What do dating apps, border control, and HRT documentation have in common? Find out in Winter Chen’s explosive movement between the forms and functions that draw a life’s rawest borders.
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Anna Tan reviews Bone Weight and Other Stories, by Shih-Li Kow, and finds the stories in the collection weighted down by losses familiar to Malaysians.
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Have you ever been late to an appointment, or haunted by someone’s late arrival? Sayan Aich Bhowmik’s poems present us with seasons and people who have taken their time.
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In this story by Casper Ho, a young boy is excited to fill in his new journal, but with what?
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Read some creative non-fiction by Southeast Asian authors or about Southeast Asia lately? Ng Yi-Sheng recommends five titles to peruse.
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In the wake of a departure, what has – and is – left? Two poems by Oindri Sengupta.
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In his review of A Tinderbox in Three Acts, by Cynthia Dewi Oka, Ho Kin Yunn finds a poetics that confronts mass horrors and implicates all of us.
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In London, a broken Lim Chin Siong, with the help of his therapist Eileen Tay, tries to step away from the precipice. Philip Holden’s story probes deeply and gently into what it means to “accompany others, and not to oversee them.”
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The representative of law and order comes to life in Salil Tripathi’s story. “Was Chin Siong trying to create solidarity between the people and the police to rise up against the government?” Senior Inspector Tan Kim Wah has to decide what to write in his report to his superiors.
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A. K. Kulshreshth homes in on the wheeling and dealing to stay on the right side of history in his sharp depiction of an unlikeable protagonist. The man is fictional, but how can one tell amidst the “lies, half-lies, truths, and half-truths”?
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In this moving story, Faith Ho imagines the tumultuous events of the 50s from the perspective of Wong Chui Wan. Much more than Lim Chin Siong’s wife, Wong was an activist and a trade unionist at a time when “they [were] writing themselves into being.”
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A month of graphic novels? Glorious. Ng Yi-Sheng is our guide to the tragic, the fantastic, and the pandemic.
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What are these ghost orchids in Ismim Putera’s new story “Bunga”? Are they even orchids or not?
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From salt to frozen yogurt, Valerie Eng takes us through a jumbled journey of flavors—equal parts liquid and sharp, joyful and grieving.
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In this new story by Devanshi Khetarpal, an unsettling neighbor gets under the skin.
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Do objects give off an aura? What about texts about objects? This playful new story by Glenn Diaz, featuring a weary encyclopedist, questions the credentials of literature.
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Success and scandal makes this month a good time for global speculative fiction, according to Ng Yi-Sheng.
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What else can a miscarriage bring but pain to a woman in a traditional marriage in Bangladesh? Find out in this new story by Sohana Manzoor.
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With these three poems, Anuradha VIjayakrishnan attends to distance, belonging, and endings, showing how life endures even in the most hostile spaces.
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