The article describes him as "a rare South-East Asian talent writing in English"
and I mentioned a day or two ago that he is one of the writers who will be at the Singapore Writers Festival. I picked up a copy of his collection of stories Sightseeing in Kinokuniya the other day.
A couple of soundbites from the interview regarding cultural identity and "exoticism":
I didn’t want to represent Thailand as hyper-exotic. As a teenager growing up in Bangkok, I couldn’t quite figure out what was so strange about Thailand and why people were travelling all this way to come to a place where I simply walked around malls every weekend. I wanted readers to see Thailand as a real place, with a kind of ordinariness about it.
There’s been some concern in the Thai-American community about the way Thais are represented in my book. Many feel that Thailand’s been (stereotyped as being rife with) sex, drugs and police corruption. The government’s strategy has been to portray this other Thailand: This land of smiles, a kind of sanitised Thailand, which doesn’t agree with my sense of how things are there either.
Read the rest of the interview here.
5 comments:
vey interesting! actually I'd like to read him as I have been reading a lot of works from writers during the troubled period - like sidaoruang, siburapha, sujit wongthet.
there is indeed a move to change the image of Thailand, to go back to those glorious years, remember what it was like before the Americans came and made their base there and change things forever. One of these is the movie - Suriyothai - quite an epic.
*sigh* another book on the must get and must read list!
I haven't read thai writers at all, Kak Teh, and must do something about it ... starting with this young man now I have his book
sharon, read his book. it's a fun ride. touching, witty and sharp.
Thanks Sharon. The young writer's interview was interesting.
"I couldn’t quite figure out what was so strange about Thailand and why people were travelling all this way to come to a place where I simply walked around malls every weekend."
That's exactly how I feel about this place sometimes. They look out the LRT windows and point and say stuff.. and I'm like.. it's a fountain.. or a building.. or a trwe.. or whatever.. get over it. :) and the happy anticipation in their faces.. like the mall was Disneyland instead of a place where you went to buy stuff. I don't know why that is. Do they not have malls in their country ? or fountains ? or trees or temples ?
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