Readings from Readings: New Malaysian Writing

Readings from Readings #1

by Bernice Chauly (Editor), Sharon Bakar (Editor)

An indonesian man is swept out to sea by the tsunami and encounters a floating tree filled with naked girls; a cat is successful in his application to become head of a government department; and a senior demon writes a progress report for his master on the state of the country. Elsewhere, characters struggle to make sense of mysterious events: a hungry student finds a clutch of eggs left on the doorstep; a child receives paintings of herself on her birthday each year from her absent father; an elderly uncfle claims the moon-shaped scars on his ear lobes are of supernatural provenance. There are pieces here about longing and loss, quilt and betrayal, and the struggle to stay afloat in difficult relationships. Anf of course about how it feels to return home.

198 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2011

About the author

Bernice Chauly is the author of six books of poetry and prose: Once We Were There (2017, Winner of the Penang Monthly Book Prize), Onkalo (2013, “Direct, honest and powerful” —JM Coetzee), Growing Up With Ghosts (2011, Winner of the POPULAR-The Star Readers’ Choice Award for Non-Fiction), The Book of Sins (2008), Lost in KL (2008), and going there and coming back (1997).

Born in George Town, Penang to Chinese-Punjabi teachers, she read Education, TESL and English Literature in Canada as a government scholar. For over 20 years, she has worked extensively in the creative industries as a writer, teacher, photographer, actor and filmmaker and has won multiple awards for her work and her contribution to the arts in Malaysia.

Chauly has served as Festival Director of the George Town Literary Festival since 2011, the only state-funded literary festival in Malaysia. She was also an Honorary Fellow at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP) in 2014, and was awarded residencies at the Nederlands Letterenfonds in Amsterdam and the Sitka Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska. She is the founder and Director of the KL Writers Workshop, and currently lectures at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC). She lives in Kuala Lumpur with her two daughters.

Reviews

[Anna Tan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm rather ambivalent about this book. I'd rate it somewhere between "it's ok" and "I liked it".
There were some outstanding gems, such as Brian Gomez's "a/p", Jade-Yi Lo's "The girl with the ruby red shoes" and Rafil Elyas' "Progress report", and some pretty good pieces, such as Dina Zaman's "How to stay married", Clarissa Tan's "The visit" and Janet Tay's "The airport" but the overall feel of the book was an underwhelming meh.

The second anthology, Readings 2 is a much better read and it was a good thing I picked that one up first. If I had started with this I would most likely have given that one a miss.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up for research and while I love the idea of Readings from Readings overall the stories left me feeling depressed. The stories that I identified with are It's all right Auntie, Salt and The girl with ruby red shoes. Some of the poems and stories I could not read as it was in malay.

[Johnny B. Rempit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good mix of short stories and poetry. Since poetry isn't really my thing, I can't really fully appreciate the whole collection. 3 stars out of 5.