Malaysian Writer + Written Works

SHIVANI SIVAGURUNATHAN

Shivani Sivagurunathan is a Malaysian writer who is lecturer at University Putra Malaysia. Her creative work has been published in numerous international magazines and journals.Her poetry chapbook,Chiaroscuro,published by Bedouin Books,came out in August 2010. Shivani Sivagurunathan is currently working on a novel set in Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

Review on Wildlife on Coal Island :        As suggested by the title Wildlife on Coal Island, animals feature heavily in the eleven stories which make up the collection. (Two of these stories, "The Bat Whisperer" and "Catching Iguanas", have appeared in Cha.) Tapirs, mynah birds, chameleons, iguanas, parrots and bats inhabit the island, sharing space with its human residents. This cohabitation is central to many of the stories, such as in the relationship between a pet monkey and an ageing Chinese opera singer, a flock of kingfishers that foretells doom for a self-proclaimed psychic and a python which does battle with a former colonial plantation overseer.         Sivagurunathan's stories explore the particularities of island life, but they are also about Malaysia more generally. Local readers will have few problems recognising national stereotypes, such as the nosy "aunty" next door or the country's obsession with national examinations. The dialogue used in some of the stories also has a strongly local flavour, which could be challenging to readers who are not familiar with Malaysian English. Despite these national traits, however, Coal Island, like all islands, has a personality distinct from the mainland. Sivagurunathan uses a different narrator for each of the stories, enabling her to give readers a sense of the individuals that make up the whole. This whole turns out to be slightly off-kilter, and there is a sense of unrealism in the collection, as if life on the island has slightly detached from reality—separation from the mainland allowing the unusual to become the usual. For example, at one point, Coal Island is described as "a place of secrets, gossip and murder," and in the first story "All About the Monkey," Kumar says that his favourite fact about his home is that "unlike other parts of Malaysia, Coal Island doesn't produce red watermelons, only the yellow kind." Similarly, in the last story, "The Bat Whisperer," Pong Pong, a gay Hindu resident of the island, has the ability to talk to bats and uses his talent to communicate with those that live on the rooftops of other people's houses. Apart from these, there are a plenty of other people and animals to be encountered in Shivani Sivagurunathan's unique take on island life in Wildlife on Coal Island. Sources: http://www.asiancha.com/issu/13/shivanisvagurunathan/

TAN TWANG ENG

Interesting facts of Tan Twang Eng

• Born in Penang on 1972
• Studied law at the University of London
• Ever worked as a lwayer in one of Kuala Lumpur reputable law firms.
• Firts dan ranking in aikido and is strong proponent for the building conservation.
• Talks about his life background in his second novel
• His first novel : The Gift of Rain listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2007.
• His second novels :The Garden of Evening Mists (2012) 

Yun Ling, the narrator of the Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng's stunning second novel, The Garden of Evening Mists, is a conflicted woman. The sole survivor of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, she is haunted by her savage treatment there - treatment which caused the death of her beloved sister - and yet captivated by Japan's rich artistic traditions.She is also torn between remembering and forgetting. Having spent her life trying to escape the memory of those wartime horrors, she is now suffering from aphasia, a degenerative neurological condition, and must reassemble her past in order to write her memoirs before the details slip away forever.These conflicts frame the book. Tan structures his narrative around Yun Ling's memoirs, skipping back to a remembered past soon after the war where we learn how Yun Ling met Aritomo, a famed gardener once employed by the Emperor of Japan. Aritomo is the creator of a mysterious Japanese garden set incongruously in the remote mountains of Malaya, who Yun Ling entreats to help design a tribute to her dead sister. When he agrees to take her on as an apprentice instead, this position of subservience raises unwanted ghosts hidden in her past.As in his first novel, The Gift of Rain, Tan employs exotic settings and mystical aspects of Japanese culture to drive his narrative. But this time the effect is darker. Aritomo's mastery of the art of shakkei - "Borrowed Scenery" - initially seems enlightened, but as we come to question his true motives for absconding to this obscure backwater, it appears increasingly deceptive.Though later plot elements surrounding a search for buried wartime treasure do not always complement the atmosphere Tan has carefully constructed, this is a beautiful, dark and wistful exploration of loss and remembrance that, appropriately, will stay with you long after reading.

HILARY THAM

Poet, Teacher Hilary Tham Goldberg, 58; Immigrant's Art Explored, Fused Cultures 

      Hilary Tham Goldberg, 58, a poet, painter and teacher who viewed the world from the perspective of a Chinese-Malaysian converted Jewish wife and mother in suburban America, died June 24, 2005, of metastatic lung cancer at her home in Arlington.Mrs. Goldberg was born in Klang, Malaysia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and was educated at a convent school taught by Irish nuns. Her grandmother grumbled that she wasted too much time with her nose in a book, but a high school English teacher urged her to continue reading and to write poetry. She published her first book of poems in 1969.She received a master's degree in English literature in 1969 from the University of Malaya and immigrated to the United States in 1971 after her marriage to a Peace Corps volunteer in Malaysia. She lived in New Jersey before moving to Arlington in 1973.She was the author of nine books of poetry and a book of memoirs and poems, "Lane With No Name: Memoirs and Poems of a Malaysian-Chinese Girlhood" (1997). She also was editor in chief of Word Works Inc. and poetry editor for "Potomac Review."A book of poetry titled "Bad Names for Women" (1989) won second prize in the 1988 Virginia Poetry Prizes. Two of her books are used as Asian studies texts by the University of Pittsburgh, and her most recent, "Tin Mines and Concubines," a collection of short stories set in Malaysia, won the Washington Writers Publishing House Prize for fiction and will be published in the fall.

  YASMIN AHMAD

    Yasmin Ahmad was born on January 7, 1958 in Bukit Treh,Muar,Johor,Mlaaysia. She was a director and writer,known for Sepet ( 2004), Mukhsin (2006) and Talentime (2009).She died on July 25,2009 in Petaling Jaya,Malaysia. Her films explored romance between members of different ethnic groups and religions,touching on the issues of parental abandonment,AIDS and gender discrimination,against the backdrop of Malaysia's ethnic diversity. She started out as copywriter.Subsequently,she became the creative director for an advertisement agency. She became known for sentimental TV advertisement that focused on family and religious celebrations uniting the ethnic Chinese and Indian Minorities in Malaysia with the Malay Muslim majority.

Review by Ronald Bergan on Yasmin Ahmad:

t is rare for films from the small Malaysian cinema industry to make an impact internationally, mainly because the majority of them are rather clumsy melodramas, broad comedies and formulaic musicals made for local consumption. Therefore, it is a double tragedy that Yasmin Ahmad, one of the few Malaysian directors to make a name on the world stage, has died aged 51 after suffering a stroke and undergoing surgery for a cerebral haemorrhage.

Ahmad was part of a new generation of film-makers who reflected the wide ethnic and cultural diversity of her country and the lives and dreams of its young people. Stylistically, her principal influences were Yasujiro Ozu and Douglas Sirk, although she created her own western and oriental mixture. Her films challenged ethnic stereotypes, and she was openly against any type of fundamentalism and racism, making it her life's work to support minority rights. Unsurprisingly, her feature films were disliked by the regime in Malaysia, a conservative, mostly Muslim country, for tackling taboo subjects such as inter-racial relations and teenage angst. In fact, the second, and perhaps most renowned of her six features, Sepet (2004), was banned in Malaysia, until Ahmad agreed to make eight cuts.

Sepet (which could be translated as "slit eyes"), about a relationship between a Chinese boy and a Malay girl, touched the sensitive nerve of race in Malaysia, where the memory of the terrible 1969 riots between Chinese and Malays is still strong. Ahmad, who was married to a Chinese man, made the film for $400,000 and shot it in Ipoh, where Chinese and Malay communities live in close proximity.

The film focused on a 16-year-old student, Orked (Sharifah Amani), the only child of well-off Malay parents (amusingly played by Ida Nerina and Harith Iskander), who falls for Jason (Ng Choo Seong), a slightly older Chinese boy, an aspiring poet who sells pirated video tapes at an open-air market. Despite differences in class, race and language (they communicate in English), a romance blossoms. This is often wryly observed, though it ends in tragedy. Ahmad followed the characters of Orked and her family in two sequels, Gubra and Mukhsin (both 2006).

Ahmad was born in Kampung Bukit Treh in Muar, Johor, the oldest of three children of a musician father and theatre director mother. She was educated in England and gained a degree in arts and psychology at Newcastle University. Film was far from her mind when she got a job at IBM as a marketing representative, before moving into advertising as a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather. In 1993, she joined the advertising agency Leo Burnett in Kuala Lumpur, where she became an influential executive creative director and for whom she made ads for Petronas, the national oil and gas company.

This led to her first feature, Rabun, in 2002. (All her films have one-word titles.) It first introduced the character of Orked, clearly the director's surrogate, in a supporting role as the daughter of elderly parents who travel from the city to a village, where life is perceived to be easier. Ahmad's treatment of the love, both physical and spiritual, between the couple, is remarkable, while the use of long takes and voice-overs, and the avoidance of close-ups, allowed audiences more objectivity than the usual "in your face" approach of much of mainstream Asian cinema.

Gubra ("Anxiety") takes place some years after Sepet left off, and continues the theme of race/class problems as Orked, now a jet-setting married professional, has a romantic liaison with the brother of her late Chinese boyfriend. This story runs parallel to one set in a slum where a devout Muslim couple befriend two prostitutes. While expertly balancing comedy and melodrama, Ahmad makes pointed social observations, and stresses the need for forgiveness and compassion.

Mukhsin, another semi-autobiographical film in the Orked series, goes back to the late 60s when the heroine, a tomboy aged 10, befriends a 12-year-old boy (the title character) while on vacation at a kampung(village settlement). Probably Ahmad's most appealing film, it develops the theme of the benefits of a close-knit family and observes the ironies of first love with warmth and humour.

Muallaf (The Convert, 2008), about religious conversion, was not shown in Malaysia, despite being approved by the censors with three audio mutings. It tells of two devoutly Muslim Malay sisters on the run from their wealthy, abusive father. They meet a Chinese Catholic school teacher, who draws comfort from their religion. Despite the subject matter, Ahmad said Muallaf is actually about forgiving one's parents for all the wrong they may have done. But solemnity and didacticism was never Ahmad's way, and she retained a lightness of touch.

In her final completed film, Talentime (2009), Ahmad revisited the themes of faith, tolerance, family and living in a multicultural society. It follows three families: a mixed Malaysian family, similar to the one in the Orked films; an Indian family composed of a widow and her two children; and a dying Malay mother and her son. The thread that brings them together is a high school talent show in which a child from each of the three families is involved.

At the time of her death, Ahmad was in pre-production on her first feature film to be shot in Singapore, Go, Thaddeus!, which was to have been about Thaddeus Cheong, a 17-year-old Singaporean triathlete who died after completing a trial for the 2007 South-east Asian Games.

Ahmad is survived by her husband, Abdullah Tan Yew Leong, a Chinese ad agency creative director.