In this essay on the films of Iranian director Alireza Khatami, Robert Hirschfield isolates the qualities and influences that distinguish this body of work.
Read MoreDoes the August Revolution in Bangladesh give cause for hope? Gaudy Boy author Mozid Mamud reflects on the revolution in the light of the country’s history of fissures.
Read MoreRobert Hirschfield pays an insightful and heartfelt tribute to a haiku master of South India.
Read MoreIn his essay about moving from Singapore to Germany, Thow Xin Wei reflects on what it means to learn a new language in order to fit in.
Read MoreHow far would we go for social justice, and how would that youthful self be viewed afterwards? Lillian Tsay reflects on her involvement in Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement in her essay “The Era I Had Loved.”
Read MoreIn this poignant essay, Monisha Raman finds her way in the maze of grief by walking.
Read MoreIn this essay, one of three winners of the 2023 Singapore Unbound Awards for the Best Undergraduate Critical Essays on Singapore and Other Literatures, Gan Chong Jing argues that Singaporean playwright Kuo Pao Kun creates a uniquely fluid form of allegorical theatre by infusing experimental, non-realist English language theatre with Chinese Xiangsheng performance techniques.
Read MoreIn “Mind the Gap”: Exploring Hwee Hwee Tan’s Portrayal of Cultural Tensions in a Modern, Globalising World,” one of the three winners of the 3rd Singapore Unbound Awards for the Best Undergraduate Critical Essays on Singapore and Other Literatures, Kelly Sng argues that Tan’s novels raise provocative questions about the limits of transnational capitalism and cultural fluidity in a modern, globalizing world.
Read MoreOne of three winners of the 3rd Singapore Unbound Awards for the Best Undergraduate Essays on Singapore and Other Literatures, “Chosen One’s Chosen Pronouns: Queer Identity as Messianic Belief in Neon Yan,” by Tan Yan Rong, examines the intersection of gender and religion, truth and belief, in Neon Yang’s Genesis of Misery and A Stick of Clay.
Read MoreThe exciting recovery of a previously unknown book-length poem by a Singaporean who migrated to Australia. Gwee Li Sui, the editor of A Walk with My Pig, describes the recovery not only of the work but also of the poet Mervin Mirapuri.
Read MoreWhat is gold if it is not a color nor a metal? In this essay Max Pasakorn wonders and wanders into an answer.
Read MoreIn this new essay, Jasmine Gui examines the myth of the successful diasporic Asian artist in her own life.
Read MoreOne of three winners of the 2022 Singapore Unbound Awards for the Best Undergraduate Critical Essays on Singapore and Other Literatures, Katherine Enright’s essay analyzes Ng Yi-Sheng’s short story “Agnes Joaquim, Bioterrorist” as a subversion of the conventions of Victorian plant fiction and of the orchid as a Singaporean national symbol.
Read MoreOne of three winners of the 2022 Singapore Unbound Awards for the Best Undergraduate Critical Essays on Singapore and Other Literatures, Quek Yee Kiat’s paper is a study of selected rewritings of myths in Singapore and their re-significations, encompassing two interconnecting themes––“Fearless Females” and “Queering Hybrids.”
Read MoreOne of three winners of the 2022 Singapore Unbound Awards for the Best Undergraduate Critical Essays on Singapore and Other Literatures, Timothy Wan’s essay uses Pearl Bank as a focal point to offer a reconsideration of how Singaporeans engage with nostalgia.
Read MoreIn this essay on the late Malaysian poet Wong Phui Nam, Daryl Lim Wei Jie considers how death acted for the poet as “a catalyst of deeper truths about the exilic migrant condition that he perceived himself to be stranded in – and the broader human condition.”
Read MoreIn “Dear Pluto,” Susan L. Lin writes to the Death Planet about her plans to visit it in the distant future.
Read More“Singapore's climb from a Third World country to a First World nation was made easier, thanks to the escalator.”
Read MoreAmanat is a groundbreaking anthology featuring the stories of women writers from Kazakhstan over the past thirty years.
Read MoreIn “My Story,” Burmese rights advocate Ningja Khon relates how she ran afoul of the Myanmar’s military junta and had to escape the country to southern Thailand before ending up in the US.
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