F192.
Writing Southeast Asia Away from the Western Gaze
Friday, March 25, 2022
1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
How can we tell our stories on our own terms? Five anglophone writers from Myanmar, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand talk about reclaiming perspectives and writing that does not pander to orientalist expectations. What does it mean to use English, an imperial language, in this decolonial work, particularly in such multicultural, multilingual countries, and what is the role of translation in navigating this cultural and linguistic fluidity?
Participants
Jeremy Tiang won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018 for his novel State of Emergency. He has translated over twenty books from Chinese, most recently Lo Yi-Chin's Faraway, and is currently Princeton University's translator in residence. He also writes and translates plays. www.JeremyTiang.com
YZ Chin is the author of Edge Case, a novel, and the story collection Though I Get Home, which won the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the Asian/Pacific American Award For Literature honor title. Her translation of The Age of Goodbyes by Li Zishu is forthcoming.
Sunisa Manning is a Thai and American novelist. She’s the author of A Good True Thai, which was a finalist for the 2020 Epigram Books Fiction Prize for Southeast Asian Writers. She is the recipient of the Steinbeck Fellowship, a residency from Hedgebrook, and other honors.
Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint is the author of the novel The End of Peril, the End of Enmity, the End of Strife, A Haven, which won an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and Names for Light: A Family History, which won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize.
Gina Apostol's last novels, Insurrecto and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, explore the Philippine revolutions against America and Spain. Her third novel, Gun Dealers' Daughter, won the 2013 PEN/Open Book Award. Her first two novels won the Juan Laya Prize (Philippine National Book Award).
