Edition 49
New Asia Now
- Published 4th August, 2015
- ISBN: 978-1-922182-90-6
- Extent: 264 pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook
Griffith Review 49: New Asia Now showcases outstanding young writers from the countries at the centre of Asia’s ongoing transformation. They write about the people and places they know with passion, flair and insight.
All born after 1970, our contributors are cultural agenda setters at home who explore issues of identity and belonging in the new world that is unfolding.
Griffith Review 49: New Asia Now, co-edited by Julianne Schultz and Jane Camens, takes a journey through the region’s diversity, featuring a new generation of literary stars who will shape the way we understand the complexities of culture, politics and modernisation.
New Asia Now – Volume 2
Accompanying the print edition of New Asia Now is an exclusive e-book that includes an additional eighteen pieces, with fiction from Shandana Minhas, essays from Kirril Shields and Candice Chung, and poetry from Nicholas Wong and Stephanie Chan – download New Asia Now – Volume 2 as a PDF.
Reviews
‘It is the thrill of reading such a kaleidoscope of new Asian writers that makes this collection so enjoyable. It gives an informed insider’s perspective into countries we think we know – and ought to know more. It should appear on Australian high school syllabuses. As Schultz and Camens write, “By including Australia in the notion of New Asia, we have made a small leap.”’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘New Asia Now takes some time to read and comprehend due to the breadth of works and the lack of structure to help the reader along. But the challenge works to the edition’s advantage, reminding the reader of the inability to reduce this region to one or two national discourses. More attempts to this end are needed in Australia and Griffith Review has provided the perfect example on how this can be achieved. Rating: 5 out of 5 stars’ ArtsHub
‘Other stories [from Best Australian Stories 2015] such as Omar Musa’s “Supernova” [first published in New Asia Now] combine a strong and compelling narrative with an informative and reflective element, reaching beyond the strictly personal experience. A Malaysian-Australian man – “I am an Australian resident not citizen” – returns to Malaysia to vote in the first democratic election in 50 years after 20 years of “benign discomfort” living in Australia. Musa’s finely rendered prose shows us a man caught between two cultures, who as a child dreamed of becoming the first Malaysian astronaut and as a man is now preparing to vote for the first time in his country of birth.’ Sydney Morning Herald
New Asia Now is ‘a brilliant collection of our region’s leading young writers engaging with concepts of place, belonging and language.’ Lisa Dempster, director of Melbourne Writers Festival, in SMH Best Books to Read Over Summer
New Asia Now ‘is a book that holds inside the bravery and courage that will have you rethinking any complaints you have about Australian politics.’ The Creative Issue
‘In China, Keyi believes there is no plurality in her country’s news media as it is dominated by a handful of state-run organisations. Money is frequently used to silence people and journalists are pressured to present a purely positive story. “Some of what goes on in China can only be reported on when sourced outside of China,” Keyi said. New Asia Now is clearly providing such a platform for writers and activists to do just that.’ Lachlan Rutherford, Byron Bay Writers’ Festival blog
‘New Asia Now might be the most pertinent issue of the @GriffithREVIEW released. A must read.’ Sam Twford-Moore @samtwyfordmoore
Miguel Syjuco’s ‘latest work “Beating Dickheads”, is a punchy, polemical defense of the right to call a spade a spade, to speak critically, and to even make a mockery, of politicians and public institutions… With “Dickheads,” Syjuco shows off not just the literary gifts that won him awards, but more importantly, the moral courage of one who could avert one’s eyes from reality but chooses not to. The cost of calling out the dickheaddery of wealthy, well-connected, potentially criminal public figures who might be the parents of one’s childhood friends, politicians with far more platforms to get back at you in a nation where spaces for free, critical speech are ever under threat, is certainly higher than to merely cuss one’s lungs out at a western Sydney pub, or on a deniable Twitter account.’ MWF Blog
‘By including Australia in the concept of a New Asia, a small leap has been made, even though the island nation is growing into a remarkable hybrid nation that absorbs influences from the old and new worlds.’ PS News
‘Worth consideration is the humility with which the New Asia Now issue professes to approach its task, for it is arguably this quality that makes this impetus to assemble an Asia-themed edition genuinely new. Although Australia has ostensibly attempted to establish good diplomatic and economic ties with its Asian neighbors since the end of World War II, only now has Australia begun to approach the matter with such deference and awe… Funded in part by the government-supported national arts council—and referring explicitly to the Asian Century in its foreword—New Asia Now is undeniably the literary byproduct of this Australian about-face.’ Tiffany Tsao, Asymptote
‘Asia now is a treasure trove of writing. I must confess I’m only half way through because I want to savour the experience as long as I can, for those train journeys to and from work, to nurture my soul and remind me of other worlds, many close to home. Some are already here and I must embrace them, because denial that Asia is coming is useless.’ Groove 107.7 FM (New Zealand)
On New Asia Now events
‘Chinese writer Murong Xuecun gave a genuinely dangerous talk – at least if his scathing and brilliant sketch of the Chinese Communist party and their ever tightening noose around public debate was to be believed… Xuecun said we should all be wary as we observe politicians, journalists, business people and academics of the world kowtow to the growing influence of his country’s bureaucracy. He said ominously: “You must not harbour the slightest illusion about the mercy of the Chinese government. This government is strong enough to have an impact on your lives.”’ Guardian on Festival of Dangerous Ideas
New Asia Now was #2 in The Creative Issue’s top 5 picks of the Byron Bay Writers Festival: ‘Literary festivals should be about discoveries, about emerging talent and increasing culture… It is a book that holds inside the bravery and courage that will have you rethinking any complaints you have about Australian politics.’
Byron Bay Writers Festival: ‘Favourite session of the day!’ Lachlan Rutherford @fundamentalnail
Brisbane Writers Festival: ‘Joshua Ip shaking up Festival Club #bwf15. Thanks for bringing him to us @GriffithREVIEW #NewAsiaNow’ @megansfiction
Melbourne Writers Festival: ‘the packed venue so early in the day suggested that the writers’ efforts to bravely and searingly tell the world about their governments and their people’s struggles might not be in vain.’ MWF Blog, on Writing and Censorship panel
‘Yesterday I attended a fantastic workshop run by Singaporean poet Joshua Ip on Asian poetic forms at the SA Writers Centre…Thanks Joshua for enthusiastic insight and instruction in forms of poetry (many of them unfamiliar to me) and the opportunity to see and hear his unique work (we swapped poetry books of course!) I hope to work with some of the forms and hopefully produce some publishable work over the next few months.’ Rob Walker, poet (blog)
‘Joshua Ip is one cool guy, and he knows how to run a workshop… A good group of participants fully engaged by a guy who knew his subject, knew how to put it across, listened intently to his students, kept the subject entertaining, and covered a lot of ground in the three hours available. I’ve heard of haiku, and renga and tanka and ghazal and pantuns, but I’d never heard of empat perkataan or liwuli. Great to come away from a workshop with new knowledge.’ Blog: mistakenforarealpoet
Listen
National Library of Australia event: 10 August 2015: Hear Professor Julianne Schultz AM, founding editor of Griffith Review, and three outstanding young writers as they provide fresh perspectives on life in the world’s most populous region Miguel Syjuco (the Philippines), Annie Zaidi (India) and Sheng Keyi (China) delve into the many facets of their countries, from the powerful and the powerless to the complexities of culture, politics and modernisation. Each writer describes what their country feels like up close and personal, with an insider’s eye and passion.
Throughout human history, clothing has been associated with power. In ‘Embodying Venus‘ Indian writer Annie Zaidi explores the idea of shame which is attached to nudity, and the power that it wields: both as a symbol of domination and of protest. Listen to Annie discuss her essay with Amanda Smith on ABC Radio National Body Sphere.
Watch
Perspectives Asia event: 2 September 2015: In conversation with Griffith Review’s Julianne Schultz, three writers provide fresh perspectives on life in Asia’s most dynamic and powerful countries. Murong Xuecun reveals potentially dangerous undercurrents in China, while Singaporean poet Joshua Ip and Indonesian author Maggie Tiojakin describe ripples that there’s more than is generally known about their nations.
With thanks
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory board.
This project is supported by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia–China Council and the Australia–Indonesia Institute of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The project is also supported by a private benefactor ‘in memory of Bettie Kornhauser and the gentle people of Burma’.
In this Edition
Wake up while the flowers are blossoming
CHINA’S PRESIDENT XI Jinping and I have a common understanding: we believe that the internet has become the Chinese Communist Party’s greatest enemy, and, if left to take its natural course, the internet will change China. Based on this understanding, Xi Jinping and his...
All for the people, without the people
‘WHEN YOU DON’T like whoever is in charge, you can vote them out. Right?’ It’s two in the morning, and I’m standing in the middle of the street outside my hotel in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. The speaker is a young xe om driver...
The conscience of Somchai
TAKE A BANGKOKIAN. Let’s called him Somchai. He’s in his mid-thirties and is of (typical) Thai–Chinese ethnicity.Somchai grew up in a well-to-do middle-class family. He has kind and loving parents who dote on him. He received a good education at one of the better...
Behind the mask of an emergency
Winner, 2016 Walkley Young Journalist of the Year Awards – Student Journalist of the Year categoryTHERE WERE MANY things I didn’t understand. I grew up in Melbourne with my Anglo mother and didn’t have much exposure to the Chinese–Malaysian side of my heritage. Then,...
Beating dickheads
I KNOW EXACTLY how you feel. I see you at the brekkie table, reading a newspaper. You – a decent citizen, a reasonably informed voter, patriotic in your own quiet way. I know exactly, because I’m the same. Whether it was Julia Gillard and...
Unable to let bygones be bygones
‘LET BYGONES BE bygones!’ Mum and Dad said to me, speaking over each other. Their faces shared their determination to have the last say on the matter. The afternoon light was fading and our teas were turning cold. My parents and I had been...
Made in cool Japan
I HAND MY passport and boarding pass to the officer at Brisbane International Airport and she notices I’m heading to Japan.‘What do you do there?’ she asks.‘Work at a university,’ I say.‘Teaching English?’‘No, Japanese popular culture.’‘Oh! My son loves manga and is studying Japanese,’...
Powering Asia
I MEET TONY Pickard on the side of the highway at the X Line Road turn-off. He’s a grazier at the edge of the Pilliga Forest, in north-west New South Wales. ‘You’re lucky I’m still here,’ he says, his brow furrowed. The local radio station is...
An unending, tortuous war in Kashmir
KASHMIR’S STORY IS, for me, a personal history of unresolved pain and grief. Once called a paradise on earth, Kashmir is my wounded homeland, a much-contested geography torn between India and Pakistan.Growing up in Kashmir during the 1990s meant living in a state of...
Keeping the faith
WHEN I RECEIVED the link to a blog post by someone preaching that Muslims should not use contraception, of any kind, I was taking a taxi from Juanda International Airport, Surabaya, to Airlangga University. My close friend sent it to me via Whatsapp, accompanied...
The Asian invasion
THE FIRST RIDE-ON mower my parents bought was always breaking down. This seems an incidental fact, but really it isn’t. We lived on sixteen acres in subtropical northern New South Wales and the grass grew like wildfire. There was a man who would come...
Good things come in pairs
ONE OF THE first things you notice at a Chinese wedding reception is the Chinese character for ‘double happiness’. Among the swaths of vermillion red decorations, the symbol, often drawn in gold calligraphy, accosts you from all directions. There it is, stamped high on...
Embodying Venus
I HAVE A clear memory of the buttons – large, translucent-white plastic – and the teacher’s fingers unbuttoning the first one. She was shouting: ‘I’m going to take off your clothes! I’m going to strip you naked in front of everyone!’The child’s maroon tunic,...
Climbing the walls
WE PULL UP outside the Centre. The dust resettles on the path, I pay my driver two dollars and slide my helmet off. Sweat trickles down my back as I pull my hair off my neck and tie it into an unruly bun. It’s...
A fantastic summer evening
I WAS THAT age when I was bathing in the season’s first rains without shame or concern for the holes in my underwear. Together with my first cousins V and S, and S’s friend R, I was enjoying a downpour on the front lawn,...
The way one fell
Richard the Lionheart waits in a dungeon with his brothers for their father, Henry II, to come kill them. RICHARD: He’s here. He’ll get no satisfaction out of me. He isn’t going to see me beg. GEOFFREY: You chivalric fool. As if the way one fell...
Half a butterfly
THE FIRST FEW days I stayed in Dona Paula, I was having a really hard time finding the beaches I’d heard about. My companions and I would walk down the dusty streets, but the roads seemed to curve away from the water at the...
Interview with Miguel Syjuco
BORN IN 1976, Miguel Syjuco is a freelance writer from Metro Manila in the Philippines. Since finishing a Bachelor of English literature in Manila, Miguel has lived in Adelaide, where he completed his PhD in literature; in New York City, where he completed a...
Interview with Murong Xuecun
MURONG XUECUN IS the pen name of Hao Qun, a novelist and the most famous of a wave of Chinese writers who have become publishing sensations in the past decade due to their canny use of the internet. Murong is one of the most...
Interview with Sheng Keyi
SHENG KEYI IS a Chinese writer who grew up in Huaihua Di, a poor and isolated village of the Hunan province, on the banks of the Lanxi River. Sheng was sixteen years old in 1989, when student protests were violently suppressed at Tiananmen Square;...
Interview with Annie Zaidi
ANNIE ZAIDI IS a journalist and creative writer based in Mumbai. Since the publication of her first book – a collection of essays called Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales (Tranquebar, 2010) – she has published short stories, poetry and two...
Vigil
ON THE TWENTY-EIGHTH day of Po Lin’s vigil, her mother opened her eyes and said, ‘Don’t pour that cheap stuff on your father’s grave. Bring him his favourite every time. At least promise your mother that.’‘Maa?’ Po Lin rose from the chair and the...
Supernova
THE TELESCOPE SAT slightly apart from the clutter of the room – aloof, cool, shaded by a closed curtain. Azlan Muhammad ran a chubby hand down the length of its metallic form as he whistled a loud and tuneful melody. He paused to thumb...
Man of the people
‘IS HE HERE, yet?’ he asked, craning his neck to the left and right.‘Who?’‘The guy, what’s his name?’‘The guy? You don’t remember the name of our next president?’‘He’s not our president, yet. The election’s not until next week,’ the man said, chewing on a...
Father, son
LOOKING AT THE mammoth spot-lit ads for chubby babies and running shoes, he feels very far from home. When he imagines talking to his son, the voice isn’t right. Too stern. Or too soft.They haven’t spoken for three years – after their fight in...
A little life
IT WAS AFTER ten at night when they finally arrived – three men and a woman, faces shining and covered with sweat, their expressions displaying an alert restlessness. Everything about the short, pale, plump woman was blunt.‘Our wait has finally produced some fruit. Have...
A cottage for sale
THERE IS ONLY one way to sing like Frank Sinatra. Keep your body straight, taut like a rope. ‘The deep vibrato will come from your stomach,’ my father always told me. Next, sip in little breaths from the sides of your lips. Tip your...
Incorrigibles
A FAT SHADOW fell on my desk. ‘Let me see your notebook,’ Pak Firdaus said, but I gripped it so tightly that he had to pry it from my fingers. All eyes were on us, but Pak Firdaus didn’t care. He turned the pages with...
Stress management
UNKNOWN TO THEM, all of us on the call desk could tell when the bosses were listening in. Common signals included a split-second, sporadic choppiness or a Darth Vader-like echo, even for agents like Karen, who was known for hiking up her already high-pitched...
Life time does not return
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Call me Al
I TAKE MY shoes off at the door, step up and into slippers that are far too small. An old woman hinges at the hip, bowing, her body becoming a perfect right angle. Still bowing, she steps backwards until she’s behind the desk, straightens.She...
Black origami birds
IN THE DARKNESS, she counts them off like sheep. Black sheep.And another…And another…And another…Blinded by the night, disorientated by half-sleep and the heaviness inside, Grace can’t tell if each jolt is her heart, the baby or the earth.Sometimes loud and angry as a scar, their...
The umbrella men
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Pollen fever
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Roll call
Trains came to a halt.Factory chimneys stopped breathing.Schools and hospitals boarded up their doors. But from his desk each morning,the old teacher still called the roll.His chapped lips spoke each student’s name. Whenever he was met with silence –as if he had been punched right through...
The hanged man sings Kathmandu
IA nation cursed by the Sati.– Popular Nepali saying. Neither with a bang, nor with a whimper,But with the cries, the shrieks, the cursesAs of a woman by fire being ravagedWill you go down, Kathmandu,City of ruins and shadows,Where the dead lurk in the eyes...
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