Our Event, the Capricorn!

So ... it turns out that our event, Readings, is a Capricorn (since it was born 8th January 2005) which makes it (according to audience member, Dave Tee, "ambitious, strong willed and never prepared to say die"!)

Forgive a short detour to nostalgia.

We began of course at Darling Muse gallery, and later in 2005 moved to Seksan's and have had a home here ever since. Bernice was the mummy of Readings, and I took over as adoptive mum when her mum became terminally ill, and then she fully handed over the event to me and started a new one, Ceritaku!, at No Black Tie.

Over the years we've given more than 160 writers space to read their work and given them a meeting place where friendships have been forged and collaborations born.

And as straits-mongrel (who also gave me permission to use his beautiful pictures) points out beautifully in his post Reading in Colours,  this event has brought together a huge diversity of folks in the kind of Muhibbah spirit that this 1 Malaysia thing is supposed to be about. Frankly, that's never been on the conscious agenda, but has definitely been one of the best things that has naturally emerged from the event.

And now we've launched a book project which hopefully will put event and writers on the map.

So a party to celebrate this was in order, and party we did.

We welcomed back some of our earliest readers and introduced some new ones.

I've been trying to get hold of The Loud girl aka Elaine Foster ever since I first heard her read at one of The British Council's Wayang Kata events.  She could also be crowned slam queen of KL, and is organising spoken word events now in collaboration with Word Forward in Singapore.  I especially loved the first piece she read, which she had written in collaboration with George Wielgus and Tsiung Han See about the coming revolution and what it would not be like!

Jo Kukathas, actor, playwright, director, and driving force behind Instant Cafe Theatre had been one of the participants in the British Council's creative writing workshops earlier this month.  I loved the pieces she brought to share with the group, and she read from one of them - she isn't prepared yet to say whether it is fiction or autobiography ("It's a something.") which tells the story of larger than life family members.  I really am looking forward to more.

Some three years back, O Thiam Chin told the sad story about how hard it was for him to self-publish his first collection of short fiction and get the copies sold.  How far he's come since then, with a very well-received second book, Never Been Better, published by MPH. (And the bookshop sent along copies for sale.)

And then it was time for cake! We actually had three cakes.  Two of them were red velvet cakes with butter-cream icing ordered from That Last Slice, and they tasted every bit as good as they looked. (Thanks, Aishah,  for driving over from Shah Alam to deliver!)

The third was an absolutely delicious chocolate cake which Saras had had a friend bake for us, and very much appreciated. 

We blew out candles and made a wish - for the next 5 - no, 50 years of Readings to be as successful.


After the break, Bernice Chauly read from the book she is finishing Growing Up with Ghosts which she describes as:

... a literary autobiography, a memoir of sorts in five voices ... about her Chinese and Punjabi family and diasporas which span hundreds of years.

It will also form part of her MA in English Literature and Creative Writing at University Malaya.  Bernice has also been chosen as one of four writers worldwide to participate in Winternachten's (International Writers' Festival of The Hague) tour of the Dutch Caribbean and Suriname in April on the theme A Sense of Belonging.

What I've heard of the new work so far (in the workshops and here in Readings) shows that Bernice is working with fascinating material, and as she says, writing of this kind has been very much neglected in Malaysia. I think it also takes a lot of courage to put your own story out there in the public arena.

Do read this interview Bernice did with The Nutgraph last year, in which she shares some of her personal history with us.

Kam Raslan is the writer who has read more frequently at Readings than any other and  we have followed his Datuk Hamid from his first tentative fumblings with a Swiss milkmaid,  appearing in his own column in Off The Edge, and finally getting a whole book - which the Malaysian public took to their hearts - dedicated to his adventures.  Now it seems that there is a sequel in the pipeline, and the extract that Kam read was as endearing and as funny as ever.  It had the Datuk in a department store attempting to choose a perfume for The Wife's birthday, when a whiff of a fragrance called Betrayal sets off a train of Proustian memory ...

I  had to put Rahmat Harun last, because he is just such an impossible act to follow.  And of course the famous  Keranamu Malaysia had to be the centrepiece of his performance ....  This guy is a force of nature!

Thanks very much to Seksan for the wonderful space (though I was a bit sad that for the first time there was no art on the walls), to all who read and all who supported, to Aishah and Saras for cakes, and to all those who helped set up and clear away.  Nothing happens without you all.

Kam Does Radio

Author Kam Raslan is interviewed on BFM89.9 and shares some of his favourite music with us.  Totally agree with him on the choice of Joni Mitchell track - one of my favourites too.

Kam's History

... it's not that I'm not interested in history. I am. But when I start feeling that my history is being claimed by some purely Malay, nationalistic, separate-from-everybody-else's history, then it upsets me, because it's just not true. Our history — the Chinese, the Indians, the different types of Malay [Malaysians] — are all touched by everybody else. And we should be aware of that, and we should give credit for that.

The Nut Graph interviews Confessions of an Old Boy author Kam Raslan about his childhood, his Malay heritage, and the book on Malaysian histories he's currently working on. Says Kam :

It's going to be about people's history, not top-down; I want to ignore the great leaders. I've been spending a lot of time in the archives, reading about everyday people who lived here then. There was this thing called the Selangor Journal, which was the precursor to the Malay Mail; it mentioned a Professor Lawrence, a balloonist who came to town in 1890s, and he asked for money so he could get his balloon up in the air, take people up and get a look at Kuala Lumpur.

So he got money from some towkay, and over at the Chinese Club — I have no idea what the Chinese Club is— he took the balloon up. It struck me that that would have been the first time anyone had had an aerial view of Malaysia then. So I want to write about what they saw, what was beneath them in KL at the time.

It's not going to be the story of sultans; it's the little stories — stories about "nothing" that say plenty.

And I for one can't wait to read it.

Everything from Malay Ghosts and Dissenter's Balls to Toy Pianos

Our Saturday Readings@Seksan was a fabulous mixture of political discussion, Malay ghosts, poetry with toy musical instruments, and some fantasy writing which raised real world issues.

Happy I was to hand the MC-ing of this event over to Animah Kosai so I could just relax and enjoy the event. (Anyone else want to have a go another time? I like being lazy!)

Danny Lim started the ball rolling by reading about a couple of local spooks from his Malaysian Book of Ghosts. We learned about the elf-like Bunian of Malay mythology, and it was fascinating to hear about the journalist (formerly with Time magazine) who actually interviewed one for Men's Review back in 1999! We also heard about Hantu Kum Kum :

A roving female ghost carrying a tombstone like a baby, who goes around asking for milk, and attacks young virgins to restore her youth and beauty.

Incidentally, the Malay version of Danny's book, Kitab Pengetahuan Hantu Malaysia, is due to be launched this Friday 8.30 pm onwards at Bau Bau Cafe at The Annexe, Central Market with a whole variety of exciting folks reading ... including me! (I am the star attraction, come and laugh at the Mat Salleh mangling Malay!)

The focus of this particular Saturday after noon was very much on Kee Thuan Chye's March 8th : The Day Malaysia Woke Up which is a collection of contributions in response to the seismic shift in the political landscape of Malaysia following the last elections. Animah read her essay What Do the Children Think?, a very effective and yes, charming piece, blending the personal and political piece to talk about how Malaysians of different are divided from each other and how hard it is for a child to see that.

Kee Thuan Chye who put the book together read extracts which included interviews with former law minister Zaid Ibrahim (The Reforms Will Come), and the extracts from the interview with Raja Petra Kamarudin delightfully titled How Big Are Your Balls? in which he talks about his arrest under the ISA (the first time round, that is) and gives his take on the political landscape.


If there was any danger that we might take ourselves all too seriously with all that politics, all that dissipated when The Happy Unicorn Collective (a group comprising Dianne Dayanna, Priya K., Nurul, Patricia Low, Tan Koon, Fairuz S. and Adam Kharul and formed for Project Connect earlier in the year) took the floor after the break.

The group blended Priya K's eccentric poetry with an unusual mix of musical instuments which included rucksack percussion, kiddy xylophone and toy piano, stylophone, and children's trumpet! The most hilarious poem was one about seagulls being evil and stealing chips when the group went to UK. (The biggest culture shock just has to be one involving the wildlife!)

It was really great to have Glenda Larke (above) with us. As I probably told you before, I knew Glenda as an environmentalist long before I even knew she wrote - let alone was a prominent fantasy writer. She started by saying that it is ironic that fantasy is a genre much looked down on, when many very famous literary authors (among them Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Gunther Grass, Marquez) have written in the genre ... except that of course good fantasy fiction tends to get a different name slapped on it. (This is something we've talked about before on this blog.)

Glenda read to us from her new, as yet untitled novel, which is to be the first part of a new trilogy, set in a world where water is a scarce and precious commodity (as she predicts it will be for all of us soon). The extract was an engaging piece about two brothers in this arid landscape.

When the book is published we must invite her back! In the meantime, you can find Glenda's excellent blog Tropic Temper here. (She has a nice write-up of this event.)

Brian Gomez was a no show (he got the time wrong) and I was sad about that because I am really enjoying his absolutely crazy novel Devil's Place. Never mind, we will invite him again and send him an alarm call.

But it was a great stroke of luck that Kam Raslan (above) happened to be along (he is now living in China, but back for a visit) and since he also had a piece in March 8th, it was the perfect opportunity to ask him to read his essay The End of Fear, about how the violence that the government warned about if the political order were threatened, failed to materialise, and how :

Fear is a legitimate emotion but it either leads to a desire to leave or extreme caution. It is not a good fertiliser for growing exciting things (although it is manure).

After the readings ended, some folks stayed back to chat with Chye and the other authors about the book and about their thoughts about keeping the spirit of March 8th alive, while we clearer up round them.

Thanks to all who read and all who came. Thanks to Seksan for the wonderful space. Thanks to Shahril Nizam again for making the poster. Thanks too to the setters-up (foremost among them, Chet) and valiant clearers away.

Next month I think Bernice is organising something for teen writers, so I will keep you posted.

When Malaysia Woke Up

Am extremely happy to hear that Kee Thuan Chye has a new book out (and he's a bit of a dark horse because I heard nothing about it pre-publication). He writes of course of the election result that shifted the ground beneath out feet.

The blurb reads :

March 8, 2008, Malaysians dealt a blow to the Barisan Nasional government that had held almost absolute power for 50 years by denying it the all-important two-thirds majority in Parliament and the control of five states. This book is about that historic day and the change that has come with it. It is also an expression of hope for a brighter future, with many Malaysians speaking their thoughts frankly and without fear. If you feel that March 8 was really something, this is the book to help you remember it for years to come.

The book was reviewed in Starmag on Sunday by R. Lim and apparently comprises personal accounts, essays and interviews ... including pieces by Kam Raslan and Animah Kosai.

Postscript:

More information from Chye :

ABOUT THE BOOK :
The day of the underdogs, the real Merdeka, a political tsunami, the perfect storm—by any name, March 8, 2008, will go down in history as a turning point in Malaysian politics. With their votes, Malaysians dealt a blow to the Barisan Nasional government that had held almost absolute power for 50 years. Denying it the all-important two-thirds majority in Parliament and the control of five states has certainly made the political scenario more vibrant.

Although surprised that there was such power in the vote they cast, Malaysians woke up to the true meaning and practice of democracy. They now face the present reasonably free from fear, free from the spectre of May 13.

This book is about that historic day and the change that came with it—an expression of hope for a brighter future, with many Malaysian voices speaking their thoughts frankly. There are also eyewitness accounts, interviews with key people, and articles never published before, written by fledgling and established writers.

Includes exclusive hard-hitting interviews with Raja Petra Kamarudin, Zaid Ibrahim, Lim Guan Eng, Dr Lim Teck Ghee and Dr S. Subramaniam.

HIGHLIGHTS

- How Big Are Your Balls? - an interview with Raja Petra Kamarudin
- The Racial Bias of Utusan Malaysia - a report by Yip Wai Fong, Centre of Independent Journalism
- One Hundred-Odd Days After March 8 - a comprehensive record of events
- Enough of the NEP - an interview with Dr Lim Teck Ghee
- Just Call Me Guan Eng an interview with Lim Guan Eng

Award Winners and Joget in June

It was a huge turnout for Readings@Seksan yesterday despite the other exciting things going on in town (KLue's Urbanscapes, and the poetry slam later the same evening at KLPAC) and despite serious traffic disruptions caused by the trimming of trees in the area.

As you can see - our readers shared quite a number of literary awards between them!

Sri Lankan author Elmo Jayawardena started us off reading a (very) short extract from Sam's Story - his Graetian Prize winning novel told from the viewpoint of a mentally-retarded young man who came to work in Elmo's household. He had to hurry away after the reading to get back to the airport where he is training pilots on the flight simulator!

Most of us know Lydia Teh as a non-fiction writer, and indeed she recently won the Star-Popular award in that category for her hilarious take on Malaysian life Honk If You're Malaysian. But today she read a short story she had written, a very beautiful and magical tale called Moon Scars which was originally published in Yellow Post.

Award-winning journalist Jacqueline Ann Surin read from her new collection of her columns Shape of a Pocket, one of several opinion pieces that had been "spiked" i.e rejected by her editor for being too controversial.

The piece opens with a personal story about how she has to argue to get the words "No religion" on her MyKad, in a country where all citizens are expected to be neatly pigeonholed by religious belief and race. She then goes on to talk about the difficulties faced by Muslim Malaysians in changing their religion if they so wish, taking in, along the way, of course, the famous Lina Joy case.

The second half of the afternoon was nicely bracketed with some traditional music with attitude from the lads of Dewangga Sakti. Was it only me who wanted to get up and joget?

I really would like musical interludes like this to become a regular feature, so if you are a (good!) musician and would like to play for us, unplugged, get in touch with me.

I was so glad that Shahriza Hussein felt well enough to come along. I've just started reading his historical novel Legacy and am greatly impressed with its ability to transport me back to (19th Perak. The research is impeccable and the writing very good indeed. (Will let you know more about it when I'm further along.) Shahriza did correct me with a twinkle in his eye when I said (based on the press coverage so far) that this was a novel partly based on his own family history. It is entirely fiction, he declares. Which is fine because we really only need to enjoy the book!

(I still have some copies for sale for just RM30 - let me know if you want one.)

Koo Yew Lie did the reading for Shahriza as he had a bad cough. She read an extract from the beginning where British Resident J.W.W. Birch and his party are taking a break (complete with china teapot!) on a journey up the Perak River in a small flotilla of three boats. The next day they will be in the territory of a certain Datuk Maharaja Lela ... (Malaysian readers know what comes next!)

Two little asides here :

1) Yew Lie was a friend I made when she came over to the U.K. college (Marjons) where I was teaching, and until yesterday we hadn't seen each other for 18 years. She's now an associate professor at UKM.

2) It's interesting, isn't it that both Shahriza's book and Chew-Siah Tei's Little Hut of Leaping Fishes open at virtually the same point of time (Autumn, 1875)?

I was extremely grateful to Clarissa Tan for making this long journey up by bus especially for this event. She is an amazing young writer and a couple of my friends afterwards confessed that they had felt themselves tearing up as she read her piece, The Visit, that won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize : the absolute honesty of the piece touched hearts.

Clarissa says that she is now at work on her first novel and I am really look forward to seeing that.

Star-Popular Award runner-up in the fiction category for Confessions of An Old Boy: The Dato Hamid Adventures, Kam Raslan has been continuing the stories each month on the pages of Off the Edge. He had us all laughing again at Hamid's musings on the Tin Mine disco (which was at the KL Hilton and the place to hang out in the '80's).

Kam is soon off to the Byron Bay Writer's Festival, sponsored partly by the Australian High Commission. (Bless 'em.) The world needs to meet Dato Hamid.

It was a great afternoon. I really thank all who came and cheered on writers, all who read their work, all who played wonderful music, all who helped set up and clear up. I particularly thank Seksan for use of his lovely space, and Shahril Nizam for designing our blog poster.

Our next Readings@Seksan will be July 26th, and the line up (I hope!) will include Fahmi Fadzil and Azmyl Yunor performing their famous Wayang Buku.

Sufian's Mission

Sufian Abas is Reads Monthly's pin-up boy in Starmag today. Daphne Lee sums him up thusly :

... a sulky young man who smells like freshly-pressed laundry.* He takes stunning photographs ... but (it is said) they are nothing compared to his beautiful, detailed work in cross-stitch. ... He tap dances. He enjoys skinny-dipping. And climbing trees. He loves horses, especially unicorns. He dislikes children, but thinks they might be delicious curried, or roasted and served with carrots and potatoes. Sufian claims that he was once nearly murdered by a witch.

But most importantly :

Sufian Abas is on a mission to save Malay fiction by producing works that people would actually want to read.

written in :

... the sort of Malay you hear on the street ... the Malay people actually use and understand ...

And he's conscious of filling a gap (presently almost uninhabited!) between what he calls the heavy literary prose and and the sort of trash you find in Malay romance novels. He also, and I think this is a particularly interesting point, urges non-Malay writers to write to Malay because they would bring something different to the language.

Anyway Daphne likes Sufian's book ... better than two other local collections she didn't think as good as they were cracked up to be on the blogs. (Blog?) Ahem. Never mind. We fought it out at the Food Foundry yesterday in between mouthfuls of toast and scrambled eggs . Chaque'un à son goût ... in short story collections as in breakfast dishes.

Priya K. reviews Sufian's book and finds the stories :

... snappy and heartbreaking ... the writing style is deceptively simple, opting for everyday language and pop culture references. The result is street poetry, with classic lines such as “dengan air mata berlenagan dan berkilauan seperti bebola disko” (with tears shining like disco balls). ... Philosophic pulp fiction, if I may venture to coin a term.

My review of Nikita Lalwani's Gifted is in Starmag today though with a Borders voucher when Kinokuniya was kind enough to give me the copy of the book which is a bit embarrassing. But never mind ... there is a 30% discount voucher for selected titles from Kino to clip out.**

Ted reviews Hitomi Kanehara's Auto Fiction (and reminds me that I still want to buy her Snakes and Earrings) and Martin Spice John Le Carre's Mission Song.

There's news too of bookstore events in April including of a free creative writing workshop to be run by Kam Raslan at MPH.

(*Hmm, just how close did Daphne get?)
(** There's a strange and sad postscript I want to stick at the end of my original post on the book.)

Kam on Censorship

Kam Raslan's thoughts on censorship from a piece on the Ubud Writers' and Readers' Festival he wrote for his website. (Kam spoke on a panel about the topic - sadly it was one of the sessions I didn't get to attend.):

The thought struck me that, from my experience in Malaysia, censorship works as an agreement between the people and the censor. If people really didn't want censorship, then it could be deposed in a day. But the audience agree to a compact where difficult and sensitive issues will be ignored. It makes life easier. And post 9/11 western countries, especially America, have entered into that agreement. Life led in the gentle cloud of censorship is tranquil and safe because history, science, religion and race are all ignored. Instead we can focus our attention on Britney. Censorship helps us deal with the difficult complexities of the world by simplifying it.

(Pic shows meself and Kam getting huggy at the closing party of the festival.)

Do Malaysians Really Get Satire?

Satire ... [1] is a literary genre, chiefly literary and dramatic, in which human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, sometimes with an intent to bring about improvement. [2] It is used in graphic arts and performing arts as well. ... Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, the purpose of satire is not primarily humour but criticism of an event, an individual or a group in a clever manner.

from Wikipedia.

Does satire flourish in Asia?

One of the most entertaining panel discussions of the Ubud Writer's and Readers' festival debated the question. Besides our own Kam Raslan, we met Sri Lankan author Manuka Wijesinghe who writes beautifully about the absurd in her novel Monsoons and Potholes, and Indonesian Isman Hidayat Suryaman who talked about how he hides his criticism of authority in humour since he cannot do it openly. He added a nice detail for us, Indonesia doesn't have a "censorship board" it has an "enlightenment board!" which does the same job! The session was moderated by Nury (who gets everywhere!).

Kam talked about how satire has become increasingly popular in Malaysia, and he read from Amir Muhammad's book to illustrate the fact that in Malaysia actually satirists are not needed because politicians do the job beautifully for them!:

Our job is to mock authority and our politicians make it too easy ...

he said, talking about how the politicians provide most of the material for KL's Instant Cafe Theatre for which Kam also writes skits.

When it came to question time I asked the panelists if they felt that their audiences really get their satire? As Instant Cafe founder Jo Kukathas (who was in the audience*) pointed out, of course Malaysian audiences understand satire ... otherwise why would their own company have been so successful?

I was actually thinking about satire on the page, particularly when it doesn't have a box around it saying "This is meant to be funny". And I was thinking specifically about this post on Amir Muhammad's blog on a spoof column he wrote as Ambi Mohan for the New Straits Times - the reactions from angry readers who didn't understand that their leg was being pulled actually makes funnier reading than the articles themselves!

Jo actually took me to task about the question I'd asked a couple of nights later, at the party at Blanco's house, and gave me plenty of examples of her own to support her argument. Somehow (might have been on my part the wine) we managed to entangle the question of "Do Malaysians get satire?" with "Do Malaysians get irony?" (which is a somewhat separate one, but nevertheless worth considering ... and I would say much of Kam's humour is gently ironic.)

On satire, with censorship so tight, and self-censorship added to it, there really is little tradition of making fun of authority figures here by means of the written word ... although happily the blogosphere is becoming increasingly good at using satire, much to the discomfort of politicians.

(It's worth noting too is that Kam's deliciously satirical sense of humour was shaped by TV programmes like Monty Python, as he grew up in the UK.)

My question then, is there a tradition of satire here, particularly on the printed page?

The issue is still knocking round in my own head. Would love your views.

(Incidentally, Isman has a very amusing blog calld The Fool Has Landed and wrote this session up very well himself. And Deepika writes a lovely piece on Manuka.)

*Now can you guess who the obnoxious politician was?

Tales from Seventh Earth

After having a good moan at the New Straits Times for a lack of anything literary (and most particularly reviews on the pages) columnist Rehman Rashid gives us not one but three excellent reviews of recently published local books (Dina Zaman's I Am Muslim, Kam Raslan's Confessions of An old Boy: The Dato Hamid Adventures and Antares' Tanah Tujuh) with a promise of more to come next Friday. This is good news indeed.

Antares' book was also reviewed by Shakeel Abedi in Starmag yesterday.

Now I feel some rumblings of guilt. I've had the book sitting on my "needs-to-be-reviewed pile" for ages, with every intention of reviewing it, so please Antares forgive me for the tardiness of this post!

Tanah Tujuh (which literally means "seventh world" and refers to our earthly abode) is a collection of short pieces (including previously published articles, memoir pieces, and legends) in which Antares writes about the Temuan people he lives amongst with genuine warmth, clear sightedness ... and a deliciously wry sense of humour.

He recounts how he decided to get away from.

... the monstrous machinery of industrialized society

by moving to an idyllic spot on the river in Pertak in Ulu Selangor in 1992 with the plan of building an "ecospiritual" artistic community.

His neighbours, the Temuan people had had had their lives radically changed by "rapacious intruders". Antares recounts how man-made decrees had turned them into mere squatters with 99 year leases on ancestral land.

When the property changed hands, Antares moved to another perfect spot near a waterfall. Sadly the place was not to remain pristine for long, and it's impossible not to feel his grief and anger at the extensive environmental damage wrought by the timber companies. And then of course it was decided that work on the Selangor dam would go ahead.

When Antares married Anoora Chapek in 1995, his close relationship with the Temuan was further cemented, and as an "insider" he was able to collect information about their legends and belief system. It was a race against time though, as many of the older folks who remembered the old stories and traditions were dying. But these rescued stories provide the richest material in the book, and I would have loved even more of them. (My favourite was the story of how Buaya the crocodile got his teeth!) The individuals who told the stories are also lovingly captured on the pages and in photographs. (You can find a gallery of Antares photos on his website).

I also very much enjoyed the accounts of traditional healing practices which Antares recounts with a definite twinkle in his eye, and his hilarious story of Ramu and the tunnel of terror. Antares turns out damn good prose, and I have to agree with Shakheel's assessment that he's one of the country's best writers. (So more please, Antares!)

If I have one criticism of the book, it is that it seemed rather bitty with the pieces differing so much in terms of tone and focus. I also found it hard to relate to the more esoteric passage relating to universal cosmology ... perhaps because I'm one of the most cynical individuals you could meet in any matters of faith.

Nevertheless it is an extremely valuable book which both entertained me and taught me a great deal.

I found myself thinking about Orang Asli issues recently when I was in Pahang visiting schools and found myself watching my teacher-trainees teach classes with large populations of Batek children from the nearby national park area. It struck me, as it strikes Antares in the book, how hopelessly inappropriate the current model of education is for these kids ... but I saw how it's also true that if the learning is made fun and relevant they really do want to participate.

It also struck me how bloody patronising these tourist trips to visit an orang asli camp at Taman Negara (to blow a blow pipe and watch these guys make fire) actually are. (One such trip was included in the package I took my sister and her family on last year and I really felt it was demeaning ... people are not anthropological specimens to be gawped at!)

A picture I'd rather hold in my head is footage of happy Temuan children playing in the river in a video Antares showed at the KL Litfest earlier in the year.

Tinling and Kam for Breakfast

The Litbloggers Breakfast this month featured FireWife author Tinling Choong and Kam Raslan (Confessions of an Old Boy) who both turned up to field questions about their writing and their experiences of being published.

Tinling describes herself as an author who writes:

... far from the centre of things

and says that this feeling of not quite belonging, of living between cultures, of what she describes as "multi-rootedness", is what has fuelled her writing. She is considered an Asian-American author in the States but sees herself more as a voice of the Chinese diaspora. Born in Malaysia (she is from Penang but went to a convent school in Ipoh, and then moved to the US to attend Wellesley College) she now lives in Vermont and describes herself as:

... a tropical city girl who lives among the snowy mountains.

She is now working towards a PhD in Chinese Literature at Yale as well as juggling life as a new mum and working on her second novel, Yuyu and the Banyan Tree which is due to be published by Nan Talase/Doubleday in 2009.

FireWife she says was fuelled by the image of a woman letting her naked body be used as a plate for sushi (a practice known in Japan as Nyotaimori. ... Now don't go trying this one at home!) while a group of four men sat around her with chopsticks eating the food. She says that she felt so angry that she went home and wrote the woman's story as if she were right inside her skin. The story of this woman became one of the eight in the novel.

In 1992 she got a Wellesley College Stevens Traveling Fellowship to travel to Asia to further develop the book, and went from country to country gathering material. She decided to link the stories of the different women through the character of Nin, who takes time out of her normal life to complete a personal photography project, also called FireWife.

The book is about the gap between knowing and actually living your true self, says Tinling, and there's much more about the writing of it on her website.

Kam says that he also feels that he writes from the periphery.

You can be Muslim and Malay and still outside the centre.

5,000 copies of the book havve now been sold and it is still on Kinokuniya's best selling list

Kam says that he deliberately chose to write for the Malaysian market, an audience which would get the in-jokes and references which a wider audience wouldn't. But the book certainly isn't going to make him very rich. He reckons his royalty check will be somewhere in the region of RM12, 000 which isn't a lot considering that 7 years work went into the book.

But, he says, he did find writing very enjoyable, creating:

... a world that's bigger than the one you live in.

He is, though, now looking for an overseas publisher for the book.

Tinling described the elation she felt when she heard that a publisher wanted to take on her book and said she had to pinch herself:

I got really lucky. The sun, moon, everything aligned!

The book is a bit expensive here at the moment, she says, as it is still in hardback. Her dad worked out that it costs 70 bowls of hokkien mee! (This is the kind of exchange rate I think in too!)


Postscript:

This article about Tinling appeared in the Star's northern edition (click to enlarge):

Tinling and Kam Sunny side Up

Don't forget MPH's Breakfast Club this Saturday p.m. at 11 at Bangsar Village 1. Your chance to talk to authors Tinling Choong and Kam Raslan. See you there!

Ubud Early Birds

From Ubud Writers' and Readers' Festival director Janet de Neefe:

Greetings,

There is a buzz in the air as the residents of Ubud start gearing up for the 4th Ubud Writers & Readers Festival. But don't think the chatter ends in our little village. Apparently the literati-glitterati, from as far away as London, have been talking up our next Festival. They must know that this year promises to be even more dynamic, stimulating and magical than ever.

For those who are willing to take a leap of faith and trust that this year's program will be better than ever, Early Bird Specials are available on the 4-Day Festival Pass. Purchase a 4-Day Pass from now until when the program is released on the 13 August and receive 10% off [that's a AUD$30 discount!]. With less than a month to take advantage of this special offer we encourage you to throw caution to the wind and head to the Booking page on our website to get your ticket or for more information.

Although the full Festival program won't be released until mid-August, we have released our Adult Workshop and Feature Events Programs to sate your curiosity. Tickets for these are on sale now and we recommend that you book early.

Once again, our fabulous Feature Events will take transport you into the worlds of some of our most fascinating Festival guests, whose writing and experiences are as diverse as their countries of origin. Set in some of Ubud's most elegant hotels, these unforgettable feasts of flavour, mind and soul are always quick to sell out. So book now!

It's no wonder that the Festival was named among the world's top six literary events! Join us and see what all the talk is about. You wont be disappointed!

This year will see more Malaysian participation in the festival than ever before with our Tan Twan Eng, Farish Noor, Kam Raslan and playwright Ann Lee taking part.

But some of the other invitees have a strong Malaysian connection.

There's Catherine Lim, a Malaysian-born author resident in Singapore, and Madeleine Thien, an Canadian author with Malaysian-Chinese parents whose novel Simple Recipes was a regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize finalist.

Then there's a couple of Hong Kong based authors I know because I included their stories in the Silverfish volume I edited (Collateral Damage) : Xu Xi, and Mohammad Cohen.

I hope that there will be more Malaysians attending the festival too, because, despite what Mr. Raman says, you really aren't going to feel out of place.

Check out the guestlist to know who else will be coming.

(I'm sure I've heard of this Kiran Desai somewhere ...)

Adaptation

Was lucky enough to be invited to attend the workshop on adapting texts for the stage oranised by FIRSTWoRKS/Instant Cafe Theatre and was much brain-boggled by the company I found myself in ... the other participants included stars in the theatrical firmament Ann Lee, Kee Thuan Chye, Jo Kukathas, Anne James, Thor Kah Hoong as well as best-selling author (!) and screen writer Kam Raslan, Zedeck Siew of Kakiseni, Bernice Chauly of the myriad talents, and the group of budding playwrights being nurtured by FIRSTWoRKS: Animah Kosai, Ridzwan Othman, Rahel Joseph and Shanon Shah.

Laurence Strangio the writer/director of Alias Grace talked us through the process of adapting his play from Atwood's novel telling us that he only drew on Grace's first person narration, and then only a small proportion of that. Although the film rights have been bought he said, it would be a very difficult film to make a movie because one of the most delightful ambiguities of the book is whether the mysterious peddler Jeremiah is the same person as Dr. Jerome La Pont, who hypnotises her. In the novel and in the play it is possible, Laurence says, for both possibilities to live at the same time.

He says he read and reread the book, putting post-it notes on the sections he liked best and then typing them onto computer. He says he played "fast and loose" with the arc of the story, and says he knew the book well enough to reinvent it. The first draft was three and a half hours long when read through, and was, of course, substantially cut. Laurence also showed us transparencies of a particular scene so we could see how it had changed over time, and explained how the actor's portrayal of the role (in this case Caroline Lee) fed into the way the work was written.

We talked about reasons for adaptation, and then we discussed texts that we had brought along to the workshop to adapt.

On the second day we drew a poster presentation of the key touchstones of our texts and here're some photos. (I put the full set on Flickr.)

Kee Thuan Chye hard at work ...

Me, being creative on the floor! I chose Tinling Choong's FireWife since I'd just finished reading it and found it very visual. (Eight women, eight photographs, fire, water).

Bernice wrestles Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia down to the ground!

Kam show-and-telling his take on Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Chye and Ridzwan inspect the posters. (I think they're looking at the naked lady covered in sushi picture on mine!)

The most exciting part of the workshop I think was when single images were taken and improvisations built around them creating a new set of striking images.

Now adapting a text to a play is something I would very much like to do and seems more manageable somehow than starting from scratch ...

Kam the Cover Boy!

Kam Raslan is today's cover boy in Starmag, interviewed by Dzireena Mahadzir. The book is doing very well indeed for a locally published work of fiction. (I believe that it has sold about 4,000 copies to date and is still on the best-seller lists.)

The secret of its great sales? According to the publisher (Marshall Cavendish) the blog-coverage has a lot to do with it! Yipee!

But Kam has also worked incredibly hard to promote the book through readings in bookshops and writers' gatherings (the most recent being the readings Bernice organised at No Black Tie last Sunday) and he's about to launch the book in Singapore. (The bookshops down there seem to feel the book belongs in the social anthropology or history section!)

His new website has been brought into being by Reza and Chet, and I'm sure you will agree is excellent. (As I was saying, every author needs web-presence.)

Kam's response in the article to a question about whether non-Malays were equally well able to relate to the book interested me:

... Kam says the book isn’t just popular with the Malays. ... “One of the reasons why non-Malays get annoyed with Malays is because there is actually something very attractive about the Malays – they are graceful and gracious people, very likeable and civilised.

So when non-Malays see Malays acting ugly and aggressively, it’s a double disappointment. So I wanted a character who, in many ways, embodies the very civilised traits and qualities that non-Malays find attractive.”

Still, non-Malays see their own versions of Datuk Hamid, and many have told him so. “There are a lot of Indian and Chinese Hamids too, because back in that time, due to the education system, people had the same values and tastes, regardless of their race.”

It was really nice to see the family photos accompanying the piece.

I think Kam looks like his father (Mohamed Raslan Datuk Abdullah, who was tragically killed in a car accident in 1971), and I love this photo of the brothers together as kids in London 1969. (From left to right, Karim, Johan and Kam.)

"Readings" at NoBlackTie

There are in fact two "Readings" events next weekend. The event at Seksan's on Saturday which I've already blogged, and a second event on Sunday July 1st at No Black Tie at 9.30 p.m. which Bernice has put together. This features the star-studded cast of :

• Dina Zaman
• Rehman Rashid
• Kam Raslan
• Salleh ben Joned

There's a cover charge of RM15, but NoBlackTie has kindly offered 'happy hour' alcohol prices all night.

Books by the authors will be on sale.

For reservations please call 03-2142 3737 or email noblacktie@gmail.com.

Suddenly there's so much more happening! MASKARA, KLue readings, NoBlackTie, Jerome also talking about getting some Poetika readings started at The Attic. Not to mention bookshop readings and other events.

But this event should be very interesting. I'm glad Bernice has managed to coax Rehman out to read. Salleh was not well during the Litfest when he was supposed to launch his new book of poetry Adam's Dream. (Raman is actually having the launch for the book in July.) Kam and Dina well deserve their honour laps, both their books are doing extremely well.

Reading List for Politicians

Think a certain politician is ignorant? Want to make a protest? Provide a reading list or better still send them a book or two!

Kam Raslan told me in an e-mail that he was much tickled reading about how Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul gave front-runner Rudy Giuliani a reading assignment, suggesting a list of foreign-policy books to back up his contention that attacks by Islamic militants are fueled by the U.S. presence in the Middle East.

Kam goes on to say:

And I thought, what about reading lists for people who want to do something or other? There's a great book called A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Horne about the Algerian war of independence from the French in the 1950s. The author sent a copy to Rumsfeld and was politely told to sod off. Bush apparently read the book and then drew completely the wrong conclusions. Oh well.

The book protest story I like best though is this one I came across on Nury Vittachi's blog:

Our old friend Yann Martel has started the world's smallest book club - one member. He's sending a book he likes to the Prime Minister of Canada every two weeks, to encourage more funding of the arts.

Booker prize winner Martel vows to send Stephen Harper an inscribed book every two weeks accompanied by a letter. So far there have been four books and four letters which you can read here. There is as yet no response from Harper saying how he has enjoyed Martel's choices, which range from Tolstoy to Agatha Christie.

All this of course begs the question, which books would you like to send to which politician? (Home-grown or international?)

Bringing Characters to Life

First I'm going to rap some knuckles.

Sad it was indeed that so few people turned up for the MPH Writer's Circle* meet on Saturday even though so many people SAY that they want to write the great Malaysian novel!

We were talking fundamantals really - how do you craft great characters and make them live on the page? We had three very good speakers, one academic, two published authors and the dialogue flowed between them.

Professor Lim Chee Seng of Universiti Malaya (below) spoke more broadly about how writers bring their characters to life through names, dress, physical features and drew on the writing of Balzac, Shakespeare, Lawrence Sterne, Tolstoy ... and even the bible for his examples!

Nizam Zakaria (below) has now turned full-time writer. He reckons that characters will die if they are not close to what readers can relate to. He writes for TV and is often asked if his script is plot driven or character driven: but he finds it impossible to separate the two things out - they really go hand in hand. Some of his characters, he says, are based on aspects of himself. He also said that he describes his characters minimally, but likes to reveal his characters through what other characters say about them.

Kam Raslan (below), author of Confessions of an Old Boy, not to be out done by Professor Lim's literary references very nicely drew on examples from Jackie Collins and the film Titanic to show:

the ancient tussle between character and plot ...

Good characters create the plot and must relate to events in:

predictably unpredictable ways

and must be able to justify what they are doing. No character can ever be simply a foil for the main character.

The conversation was opened up even more when the audience joined in. It was really great too to have yet another very successful Malaysian novelist come along to the session, Beth Yahp, who talked about how her characters emerge from scraps of conversation recorded in her notebooks.

A couple of issues came up in conversation which interest me greatly:

Why don't Malaysian authors don't reflect the racial diversity of the country in their fiction, seldom creating characters from other racial backgrounds in their writing?

Should Malaysian authors use of Malaysian English in dialogue. (Prof Lim believes there is:

no need to mangle our English and make it laughable ...

while I'm pretty undecided on the issue.)

These are questions are v. much on my mind and the desire to write a thesis to explore them (and other fascinations) in an academic context grows ever stronger.


*Didn't know about it? Perhaps you should contact MPH to be put on the mailing list. (Call up the Marketing Dept @ (603) 7781 1800 or the Customer Service Hotline @ (603) 2938 3818 for more information.)

Catching Kam

Chet emailed me yesterday to say tell me that you can catch Kam Raslan reading from Confessions of an Old Boy at the following venues:

Date: Sunday, 20 May 2007
Time: 3:00 p.m.
Venue: Borders, Queensbay, Penang

Date: Sunday, 27 May 2007
Time: 3:00 p.m.
Venue: Borders The Curve

He'll also be at MPH's Writers' Circle this Saturday (19th) in the Booker Room at 1 Utama talking with Nizam Zakaria and Prof Lim Chee Seng about creating characters in fiction. This session (which I'm chairing by the way!) is a must for all you wanna-be fiction writers out there!

(Pic is from Kam's book - Dato' Hamid's schooldays!)

The Bringing to Book of Dato' Hamid

Kam Raslan had everyone deceived.

How many readers of arts magazine Off The Edge suspected that that old codger Datuk Hamid, reminiscing about earlier and happier times in his monthly column, was actually Kam, giving voice to one of Malaysian literature's most engaging characters? I twigged quite early on because I'd heard Kam read extracts of a work in progress at our monthly gathering. And now finally, Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato' Hamid Adventures is in our hands.

Kam writes in the foreword to the book that he feels as if he's known Datuk Hamid all his life, that it felt as if he needed to exist. And in an article which appeared in last month's Off The Edge he says:

I like to think Dato' Hamid is very real (even though I made him up) and that he encapsulates a breed of person that many of us know and most of us can recognise. He is of the old breed that has been airbrushed out of our history, bu who would sooner quote Shakespeare than wave a kris ... would be more a ease in a cocktail party than a kampong ...

And being a friend to many MCKK old boys of my husband's generation and older, I feel that I've met Dato' Hamid many times over!

Dato' Hamid was born, we're told, somewhere between the 1920's and early 1930's, educated at Malay College (dubbed the Eton of the East and set up by the British to create a Malayan civil service) and then at university in the UK before returning home to take up a post in The Ministry. He's a charming old rascal - cultured, well travelled, hedonistic ... and also a little lazy and easily corruptible.

He narrates his memoirs in the book. (Dictates them to Kam as in the picture below?)


Dato' Hamid doesn't actually seem to like the present day and the direction Malaysia has taken very much, and expresses to some extent the Kam Raslan's own sense of alienation.

The author says in the Off the Edge piece.

Many of us gaze over the serried ranks at an UMNO general assembly and do not recognise ourselves or our aspirations in that crowd. These are the Malay masses and they deserve to be represented vigorously. But I'm not one of them. Where do we go if we're not one of them? In my own case I have gone back to the past. I wanted to find a voice in another outsider.

Dato' Hamid's son, "the Ayatollah" represents a certain type of "new Malay" that's only too familiar (goatee-bearded, fanatical, politically ambitious and smugly self-righteous) and is a character I would have liked to see very much more of in the book, particularly because he gives rise to some inspired moments of social commentary.

I don't know where they came from and I don't know where they are taking us ...

says Hamid, speaking I'm sure for many readers. (How many times have I been told that the country was a gentler, kinder, more tolerant place "back then"?)

Hamid finds that he has much more in common with The Grandson, a computer animator who makes good in Hollywood, despite his purple (and later green!) hair and the ring though his nose.

Confessions is a collection of stories, four of them short episodes, and three much more substantial pieces.

My favourite is Ariff and Capitalism, set between Kuala Lumpur and London in 1972 in which Hamid gets drawn into a get-rich-quick scam with hilarious results. (Below, Hamid, being seduced by the buxom "Edwina" at the Sheikh's dinner party in London.)
I also thoroughly enjoyed the rambunctiousness of Dato' in Love which involves among other things the seduction of a Swiss milkmaid and the theft of a diamond.

In The Beat Generation Hamid reminisces about the time in the 1950's when he was dragged along by his friend Nik to work in Paris and Algiers a drummer with a band. Kam writes in his Off the Edge article:

I wanted to show the Malay/Malaysian wanderlust ... Dato' Hamid came back after his adventure, but so many Malaysians have travelled and have never come back. ... What happened to that spirit of adventure? Who let complacency in?

The longest story in the book is Murder in Parit Chindai, which gives a Malaysian twist to the traditional Agatha Christie type murder in the library at a country house with a cast of eccentric characters, any one of whom could have done the grisly deed. It's a very clever piece, and I appreciated the fact that Kam brought in characters of other races (which happens too rarely in fiction by Malaysian authors). But I felt that Hamid and the others seemed like pawns being moved around the chessboard of the necessarily complex plot of the whodunit, rather than initiating action themselves. (It felt in this story as if Kam were pulling the strings rather than taking dictation which for me made it less effective than the other stories.) (Below ... another body.)

The Malayans is set "Somewhere near Seremban - 2001" and is a conversation between a group of old friends, Malaysians of different races (a reminder that the ethnic divisions was not a feature of the landscape of the country in the past) following the death of one of their gang on the golf course. They mull over life, talk about their children and contemplate the principles and idealism on which the new country was founded at Independence and how it has lived up to them.

Would I recommend the book? Most definitely. It's hugely enjoyable, deeply relevant, and beautifully written. I read it with a huge smile on my face, often laughing out loud at the turn of a phrase.

I am left saying that I want more, much more of Dato' Hamid, his friends and family ... especially The Ayatollah!

A very nicely written review by Dzireena Mahadzir appeared last Sunday's Readsmonthly supplement of the Star.