looked at me seriously and said, “In this country, it is not strange to have any piece of writing censored.” She paused for a few seconds. “If one of your short stories is censored, don’t be upset.””

Tuesday 8 January 2013

F Sionil Jose reviews Chronicle of a Life Foretold by Mila D. Aguilar


From the same column as Jose's comment on the readership of Philippine literature (below), comes his review of Mila D Aguilar's Chronicle of a Life Foretold.

Mila D. Aguilar (nom de guerre Clarita Roja) was a University of the Philippines teacher. She continues to be a teacher and more. She was very much involved with the revolutionary opposition to Marcos and the oligarchy for which she paid dearly, with years in prison. She continues to resist and her resistance now is strengthened by her religious faith and her continuing devotion to her art, as this brilliant collection of poetry — her latest — illustrates.

I have admired Mila since the ’70s when I became aware of her work, and this admiration continues to this very day when so many of her contemporaries have fallen by the wayside or succumbed to the pleasures of a bourgeois life.

I also remember fondly her publisher — the still struggling, fighting, persevering bookstore Popular, whose founder Joaquin Po I met in the ’40s and whose friendship I have always valued.”

F Sionil Jose: “No Filipino writers in their reading lists” | Hindsight

Filipino author F. Sionil Jose (front row, sec...
Filipino author F. Sionil Jose is one of the Philippines' most popular writers. He wrote a series of books based on the time of the American occupation of the Philippines, as well as the provocative novel Ermita , named after Manila's notorious red-light district. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Thank God, De La Salle professor Elfren Cruz and his wife Neni, who heads the Book Development Council, had several Filipino books on their Christmas gift list. Otherwise, if those celebrities and personalities are to be believed, we have no authors worth reading. Their lists of the books they like best do not include our writers, not Rizal, not Nick Joaquin, not Ben Santos. I’d like to mention more who are still alive, but naming the dead raises no controversies.

For decades, as literary editor, I have followed the growth of our creative writing in English. In my Solidaridad Bookshop, half of my stock consists of Filipino books written in English and in the native languages. I just went through our 2013 catalogue. In it are discoveries of great academic and creative writing.

Why don’t our celebrities read Filipino authors? Is it colonial mentality that has afflicted them? Or intellectual snobbery which concludes that Filipino writers are incapable of intellectual and artistic excellence? I’ll be charitable and say it’s ignorance, aggravated by an educational system that diminishes reading, of bookshops which tuck Filipino titles in inaccessible corners called Filipiniana.”

The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng «conclusion» | Kathleen Price

❝Moments in time when the world is changing bring out the best and the worst in people.❞ *

Tan Twan Eng's debut novel A Gift of Rain continues to receive the attention it deserves.

“…what I am perhaps the most impressed with is the story’s dealing with race. Japan’s involvement in World War 2 is always something that fascinated me, but at the same time not something I wholly wanted to investigate. From many British soldiers accounts, it was one of the harshest regimes, and even peers of mine in Hong Kong told stories about Japanese culture both then and now like they were fireside stories for camp, sadly making Bridget Jones’ mother’s opinion of the Japanese being a ‘cruel race’ a far more popular opinion than I would like. Naturally then, it makes the topic a hard one to tackle and open up to a Western audience. What the Gift of Rain does is bring a sensitive perspective in showing the lives all citizens in Malaya of all races, Philip experiencing this hostility even before the war due to his mixed race- very close to what I have witnessed over recent years. Tan explores how the practical survival instinct to choose a side is near impossible when opened up to enough humanity, and how what is truly crucial is to hang onto the characteristics that you choose for yourself.

Overall, I would say that it needs a little faith and patience to get off its feet, but once in flight it becomes a story you’re unlikely to forget.”

Read more… 

*This quotation (above) from The Gift of Rain has become a “quotable quote.” It was quoted, for example, by the IMF Chief, Christine Lagarde in her speech in Kuala Lumpur on the 14th of November 2012.

Monday 7 January 2013

Review of The Garden of Evening Mists in The Herald, Scotland «conclusion»

“The themes of Twan Eng's novel are memory and colonialism, a superficially neat connection which asks not only what do we remember, but what should we remember, and how? The truth is always messier, though. Yun Ling's friend Magnus is a veteran of the Boer uprisings against the British; the hills behind Kuala Lumpur bear the name of their British colonialist invaders. Interestingly, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are only mentioned in one line – this book, written by a Malaysian, has Yun Ling ask about Japanese reparation for the pain and suffering it caused other nations. She does not want to remember the pain and suffering any Japanese subsequently experienced.

In that sense, this is a weighted political novel, but that's where its passion comes from. Yun Ling is possibly too restrained at times, Aritomo too shadowy, but both have serious secrets to hide. In a violent world, perhaps restraint is the best we can manage; in a horribly compromised life, reparation is never quite enough, and is itself full of contradictions. Twan Eng's novel is a commendably grown-up tale that doesn't give easy concessions”

Sunday 6 January 2013

I Write Just to Be ‘A Good Citizen,’ Says Ma Thida



“During an interrogation session at Rangoon’s Insein Prison in 1995, a military intelligence officer asked a 29-year-old woman sitting in front of him what her political aspirations were.

“To be a good citizen,” a weakened and pale-looking Ma Thida answered without hesitation. She had just fallen seriously ill in the infamous prison, where she was being held for her political activism.

Nearly two decades later, the Burmese writer and former prisoner of conscience said she remains concerned about politics for the same reason: because she wants to be a responsible and active citizen. For Ma Thida this means that one should be aware of what is happening in Burma and help tackle its numerous problems.

“I want to prove I have the ability to work for my country as a citizen. There are many things to do,” she said during an interview with The Irrawaddy. “It may not fit into other people’s definition of politics. But in Burma, everything is politics—environment, education, health, and so on.””



Saturday 5 January 2013

Dr. Ruth Elynia S. Mabanglo, Multi-awarded Poet and Presidential Awardee | Asian Journal

“CONSIDERED as one of the leading female Filipino poets of our time, Dr. Ruth Elynia S. Mabanglo’s success did not come easy.

If you read her biography, it seems as though awards and recognition sprinkle her like tiny drops of rain.

For the past 30 years, Mabanglo has racked up awards from being the first woman to receive the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature Hall of Fame, “Makata ng Taon” Poet of the Year by the Commission on Filipino Language, to earning the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award for Poetry for her book, Mga Liham ni Pinay (The Letters of Pinay).

Most recently, President Benigno Aquino III awarded University of Hawaii professor Mabanglo the 2012 Presidential Awardee for Filipino Individuals and Organizations Overseas, in the “Pamana ng Pilipino” category.

The Presidential award is given to Filipino individuals and overseas groups, in recognition of their outstanding contributions to national development efforts, or their outstanding achievements in their field of profession.

In the Pamana ng Pilipino category, Mabanglo exemplified the talent and industry of the Filipino, and brought the country honor and recognition through excellence and distinction in the pursuit of their work or profession.”

For Mabanglo, a professor and coordinator of Filipino and Philippine Literature Program at the University of Hawaii, it’s been a difficult but worthwhile journey.

Thursday 3 January 2013

Documentary Special: Hidden History — Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Portrait from Blogger
Majelis Sastra Madiun
“The late Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer was a noted historian, journalist and novelist, famous internationally but banned at home.

He was gaoled by both colonial and Indonesian governments and even by the man he'd supported, Indonesia's first president Sukarno.

Pramoedya not only documented Indonesia's growth into an independent nation, he wrote compassionately of a history long suppressed.

Today, there are growing calls for one of Asia's most turbulent periods to be open to more scrutiny and Pramoedya's books accepted as an important contribution.

Karon Snowdon travelled to Indonesia to learn about the country's hidden history.”

“Introduction / Pengantar: Crossing Bloodlines” by Deborah Cole, Cordite Poetry Review: Indonesia Special Issue

“The poems in this collection trace the overlapping cycles of the human journey from birth to death across the space/time habitat we measure in footfalls and poetic metre. Travelled in the company of family and community, our journeys enact the species’ heritage and legacy of kinship and violence – two sides of the same struggle towards a longed-for intimacy that might negate the spatial, temporal and psychological divide between the other and the self. Through commingling languages and intertwining elocutions, this issue explores the distances and intimacies between a varied set of human journeys by poets writing in Indonesia and Australia. As these two countries are so close on maps – but oftentimes, sadly, only on our maps – these poems invite the re-arrangement of our conceptual geographies.


This collection began as a conversation between Kent MacCarter and Sapardi Djoko Damono (arguably Indonesia’s best-known contemporary poet and leading literary scholar). The goal was to create a translation exchange that would showcase established poets whose work was still very much on the rise with a balanced representation of gender, ethnicity and region in each country. A second conversation between MacCarter and John McGlynn (leading translator of Indonesian literature into English and editor-in-chief of The Lontar Foundation) led to an invitation to McGlynn, poet Dorothea Rosa Herliany and me (Deborah Cole) to join the project – an invitation that we accepted enthusiastically.”


An extract from another essay in this volume was featured earlier on this site: “Notes about the INDONESIA Special Issue | Kent MacCarter ”

Aspiring Bruneian poet departs for workshop in Indonesia


✽ “AN ASPIRING local poet departed for Jakarta, Indonesia as she was invited to attend a Malay theatre workshop and poetry reading during the new year.

Hjh Karmila (Kris) Hj Sapar (pictured) during an exclusive interview with The Brunei Times, commented about the state of poetry in the nation.

According to Karmila, the public still practice poetry as an art form and stressed the need for it to be preserved because it is part of the Malay culture.”

✽ “"I instil universal themes to my poetry and usually would compose my own music that goes with it. Depending on the theme, I will write my script from scratch and discuss with the musician to play the music live while I am singing/reciting poetry."

Karmila is one of the 50 individuals selected across the Southeast Asian region to gain new knowledge of poetry artistry through the writing and reading workshop, which will be conducted by one of her idols, Asrizal Nur, a professional Indonesian poet at Anjungan Riau, Taman Mini Indonesia Indah Jakarta, at the Indonesian capital.”

Two reviews of Tan's The Garden of Evening Mists



In Me, You, and Books:


“An exquisite novel flowing around a mysterious Japanese garden in the highlands of Malaysia and narrated by a Chinese woman scarred by her experiences in a Japanese concentration camp during World War II. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012.

Tan is a superb writer able to create a multi-layered novel involving the stories of diverse characters and spanning three time periods. He has woven the stories told by his varied characters into a flowing mediation on gardening, memory, illusion and loss. The narrator is Yun Ling, a Malaysian women of Chinese descent. In the most recent layer of the story, health threats cause her to retire her judgeship and return to the plantation and Japanese garden in the Malaysian highlands where she had lived for a time thirty years before. Once there, she begins collecting her own memories. Many of them deal with the earlier time when she had lived at the tea plantation of friends and worked with the Japanese gardener, Aritomo, the former gardener of the Emperor of Japan. Although still bitter toward the Japanese, Ling had agreed to be his apprentice in order to create a garden honoring her sister who died when they were both imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp. As Yun Ling had labored in the garden, she had calmed and healed. Her relationship with the mysterious Aritomo had deepened in surprising ways. She dug more deeply into the past and told of her own scarring experiences in the camp”




In Counterpunch «conclusion»:

“I’ve circled around much of the story, identifying the surface realities of Tan Twan Eng’s enchanting novel, short-listed for this year’s Man Booker Award. There are mysteries to be uncovered here, elegantly woven into a story of great beauty and formality, whether they are the Japanese gardens (the Art of Setting Stones and the Deception of Borrowed Scenery) or the equally detailed references to tea ceremonies and, to a lesser extent, tea cultivation. Even tattooing, as it relates to ritual, class, and artistry becomes important as Aritomo’s secret past slowly unfolds for Teoh Yun Ling (as well as the reader). The Garden of Evening Mists levitates above the surface reality of war and its terrible atrocities and floats, hauntingly, like a Japanese lantern up into the sky.”