by Grant Evans
Silkworm Books, 2012

Lao royalty’s engagement in all the major events of the country in the last century forms a rich and complex narrative. But with the 1975 Communist revolution this history fell into oblivion and has all but disappeared from public memory.

The Last Century of Lao Royalty recovers this history by presenting a wealth of rare documents and photographs. They bring to life the political, social, and cultural activities of the members of the royal families and provide a unique perspective on the role of royalty in modern Laos. Royalty was, in fact, a force for moderation, modernization, and democracy during the period of the Royal Lao Government (1947-1975). The last king, King Sisavang Vatthana, for instance, refused to give his imprimatur to a military dictatorship because he was so doggedly committed to constitutional rule.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Joanna Catherine Scott
Mcfarland, 2011

This poignant collection of oral histories tells the stories of nine Laotians, four Cambodians and nine Vietnamese: what their lives were like before 1975, what happened after the Communist takeover that made them decide to flee their native countries, and how they escaped. The storytellers (housewife, Amerasian child, schoolteacher, government clerk, military officer, security agent, Buddhist monk, artist) create a broad and moving picture of the new realities of contemporary Indochina.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by William J. Rust
The University Press of Kentucky, 2012

In the decade preceding the first U.S. combat operations in Vietnam, the Eisenhower administration sought to defeat a communist-led insurgency in neighboring Laos. Although U.S. foreign policy in the 1950s focused primarily on threats posed by the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, the American engagement in Laos evolved from a small cold war skirmish into a superpower confrontation near the end of President Eisenhower’s second term. Ultimately, the American experience in Laos foreshadowed many of the mistakes made by the United States in Vietnam in the 1960s.

In Before the Quagmire: American Intervention in Laos, 1954–1961, William J. Rust delves into key policy decisions made in Washington and their implementation in Laos, which became first steps on the path to the wider war in Southeast Asia. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources, Before the Quagmire documents how ineffective and sometimes self-defeating assistance to Laotian anticommunist elites reflected fundamental misunderstandings about the country’s politics, history, and culture. The American goal of preventing a communist takeover in Laos was further hindered by divisions among Western allies and U.S. officials themselves, who at one point provided aid to both the Royal Lao Government and to a Laotian general who plotted to overthrow it. Before the Quagmire is a vivid analysis of a critical period of cold war history, filling a gap in our understanding of U.S. policy toward Southeast Asia and America’s entry into the Vietnam War.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Justin Thomas Mcdaniel
University of Washington Press, 2008

“Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words” examines modern and pre-modern Buddhist monastic education traditions in Laos and Thailand. Through five centuries of adaptation and reinterpretation of sacred texts and commentaries, Justin McDaniel traces curricular variations in Buddhist oral and written education that reflect a wide array of community goals and values. He depicts Buddhism as a series of overlapping processes, bringing fresh attention to the continuities of Theravada monastic communities that have endured despite regional and linguistic variations. Incorporating both primary and secondary sources from Thailand and Laos, he examines pre-modern inscriptional, codicological, anthropological, art historical, ecclesiastical, royal, and French colonial records. He traces how pedagogical techniques found in pre-modern palm-leaf manuscripts are pervasive in modern education by looking at modern sermons, and even television programmes and websites.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Gayle L. Morrison
Mcfarland, 2007

Starting in 1960, Hmong guerrilla soldiers, under the command of General Vang Pao, functioned as the hands and feet of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s secret war against communist forces in Laos. Operating out of Long Cheng, the Hmong soldiers allowed the CIA to accomplish two objectives: to maintain the perception of United States neutrality in Laos and to tie up North Vietnamese troops in Laos who would otherwise have been sent to fight in South Vietnam. The U.S. government had quietly pledged to General Vang Pao and the Hmong that the Americans would take care of them in the event that Laos fell. In May 1975, this promise was redeemed when the CIA generated an air evacuation that moved more than 2,500 Hmong officers, soldiers and family members out of their mountain-ringed airbase. Fifty or so Hmong and Americans involved in the evacuation provide herein a firsthand account of the 14-day evacuation and the events leading up to it. Their accounts document both the political and human aspects of this unusual historical event.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Return to Top

by Ross King
University Of Hawai’i Press, 2008

Arguably Southeast Asia’s most spectacular city, Kuala Lumpur—widely known as KL—has just celebrated fifty years as the national capital of Malaysia. But KL now has a very different twin in Putrajaya, the country’s new administrative capital. Where KL is a diverse, cosmopolitan, multiracial metropolis, Putrajaya fulfills an elitest vision of a Malay-Muslim utopia. KL’s multicultural richness is reflected in the brilliance and diversity of its architecture and urban spaces; Putrajaya, by contrast, is an architectural homage to an imagined Middle East.

The “purity” of Putrajaya throws the cosmopolitan diversity of Kuala Lumpur into sharp relief, and the tension between the two places reflects the rifts that run through Malaysian society. In this copiously illustrated book, Ross King considers what form of metropolis the Kuala Lumpur-Putrajaya region might foreshadow, arguing that signs of this future city are to be sought in the collision points between the utopian dreams of imagined futures and the reality of purposely forgotten pasts.

Drawing on postcolonial studies, media studies, and critical social theory, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya makes a significant contribution to architecture, urban planning, urban design, and Malaysian politics and society.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

edited by Bernice Chauly and Sharon Bakar
Word Works, 2011

Bernice Chauly and Sharon Bakar select the best poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction submitted by Malaysian, Singaporean and expatriate writers who have read their work at their live literary event, Readings, and demonstrate the sheer variety and range of voices that characterize the local writing scene. You will find works from both established poets and authors, and from promising new writers making their debut. If ever evidence were needed that the local writing community is thriving — this is it.

Readings from Readings celebrates Kuala Lumpur’s longest-running live literature event. Founded in 2005 by Bernice Chauly, Readings provides a regular place in which local writers and readers can connect in an informal atmosphere.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Christine B.N. Chin
Oxford University Press, 2013

Cosmopolitan Sex Workers is a groundbreaking look into the phenomenon of non-trafficked women who migrate from one global city to another to perform paid sexual labor in Southeast Asia. Through a new, innovative framework, Christine B.N. Chin shows that as neoliberal economic restructuring processes create pathways connecting major cities throughout the world, competition and collaboration between cities creates new avenues for the movement of people, services and goods. Loosely organized networks of migrant labor grow in tandem with professional-managerial classes, and sex workers migrate to different parts of cities, depending on the location of the clientele to which they cater.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

edited by Amir Muhammad
Buku Fixi, 2013

KL NOIR: Red is the first of 4 volumes about the Malaysian capital city’s dark side. There are 14 short stories and one essay about the seedy, the sinister and sometimes the spooky. You will find murder, drug-dealing, kidnapping, sexual depravity, prostitution, celebrity secrets, suicides, academic rivalry, gangsters, police brutality, cannibalism, black magic, creepy rituals, political corruption and even busking. It’s all totally fictional. Well, maybe the cannibalism is.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Yat Ming Loo
Ashgate, 2013

Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, is a former colony of the British Empire which today prides itself in being a multicultural society par excellence. Engaging with complex colonial and postcolonial aspects of the city from the British colonial era in the 1880s to the modernisation period in the 1990s, this book demonstrates how Kuala Lumpur’s urban landscape is overwritten by a racial agenda through the promotion of Malaysian Architecture, including the world-famous mega-projects of Petronas Twin Towers and the new administrative capital of Putrajaya. It demonstrates how the ‘Malayanisation’ and ‘Islamisation’ of the urban landscape – the core of Malaysia’s decolonisation projects – has marginalised the Chinese urban spaces which were once at the heart of Kuala Lumpur. Drawing on a wide range of Chinese community archives, interviews and resources, the book illustrates how Kuala Lumpur’s Chinese spaces have been subjugated. This includes original case studies showing how the Chinese re-appropriated the Kuala Lumpur old city centre of Chinatown and Chinese cemeteries as a way of contesting state’s hegemonic national identity and ideology.This book is arguably the first academic book to examine the relationship of Malaysia’s large Chinese minority with the politics of architecture and urbanism in Kuala Lumpur. It is also one of the few academic books to situate the Chinese diaspora spaces at the centre of the construction of city and nation. By including the spatial contestation of those from the margins and their resistance against the hegemonic state ideology, this book proposes a recuperative urban and architectural history, seeking to revalidate the marginalised spaces of minority community (Chinese spaces in Kuala Lumpur), and re-script them into the narrative of the postcolonial nation-state.

Goodreads | Amazon

Return to Top

by Tilman Baumgärtel
Hong Kong University Press, 2012

The rise of independent cinema in Southeast Asia, following the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers there, is among the most significant recent developments in global cinema. The advent of affordable and easy access to digital technology has empowered startling new voices from a part of the world rarely heard or seen in international film circles. The appearance of fresh, sharply alternative, and often very personal voices has had a tremendous impact on local film production. This book documents these developments as a genuine outcome of the democratization and liberalization of film production. Contributions from respected scholars, interviews with filmmakers, personal accounts and primary sources by important directors and screenwriters collectively provide readers with a lively account of dynamic film developments in Southeast Asia.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

edited by May Adadol Ingawanij and Benjamin McKay
Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2011

Since the late 1990s, a vivid new sphere of cinematic practice in Southeast Asia has emerged and been identified as independent. What exactly does this term mean in relation to the way films and videos are made, and the way they look? How do issues of festival circulation, piracy, technology, state and institutional power, and spectatorship apply to practices of independent cinema throughout the diverse region? The authors who speak in this volume—contemporary filmmakers, critics, curators, festival organizers—answer these questions. They describe and analyze the emerging field of Southeast Asian cinema, which they know firsthand and have helped create and foster.

Glimpses of Freedom is the outcome of a project collaboratively conceived by a new generation of scholars of cinema in Southeast Asia, inspired by the growing domestic and international visibility of notable films and videos from the region. Contributors include internationally esteemed independent filmmakers, critics, and curators based in Southeast Asia, such as Hassan Abd Muthalib, Alexis A. Tioseco, Chris Chong Chan Fui, and John Torres. International scholars such as Benedict Anderson, Benjamin McKay, May Adadol Ingawanij, and Gaik Cheng Khoo contextualize and theorize Southeast Asia’s “independent film cultures.” The interaction between practitioners and critics in this volume illuminates a contemporary artistic field, clarifying its particular character and its vital contributions to cinema worldwide.

Goodreads | Amazon

edited by David C. L. Lim and Hiroyuki Yamamoto (Editor)

Routledge, 2011

This book discusses contemporary film in all the main countries of Southeast Asia, and the social practices and ideologies which films either represent or oppose. It shows how film acquires signification through cultural interpretation, and how film also serves as a site of contestations between social and political agents seeking to promote, challenge, or erase certain meanings, messages or ideas from public circulation. A unique feature of the book is that it focuses as much on films as it does on the societies from which these films emerge: it considers the reasons for film-makers taking the positions they take; the positions and counter-positions taken; the response of different communities; and the extent to which these interventions are connected to global flows of culture and capital.

The wide range of subjects covered include documentaries as political interventions in Singapore; political film-makers’ collectives in the Philippines, and films about prostitution in Cambodia and patriotism in Malaysia, and the Chinese in Indonesia. The book analyses films from Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, across a broad range of productions – such as mainstream and independent features across genres (for example comedy, patriotic, political, historical genres) alongside documentary, classic and diasporic films.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Jose B. Capino
University of Minnesota Press, 2010

Philippine cinema, the dream factory of the former U.S. colony, teems with American figures and plots. Local movies feature GIs seeking Filipina brides, cold war spies hunting down native warlords, and American-born Filipinos wandering in the parental homeland. The American landscape furnishes the settings for the triumphs and tragedies of Filipino nurses, GI babies, and migrant workers.

By tracking American fantasies in Philippine movies from the postindependence period to the present, José B. Capino offers an innovative account of cinema’s cultural work in decolonization and globalization. Capino examines how a third world nation’s daydreams both articulate empire and mobilize against it, provide imaginary maps and fables of identity for its migrant workers and diasporan subjects, pose challenges to the alibis of patriarchy and nationalism, and open up paths for participating in the cultures of globality.

Through close readings of more than twenty Philippine movies, Capino demonstrates the postcolonial imagination’s vital role in generating pragmatic and utopian visions of living with empire. Illuminating an important but understudied cinema, he creates a model for understanding the U.S. image in the third world.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Ben Murtagh
Routledge, 2013

Indonesia has a long and rich tradition of homosexual and transgender cultures, and the past 40 years in particular has seen an increased visibility of sexual minorities in the country, which has been reflected through film and popular culture. This book examines how representations of gay, lesbian and transgender individuals and communities have developed in Indonesian cinema during this period. The book first explores Indonesian engagement with waria (male-to-female transgender) identities and the emerging representation of gay and lesbi Indonesians during Suharto’s New Order regime (1966-98), before going on to the reimagining of these positions following the fall of the New Order, a period which saw the rebirth of the film industry with a new generation of directors, producers and actors. Using original interview research and focus groups with gay, lesbi and waria identified Indonesians, alongside the films themselves and a wealth of archival sources, the book contrasts the ways in which transgendered lives are actually lived with their representations on screen.

Goodreads | Amazon

Return to Top

by Graham Allison, Roert D. Blackwill and Ali Wyne. Foreword by Henry A. Kissinger
Belfer Center Studies in International Security, 2013

When Lee Kuan Yew speaks, presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and CEOs listen. Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has honed his wisdom during more than fifty years on the world stage. Almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Singapore into a Western-style economic success, he offers a unique perspective on the geopolitics of East and West. American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama have welcomed him to the White House; British prime ministers from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair have recognized his wisdom; and business leaders from Rupert Murdoch to Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, have praised his accomplishments. This book gathers key insights from interviews, speeches, and Lee’s voluminous published writings and presents them in an engaging question and answer format.

Lee offers his assessment of China’s future, asserting, among other things, that “China will want to share this century as co-equals with the U.S.” He affirms the United States’ position as the world’s sole superpower but expresses dismay at the vagaries of its political system. He offers strategic advice for dealing with China and goes on to discuss India’s future, Islamic terrorism, economic growth, geopolitics and globalization, and democracy. Lee does not pull his punches, offering his unvarnished opinions on multiculturalism, the welfare state, education, and the free market. This little book belongs on the reading list of every world leader — including the one who takes the oath of office on January 20, 2013.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Tom Plate
Giants of Asia Series, 2010

Imagine the delight and challenge of entering into a one-on-one political and personal conversation with the founding father of modern Singapore. This is exactly the timely treat that awaits you in Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew. The first in the Giants of Asia series, this succinct, penetrating, richly detailed and candid book on Lee Kuan Yew represents the Asian legend s first extended conversation with a Western journalist. The result is often surprising, sometimes startling, occasionally humorous and never, ever dull. Enter into the mind of this controversial but internationally respected political leader and pioneer, through the eyes and ears of one of America’s leading journalists on Asia.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Lee Kuan Yew
Straits Times Press, 2011

This collection of essays offers insightful views of the origins of egalitarianism, political autonomy, and social solidarity among small-scale societies in Southeast Asia. Theoretically reflective and rich in ethnographic details, the volume provides a solid foundation for further research on social solidarity and small-scale societies.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Ang Cheng Guan
Routledge, 2012

Lee Kuan Yew, as the founding father of independent Singapore, has had an enormous impact on the development of Singapore and of Southeast Asia more generally. Even in his 80s he is a key figure who continues to exert considerable influence from behind the scenes. This book presents a comprehensive overview of Lee Kuan Yew’s strategic thought. It charts the development of Singapore over the last six decades, showing how Lee Kuan Yew has steered Singapore to prosperity and success through changing times. It analyses the factors underlying Lee Kuan Yew’s thinking, discusses his own writings and speeches, and shows how his thinking on foreign policy, security and international relations has evolved over time.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Lee Kuan Yew
Straits Times Press, 2011

In My Lifelong Challenge, we learn of the many policy adjustments and the challenges Lee Kuan Yew encountered – from Chinese language chauvinists who wanted Chinese to be the preeminent language in Singapore, from Malay and Tamil community groups fearing that Chinese was being given too much emphasis, from parents of all races wanting an easier time for their school-going children, from his own Cabinet colleagues questioning his assumptions about language. We learn of the pain of teachers forced to switch from teaching in Chinese to teaching in English almost overnight, and of students who were caught in the transition from a Chinese medium of instruction to an English one. My Lifelong Challenge is also the story of Lee’s own struggle to learn the Chinese language. This book describes vividly his steely determination to improve his Chinese and reclaim his Chinese heritage, right up to the present when he is well into his 80s. Lee distils his experiences of 50 years into eight precepts that he spells out at the end of his narrative.

Goodreads | Amazon

Return to Top

by Robert H. Boyer
University of the Phillipines Pr, 2013

“Bob Boyer offers affectionate-often intimate-portraits of Filipino life and culture, formed over many visits to a country that many, if not most, Americans know only in the broadest terms: as a staunch ally in the Pacific and its other wars, as the rack of Imelda’s shoes, and as the home of Manny Pacquiao. Bob sharpens that picture with factual detail. Whether he’s riding a jeepney, sipping iced tea at the Chocolate Kiss, exploring the mysteries of Quiapo, or marching up Bataan and Corregidor, Dr. Boyer invariably delights and inevitably instructs; sometimes-like all good teachers do, but ever so gently-Bob disturbs and critiques us with his observations. It’s hard to imagine how a visitor from the snowbound American Midwest could connect so well with sun-baked Pinoys, but Bob Boyer did-and does again, through this eminently enjoyable book.” –Jose Y. Dalisay, Jr., PhD, Professor, University of the Philippines Diliman. “I have not met Prof. Boyer. Yet, I feel that I know him quite well. His style of writing for Sundays in Manila is not only easy to read, it is also personal. During my four decades of travel to the Philippines I walked many of the paths Prof. Boyer writes about. The scenes are described so vividly and with such clarity that I feel I am at his side. The book also served as a learning experience for me. While I visited many of the same sites, the book describes them in so much additional detail that I now know the sites better. The Philippines is blessed by a number of historic sites as well as those associated with the American period and World War II. Professor Boyer serves both as a personal historian and a guide as he brings historic events to life. The book serves as an excellent reference for persons interested in Philippine history as well as for those who plan to visit the country.” –John A. Ballweg PhD, Professor Emeritus, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Christian and Christine Schneider
Piquant Editions, 2012

“No Europeans live there!” exclaim the locals when the Schneider family moves to the slums of Manila. Yet garbage dumps and tin shacks are to be their home for many years. It’s here that they encounter chief witness Nick, doomed Jessabel, rapist Arol, billionaire Doña, guerilla Nardo, burnt-out development worker Rob … The couple’s gripping, first-hand account tells of countless fascinating encounters, of friendship and betrayal, of floods and shoot-outs in broad daylight, of prayers, dreams and fears, of meaningless death and meaningful life. Christian Schneider, a trained nurse, and his wife, Christine, a primary school teacher, spent over nine years in the slums of Manila with their two children. Through their life with the poor, they helped develop therapeutic communities for former drug addicts, prostitutes and street children. Christian and Christine now live back in Switzerland, but continue to support the aid organization Onesimo they founded in Manila.

Goodreads | Amazon

edited by Erlinda Enriquez Panlilio
Anvil Publishing, 2006

“This little volume is a valuable contribution to the lore that accumulates about every great city in the world– part social history, part myth, and part love song. Manila might be sinking under the weight of problems proclaimed every day by newspaper columnists and TV commentators. It might be plagued by calamities, both natural and manmade. It historical monuments might be wrecked by unthinking politicians; it walls and bridges defaced by ugly posters and graffiti; its hapless pedestrians killed by reckless drivers and ineptly constructed billboards. It will survive nonetheless, because people like the writers of this book will not give up on it. These Manilenas will stand their ground. Here is their testament to the city of their affections.” — From the Foreward by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo

Goodreads | Amazon

by Nick Joaquín
Bookmark Publishing, 1999

A history of the Philippines written by a Manileño (a Philippine National Artist for Literature) from the point of view of a Manila resident. This book gives great insight into the city and how it came to evolve into what it is today.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Cristina Evangelista Torres
Clearway Logistics Phase 7-9, 2012

This book makes use of the historical descriptive method to describe the origins and evolution of the Americanization process in Manila in the first two decades of American rule. It seeks to describe the transformation of the city in the light of the American colonial objectives. It focuses on the sociopolitical dynamics of administrative policy on three important components of America social modernization program: city planning and infrastructure, health and sanitation, and education. The book adops an entirely different framework by examing colonization from the perspective of cross-cultural relations. It espouse an interdisciplinary approach and uses indigenous social science concepts as integrating mechanism. The author uses the concepts of indigenous concepts of loob and kapwa and Scott’s dominant -subordinate relationship as operation paradigms to analyze colonial relationships in a historical study. The various forms of interaction between Americans and the Filipinos are examined from records of both public and private discourse of Americans and Filipinos.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Return to Top

by L. Ayu Saraswati
UH Press, 2013

In Indonesia, light skin color has been desirable throughout recorded history. Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race explores Indonesia’s changing beauty ideals and traces them to a number of influences: first to ninth-century India and some of the oldest surviving Indonesian literary works; then, a thousand years later, to the impact of Dutch colonialism and the wartime occupation of Japan; and finally, in the post-colonial period, to the popularity of American culture. The book shows how the transnational circulation of people, images, and ideas have shaped and shifted discourses and hierarchies of race, gender, skin color, and beauty in Indonesia. The author employs “affect” theories and feminist cultural studies as a lens through which to analyze a vast range of materials, including the Old Javanese epic poem Ramayana, archival materials, magazine advertisements, commercial products, and numerous interviews with Indonesian women.

The book offers a rich repertoire of analytical and theoretical tools that allow readers to rethink issues of race and gender in a global context and understand how feelings and emotions—Western constructs as well as Indian, Javanese, and Indonesian notions such as rasa and malu—contribute to and are constitutive of transnational and gendered processes of racialization. Saraswati argues that it is how emotions come to be attached to certain objects and how they circulate that shape the “emotionscape” of white beauty in Indonesia. Her ground-breaking work is a nuanced theoretical exploration of the ways in which representations of beauty and the emotions they embody travel geographically and help shape attitudes and beliefs toward race and gender in a transnational world.

UH Press | Goodreads | Amazon

by Catherine Allerton
UH Press, 2013

The Manggarai people of eastern Indonesia believe their land can talk, that its appetite demands sacrificial ritual, and that its energy can kill as well as nurture. They tell their children to avoid certain streams and fields and view unusual environmental events as omens of misfortune. Yet, far from being preoccupied with the dangers of this animate landscape, Manggarai people strive to make places and pathways “lively,” re-traveling routes between houses and villages and highlighting the advantages of mobility. Through everyday and ritual activities that emphasize “liveliness,” the land gains a further potency: the power to evoke memories of birth, death, and marriage, to influence human health and fertility.

Potent Landscapes is an ethnographic investigation of the power of the landscape and the implications of that power for human needs, behavior, and emotions. Based on two years of fieldwork in rural Flores, the book situates Manggarai place-making and mobility within the larger contexts of diverse human-environment interactions as well as adat revival in postcolonial Indonesia. Although it focuses on social life in one region of eastern Indonesia, the work engages with broader theoretical discussions of landscape, travel, materiality, cultural politics, kinship, and animism.

Written in a clear and accessible style, Potent Landscapes will appeal to students and specialists of Southeast Asia as well as to those interested in the comparative anthropological study of place and environment. The analysis moves out from rooms and houses in a series of concentric circles, outlining at each successive point the broader implications of Manggarai place- and path-making. This gradual expansion of scale allows the work to build a subtle, cumulative picture of the potent landscapes within which Manggarai people raise families, forge alliances, plant crops, build houses, and engage with local state actors. Landscapes are significant, the author argues, not only as sacred or mythic realms, or as contexts for the imposition of colonial space; they are also significant as vernacular contexts shaped by daily practices. The book analyzes the power of a collective landscape shaped both by the Indonesian state’s development policies and by responses to religious change.

UH Press | Goodreads | Amazon

by Eve Monique Zucker
UH Press, 2013

In a village community in the highlands of Cambodia’s Southwest, people struggle to rebuild their lives after nearly thirty years of war and genocide. Recovery is a tenuous process as villagers attempt to shape a future while contending with the terrible rupture of the Pol Pot era. Forest of Struggle tracks the fragile progress of restoring the bonds of community in O’Thmaa and its environs, the site of a Khmer Rouge base and battlefield for nearly three decades between 1970 and 1998.

Anthropologist Eve Zucker’s ethnographic fieldwork (2001–2003, 2010) uncovers the experiences of the people of O’Thmaa in the early days of the revolution, when some villagers turned on each other with lethal results. She examines memories of violence and considers the means by which relatedness and moral order are re-established, comparing O’Thmaa with villages in a neighboring commune that suffered similar but not identical trauma. Zucker argues that those differing experiences shape present ways of healing and making the future. Events had a devastating effect on the social and moral order at the time and continue to impair the remaking of sociality and civil society today, impacting villagers’ responses to changes in recent years.

More positively, Zucker persuasively illustrates how Cambodians employ indigenous means to reconcile their painful memories of loss and devastation. This point is noteworthy given current debates on recovery surrounding the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Forest of Struggle offers a compelling case study that is relevant to anyone interested in post-conflict recovery, social memory, the anthropology of morality and violence, and Cambodia studies.

UH Press | Goodreads | Amazon

by Sverre Molland
UH Press, 2012

For those at the high end of the trafficking chain, the sex trade is an alluring and lucrative business: the supply of girls is constant, the costs of operations are low, and interference from law enforcement is weak to non-existent. Anti-trafficking organizations and governments commonly appropriate such market metaphors of supply and demand as they struggle with the moral-political dimensions of a business involving trade, labor, prostitution, migration, and national borders. But how apt are they? Is the sex trade really the perfect business? This provocative new book examines the social worlds and interrelationships of traffickers, victims, and trafficking activists along the Thai-Lao border. It explores local efforts to reconcile international legal concepts, the bureaucratic prescriptions of aid organizations, and global development ideologies with on-the-ground realities of sexual commerce.

Author Sverre Molland provides an insider’s view of recruitment and sex commerce gleaned from countless conversations and interviews in bars and brothels—a view that complicates popular stereotypes of women forced or duped into prostitution by organized crime. Molland’s fine-grained ethnography shows a much more varied picture of friends recruiting friends, and families helping relatives. A recruiter rationalizes her act as a benefit or favor to a village friend; relationships between prostitutes and bar owners are cloaked in kin terms and familial metaphors. Sex work in the Mekong region follows patron-client cultural scripts about mutual help and obligation, which makes distinguishing the victims from the traffickers difficult. Molland’s research illuminates the methods and motivations of recruiters as well as the economic incentives and predicaments of victims.

The Perfect Business? is the first book to go beyond the usual focus on migrants and sex commerce to explore the institutional context of anti-trafficking. Its author, himself a former advisor for a United Nations anti-trafficking project, raises crucial questions about how an increasingly globalized development aid sector responds to what might more accurately be described as an extraterritorial development challenge of human mobility. His book will offer insights to students and scholars in anthropology, gender studies, and human geography, as well as anyone interested in one of the most controversial issues of development policy.

UH Press | Goodreads | Amazon

by Sarinda Singh
UH Press, 2012

Forests, as physical entities, have received considerable scholarly attention in political studies of Asia and beyond. Much less notice has been paid to the significance of forests as symbols that enable commentary on identity, aspirations, and authority. Natural Potency and Political Power, an innovative exploration of the social and political importance of forests in contemporary Laos, challenges common views of the rural countryside as isolated and disconnected from national social debates and politics under an authoritarian regime. It offers instead a novel understanding of local perspectives under authoritarianism, demonstrating that Lao people make implicit political statements in their commentary on forests and wildlife; and showing that, in addition to being vital material resources, forests (and their natural potency) are linked in the minds of many Lao to the social and political power of the state.

Sarinda Singh explores the intertwining of symbolic and material concerns in local debates over conservation and development, the popularity of wildlife consumption, the particular importance of elephants, and forest loss and mismanagement. In doing so, she draws on ethnographic fieldwork around Vientiane, the capital, and Nakai, site of the contentious Nam Theun 2 hydropower project—places that are broadly reflective of the divide between urban prosperity and rural poverty. Nam Theun 2, supported by the World Bank, highlights the local, regional, and global dynamics that influence discussions of forest resources in Laos. Government officials, rural villagers, and foreign consultants all contribute to competing ideas about forests and wildlife.

Singh advances research on forest politics by rethinking how ideas about nature influence social life. Her work refutes the tendency to see modern social life as independent of historical influences, and her attention to viewpoints both inside and outside the state prompts an understanding of authoritarian regimes as not only sources of repression, but also sites of negotiation, engagement, and debate about the legitimacy of social inequalities.

UH Press | Goodreads | Amazon

Return to Top

by Johan Fischer
Nias-Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2008

The West has seen the rise of the organic movement. In the Muslim world, a similar halal movement is rapidly spreading. Exploring consumption practices in urban Malaysia, this book shows how diverse forms of Malay middle-class consumption (of food, clothing and cars, for example) are understood, practised and contested as a particular mode of modern Islamic practice. It illustrates ways in which the issue of ‘proper Islamic consumption’ for consumers, the marketplace and the state in contemporary Malaysia evokes a whole range of contradictory Islamic visions, lifestyles and debates articulating what Islam is or ought to be. Its rich empirical material on everyday consumption in a local context will reinvigorate theoretical discussions about the nature of religion, ritual, the sacred and capitalism in the new millennium.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Johan Fischer
Big Table Publishing Company, 2012

Halal: Arabic,literally “permissible” or “lawful.” Johan Fischer’s illuminating studyproves that in the modern world, halal is no longer an expression of esoteric forms of production, trade, and consumption, but part of a huge and expanding globalized market. Exploring contemporary forms of halal understanding and practice among Malay Muslims in London – that is, halal consumption by middle-class Malays on “the frontier” – evokes important and pressing questions on both Islamic thought and how we live our lives today. The Halal Frontier gives us fresh insight into the religious dimensions of food consumption in an era of globalized mass production.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Abdullahi Ayan
CreateSpace, 2013

This book presents a wealth of information and ideas on Halal trade and commerce that cannot be found anywhere else. It answers many of the questions that business enterprises may have about accessing the global halal market and addresses the challenges they may expect. These questions include the following: 1. What is halal and how can it be utilised to gain maximum access to the global halal market? 2. What is a halal standard and how can it be applied to the production, processing and sale of halal goods and services. 3. What is halal certification and how can it be obtained? 4. Who are Halal consumers and how can they be identified and defined? 5. What kind of problems can business enterprises anticipate and how can they be overcome? 6. How can a new halal brand be created and how can an existing brand become halal compliant? Even though some of the examples are drawn from Australian experiences, the scope of the book, its ideas and their application are global. It offers a rare insight into how business can use halal as a platform to transform and expand their commercial activity in order to capture a much larger share of the global marketplace than they currently do. Mindful of the shortcoming of current halal practices, it also offers pathways to halal reform and development. Halal is fundamental to Islamic thought and practice. It gives insight into how Muslims see the world and act in it. Deeply rooted in Islamic law it can be part of the study of history, politics, sociology, culture and communication as well the study of economics and finance. However it is most manifest in its application as set of standards to the production, sale and rendering of goods and services in the marketplace which is the focus of this book.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Paul Temporal
Universal Publishers, 2011

Islamic Branding and Marketing: Creating A Global Islamic Business provides a complete guide to building brands in the largest consumer market in the world. The global Muslim market is now approximately 23 percent of the world’s population, and is projected to grow by about 35 percent in the next 20 years. If current trends continue, there are expected to be 2.2 billion Muslims in 2030 that will make up 26.4 percent of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion.
As companies currently compete for the markets of China and India, few have realized the global Muslim market represents potentially larger opportunities. Author Paul Temporal explains how to develop and manage brands and businesses for the fast-growing Muslim market through sophisticated strategies that will ensure sustainable value, and addresses issues such as:

How is the global Muslim market structured?

What opportunities are there in Islamic brand categories, including the digital world?
What strategies should non-Muslim companies adopt in Muslim countries?
More than 30 case studies illustrate practical applications of the topics covered, including Brunei Halal Brand, Godiva Chocolatier, Johor Corporations, Nestle, Unilever, Fulla, Muxlim Inc, and more.

Whether you are in control of an established company, starting up a new one, or have responsibility for a brand within an Islamic country looking for growth, Islamic Branding and Marketing is an indispensable resource that will help build, improve and secure brand equity and value for your company.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Mahmud bin Ahmad
Amazon Digital Services, 2012

Muslim countries are often thought of as culturally backward, authoritarian, misogynistic, and poor in economic performance. The teachings of Islam, however, prescribe democratic governance and free-market economics. While Muslims, as a whole, have tremendous economic potential, many Muslims are among the world’s poorest and least educated. Corrupt autocratic leaders have attempted to capitalize on the Muslim dream of building a grand society but owing to these manipulations and leaders’ insincerity, their efforts have yielded little fruitful results. This thesis discusses nation building by fusing Islam, pluralism, democracy, and modernity. It argues that Malaysia’s religious tolerance and adherence to western development models fostered economic growth since its independence. Clearly, practicing Islam, while pursuing social, economic, and political development, is a suitable model especially for heterogeneous societies. The thesis offers a model, Malaysia, as a unique example of the influence of Islamic universalism, multiculturalism, and Islamic modernism to improve economic growth. The thesis depicts the evolutionary transformation of Malay-Islam from its settlement to its status as a model for Muslims and the Third World countries. This thesis illustrates the compatibility of Islam and modernity in economic development.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Return to Top

by John Onu Odihi
TraffordSG, 2012

In this new collection of poetry, Tribute to Brunei and Other Poems, the verses represent the synoptic capture of particular environments and incidents, as well as author John Onu Odihi’s reflection of them. Presented in a rich texture of imageries, the entries on Brunei, which form a major part of the book, portray a beautiful and peaceful country where modernity and tradition blend to form a harmonious socio-cultural environment. Odihi’s depiction of the serenity of Brunei’s pristine environment in an increasingly browning world and the vivacity of cultural life in the Abode of Peace can whet your appetite for a visit to the sultanate. Through poems such as “Programme Me” “Heed the Call” and “Let’s Help Each Other” Odihi gives cogent reasons for the celebration of human diversity and relinquishment of bigotry, prejudice, and such other vices that divide people. By extolling the virtues of hard work, unity, teamwork, sincerity, faithfulness, and commitment, Odihi’s Tribute to Brunei and Other Poems presents a strong voice in the ethics that are necessary for peace and human advancement. Bless You Always Brunei Darussalam Abode of Peace You are a jewel May the Sun of Righteousness Rise and shine upon you always Let there always be justice Let there always be goodness Within your borders let mercy flow May your inward beauty radiate Like diamond in the sun….

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Burgess Needle
Big Table Publishing Company, 2012

Burgess Needle’s poetry collection distills the essence of his two-year sojourn in Thailand as a Peace Corps cultural exchanger. Readers travel with him when he meets his new headmaster, witnesses a school flogging, and feels like an idiot as he attempts to explain the conjugation of “to be.” As his Thai language skills evolve, likewise does his consciousness as he thinks in terms of earning merits for next lifetime. Beneath the ever-oppressive glaring sun, Needle gradually experiences more commonalities, but when he is assigned to teach baseball he discovers its incompatibility with Thai life, for “No one wanted to cover first base, die and return prematurely as a dog or peacock.” Thus is this collection peppered with pathos, humor and endless delight. ~ Rebecca Leo, The Flaws That Bind Burgess Needle is our guide through this thoughtful collection of poems recounting the sights, sounds, tastes, and aromas of Thailand in the late 1960s. He warns of the danger of landmines and cobras, yet lures us in with the scent of kerosene wicks, cigarettes and whiskey, and I found myself hearing the language of villagers, the lowing of buffalo, and the chattering monkeys as war is waged in the distance. Thai Comic Books is Needle examining his own misgivings and good intentions as he explores the hopes and fears of the people he meets. ~ Jonathan K. Rice, Iodine Poetry Journal Exotic but not alienating, memoir-like but musical and unpredictable, Thai Comic Books reminds us that good poetry is both timeless and borderless. ~ Jefferson Carter, Get Serious

Goodreads | Amazon

by Roy Jacobstein
Triquarterly, 2008

Suffused with tenderness and humor, the poems in this collection take readers on a journey through emotions, across national boundaries, and even along the geographic timeline. The quick mind of author Jacobstein creates fluid verse that can take on the singular geography of his native Michigan or the story of an immigrant cab driver with ease. His elegant rhyme and clever rhythm are suited equally to an ode to the stegosaurus and to his many poems for his adopted daughter. He moves readers from Washington, D.C., to Delhi, from adolescence to fatherhood, and between heaven and earth. With its immersive voice and sensitive examinations, this set of verses retains its sense of wonder at all the beautiful hellos and good-byes that humans come to know well in their too-short lifetimes.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

edited by Paul Hoover and Nguyen Do
Universal Publishers, 2008

The poems in Black Dog, Black Night highlight an aspect of Vietnamese verse previously unfamiliar to American readers: its remarkable contemporary voices. Celebrating Vietnam’s diverse and thriving literary culture, the poems collected here combine elements of French Romanticism, Russian Expressionism, American Modernism, and native folk stories into a Vietnamese poetic tradition marked by vivid imagery, powerful emotions, and inventive forms. Included here are 17 postmodern and experimental Vietnamese poets, including the founding editor of Skanky Possum magazine, as well as American poets of Vietnamese descent.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Damien Sin
Angsana Books, 1998

This selection of 50 poems is thoroughly personal, culled from the experiences of the author’s life. Childhood memories are reflected in poems with a playful use of words. In other poems, you can hear the plaintive cry of the poor and outcast. Although dark and laced with despair, the verses in the collection always offer hope and salvation. The poems reflect a spectrum of the author’s experiences, including early childhood, National Service, the Oxford education, the heroin addiction and various spells of incarceration. Sin uses inspiration, colors and sounds to express nameless, complex emotions and breaks through the obstacles of culture and grammar to speak the secret language of the heart. The language of a Singapore that cries out from the margins.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Return to Top

by Nick Turse
Metropolitan Books, 2013

Based on classified documents and first-person interviews, a startling history of the American war on Vietnamese civilians

Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by “a few bad apples.” But as award‑winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of orders to “kill anything that moves.”

Drawing on more than a decade of research in secret Pentagon files and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time how official policies resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded. In shocking detail, he lays out the workings of a military machine that made crimes in almost every major American combat unit all but inevitable. Kill Anything That Moves takes us from archives filled with Washington’s long-suppressed war crime investigations to the rural Vietnamese hamlets that bore the brunt of the war; from boot camps where young American soldiers learned to hate all Vietnamese to bloodthirsty campaigns like Operation Speedy Express, in which a general obsessed with body counts led soldiers to commit what one participant called “a My Lai a month.”

Thousands of Vietnam books later, Kill Anything That Moves, devastating and definitive, finally brings us face‑to‑face with the truth of a war that haunts Americans to this day.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Fredrik Logevall
Random House, 2012

The struggle for Vietnam occupies a central place in the history of the twentieth century. Fought over a period of three decades, the conflict drew in all the world’s powers and saw two of them—first France, then the United States—attempt to subdue the revolutionary Vietnamese forces. For France, the defeat marked the effective end of her colonial empire, while for America the war left a gaping wound in the body politic that remains open to this day.

How did it happen? Tapping into newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations and making full use of the published literature, distinguished scholar Fredrik Logevall traces the path that led two Western nations to lose their way in Vietnam. Embers of War opens in 1919 at the Versailles Peace Conference, where a young Ho Chi Minh tries to deliver a petition for Vietnamese independence to President Woodrow Wilson. It concludes in 1959, with a Viet Cong ambush on an outpost outside Saigon and the deaths of two American officers whose names would be the first to be carved into the black granite of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In between come years of political, military, and diplomatic maneuvering and miscalculation, as leaders on all sides embark on a series of stumbles that makes an eminently avoidable struggle a bloody and interminable reality.

Logevall takes us inside the councils of war—and gives us a seat at the conference tables where peace talks founder. He brings to life the bloodiest battles of France’s final years in Indochina—and shows how from an early point, a succession of American leaders made disastrous policy choices that put America on its own collision course with history: Harry Truman’s fateful decision to reverse Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policy and acknowledge France’s right to return to Indochina after World War II; Dwight Eisenhower’s strenuous efforts to keep Paris in the fight and his escalation of U.S. involvement in the aftermath of the humiliating French defeat at Dien Bien Phu; and the curious turnaround in Senator John F. Kennedy’s thinking that would lead him as president to expand that commitment, despite his publicly stated misgivings about Western intervention in Southeast Asia.

An epic story of wasted opportunities and tragic miscalculations, featuring an extraordinary cast of larger-than-life characters, Embers of War delves deep into the historical record to provide hard answers to the unanswered questions surrounding the demise of one Western power in Vietnam and the arrival of another. This book will become the definitive chronicle of the struggle’s origins for years to come.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Lien-Hang T. Nguyen
The University of North Carolina Press, 2012

While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of U.S. involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the reader from the marshy swamps of the Mekong Delta to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, and from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow, all to reveal that peace never had a chance in Vietnam.

Hanoi’s War renders transparent the internal workings of America’s most elusive enemy during the Cold War and shows that the war fought during the peace negotiations was bloodier and much more wide ranging than it had been previously. Using never-before-seen archival materials from the Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as materials from other archives around the world, Nguyen explores the politics of war-making and peace-making not only from the North Vietnamese perspective but also from that of South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States, presenting a uniquely international portrait.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by George J. Veith
Encounter Books, 2012

The defeat of South Vietnam was arguably America’s worst foreign policy disaster of the 20th Century. Yet a complete understanding of the endgame—from the 27 January 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords to South Vietnam’s surrender on 30 April 1975—has eluded us.

Black April addresses that deficit. A culmination of exhaustive research in three distinct areas: primary source documents from American archives, North Vietnamese publications containing primary and secondary source material, and dozens of articles and numerous interviews with key South Vietnamese participants, this book represents one of the largest Vietnamese translation projects ever accomplished, including almost one hundred rarely or never seen before North Vietnamese unit histories, battle studies, and memoirs. Most important, to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of South Vietnam’s conquest, the leaders in Hanoi released several compendiums of formerly highly classified cables and memorandum between the Politburo and its military commanders in the south. This treasure trove of primary source materials provides the most complete insight into North Vietnamese decision-making ever complied. While South Vietnamese deliberations remain less clear, enough material exists to provide a decent overview.

Ultimately, whatever errors occurred on the American and South Vietnamese side, the simple fact remains that the country was conquered by a North Vietnamese military invasion despite written pledges by Hanoi’s leadership against such action. Hanoi’s momentous choice to destroy the Paris Peace Accords and militarily end the war sent a generation of South Vietnamese into exile, and exacerbated a societal trauma in America over our long Vietnam involvement that reverberates to this day. How that transpired deserves deeper scrutiny.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Thomas P. McKenna
The University Press of Kentucky, 2011

In the spring of 1972, North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in what became known as the Easter Offensive. Almost all of the American forces had already withdrawn from Vietnam except for a small group of American advisers to the South Vietnamese armed forces. The 23rd ARVN Infantry Division and its American advisers were sent to defend the provincial capital of Kontum in the Central Highlands. They were surrounded and attacked by three enemy divisions with heavy artillery and tanks but, with the help of air power, managed to successfully defend Kontum and prevent South Vietnam from being cut in half and defeated.

Although much has been written about the Vietnam War, little of it addresses either the Easter Offensive or the Battle of Kontum. In Kontum: The Battle to Save South Vietnam, Thomas P. McKenna fills this gap, offering the only in-depth account available of this violent engagement. McKenna, a U.S. infantry lieutenant colonel assigned as a military adviser to the 23rd Division, participated in the battle of Kontum and combines his personal experiences with years of interviews and research from primary sources to describe the events leading up to the invasion and the battle itself.

Kontum sheds new light on the actions of U.S. advisers in combat during the Vietnam War. McKenna’s book is not only an essential historical resource for America’s most controversial war but a personal story of valor and survival.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Return to Top

by Tan Twan Eng
Weinstein Books, 2012

Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.” Then she can design a garden for herself.

As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Tan Twan Eng
Weinstein Books, 2009

The recipient of extraordinary acclaim from critics and the bookselling community, Tan Twan Eng’s debut novel casts a powerful spell and has garnered comparisons to celebrated wartime storytellers Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene. Set during the tumult of World War II, on the lush Malayan island of Penang, The Gift of Rain tells a riveting and poignant tale about a young man caught in the tangle of wartime loyalties and deceits.

In 1939, sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton-the half-Chinese, half-English youngest child of the head of one of Penang’s great trading families-feels alienated from both the Chinese and British communities. He at last discovers a sense of belonging in his unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat. Philip proudly shows his new friend around his adored island, and in return Endo teaches him about Japanese language and culture and trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. When the Japanese savagely invade Malaya, Philip realizes that his mentor and sensei-to whom he owes absolute loyalty-is a Japanese spy. Young Philip has been an unwitting traitor, and must now work in secret to save as many lives as possible, even as his own family is brought to its knees.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Tash Aw
HarperPerennial, 2006

The Harmony Silk Factory is the textiles store run by Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant living in rural Malay in the first half of the twentieth century. It is the most impressive and truly amazing structure in the region, and to the inhabitants of the Kinta Valley Johnny Lim is a hero—a Communist who fought the Japanese when they invaded, ready to sacrifice his life for the welfare of his people. But to his son, Jasper, Johnny is a crook and a collaborator who betrayed the very people he pretended to serve, and the Harmony Silk Factory is merely a front for his father’s illegal businesses. Centering on Johnny from three perspectives—those of his grown son; his wife, Snow, the most beautiful woman in the Kinta Valley (through her diary entries); and his best and only friend, an Englishman adrift named Peter Wormwood—the novel reveals the difficulty of knowing another human being, and how our assumptions about others also determine who we are.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Chan Ling Yap
Pen Press, 2010

Set in the late 1930s and 1960s, this is the tale of Mei Yin, a young Chinese girl from an impoverished family. Her destiny is shaped when she is sent to Kuala Lumpar to become the ward and companion of the tyrannical and bitter Su Hei who is looking for a suitable wife for her son Ming Kong…and ultimately a grandson and heir to the family dynasty. “Sweet Offerings” is not just a fictional story of the events that ripped one family apart, but a taste of Malaysia’s historical political and cultural changes during its transition from colonial rule to independence and beyond.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Rani Manicka
Penguin, 2004

At the age of fourteen, Lakshmi leaves behind her childhood among the mango trees of Ceylon for married life across the ocean in Malaysia, and soon finds herself struggling to raise a family in a country that is, by turns, unyielding and amazing, brutal and beautiful. Giving birth to a child every year until she is nineteen, Lakshmi becomes a formidable matriarch, determined to secure a better life for her daughters and sons. From the Japanese occupation during World War II to the torture of watching some of her children succumb to life’s most terrible temptations, she rises to face every new challenge with almost mythic strength. Dreamy and lyrical, told in the alternating voices of the men and women of this amazing family, The Rice Mother gorgeously evokes a world where small pleasures offset unimaginable horrors, where ghosts and gods walk hand in hand. It marks the triumphant debut of a writer whose wisdom and soaring prose will touch readers, especially women, the world over.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Return to Top