SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English

The Daap Sung Man

Xin Yi Low — 2023-12-30

This essay is centered around my experiences with the daap sung man during my childhood: a food delivery service I depended on for routine and familiarity. My piece reflects on the loss of continuity and the overwhelming freedom of choice that came with the disappearance of the service that followed soon after as technology started developing and the service was eventually discontinued. The absence of the daap sung man followed my dependence on self-destructive habits for the familiarity of being a "prisoner" to routine. It also muses on the passing of time and how the daap sung man's era has now become a distant story of the past, but the comfort it once provided in a time where abuse was prevalent in my family would forever permeate my memories.

*daap sung (or 搭餸), refers to door-to-door catering services, most commonly brought in tiffin carriers (gaa laam or 格篮 in Cantonese) as illustrated in this article. Please note that it is not a commonly used term in the Malaysian Chinese community but rather a unique term coined by my (the author’s) parents.

For My Son

Daniel Chan — 2023-12-30

A poem revisiting a moment in parenting to clarify what had been less than ideally explained to the child back then.

Notes on Contributors

2023-12-30

Notes on Contributors

Book Review: Alexa Alice Joubin, Shakespeare and East Asia. New York, Oxford UP, 2021. xiii + 258 pp. ISBN: 978-0-19-870357-0.

Muhammad Adib Mohd Faiz — 2023-12-30

This book review analyses Alexa Alice Joubin’s Shakespeare and East Asia, a recent contribution to the field of Asian Shakespeares. In this sprawling work, Joubin analyses East Asian Shakespeare adaptations from the 1950s to the present day, showing how each displays a process of creative appropriation and subversion. In addition to reviewing the book’s contents, this review considers Joubin’s theoretical and interdisciplinary hybridity, showing how Joubin combines techniques to yield new insights. However, the review also considers the drawbacks of Joubin’s ambitious approach, which undermines the book’s argumentative coherence and leaves key research questions unexplored.

Review of Hanna Alkaf's Hamra and the Jungle of Memories (2023)

Sharifah Aishah Osman — 2023-12-30

Not applicable.

Rahul Soni (Ed.), Valli: A Novel. Sheela Tomy, Translated by Jayasree Kalathil, India: Harper Perennial India, 2022. 407 pp. ISBN: 9789356290167

Aruna Parandhama — 2023-12-30

The debut book of Malayalam author Sheela Tomy, Valli: A Novel, was shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature in 2022 and is a contribution to the expanding body of Indian eco-fiction. Jayasree Kalathil translated the book into English. Valli is similar to other eco-fictional works from the South-Western region of India by authors like Na D'Souza's Dweepa: Island (2013), Pundalik Naik's The Upheaval (2002), and Akkineni Kutumbarao's Softly Dies a Lake (2020) in that it treats the land as a living entity throbbing with life. The hardships of rural communities, steeped in tradition, mythology, and unwritten norms governing how they should handle the environment as they attempt to navigate the hurdles of modernization, are central to all of these stories. However, Tomy takes her poetic and artistic descriptions of the landscape a step further by utilising the literary device of pathetic fallacy throughout the book. The author alludes to the Wayanadan people's spiritual interconnectedness to and dependency on the land by foregrounding the hamlet of Kalluvayal, the river Kabani, and the flora and fauna of Wayanad before she speaks about its residents and their worries.

Envisioning the Future of Literature in the Age of Globalisation

Mohammad Quayum — 2023-12-30

This article explores the present and future of literature in democratic societies and why literature and the humanities are indispensable for republics like Bangladesh. It investigates the silent crisis literature has been experiencing in the present age of globalisation with its increasing emphasis on STEM subjects in academia and concurrent dismissive attitude towards literature and the humanities as “feckless frills.” With the help of two South Asian short stories – Rabindranath Tagore’s “Kabuliwala” and R.K. Narayan’s “The House Opposite” – the article illustrates how the study of literature helps to create thoughtful, empathetic and imaginative citizens as well as vibrant and sturdy cultures, making it, therefore, imperative for building a healthy, harmonious and symmetrical civilisation. It concludes by advocating that the study of literature not only helps to create a moral centre in an otherwise material culture but can also provide the know-how to participate in and even advance the world of science, business and technology, thereby refuting the fallacy that it is impractical and therefore useless in the modern era.

Trajectories of Care: Representations of Empowered Mothering in Contemporary Bollywood

Pratyusha Pramanik — 2023-12-30

Mothering a child with disability increases caregiving responsibilities considerably, making the
mother assume the role of the nurse, the therapist, and the educator. Uninterrupted care work,
societal surveillance and prevalent stigma severely interfere with the mental, physical, and
existential well-being of such mothers. Through a thematic analysis of select contemporary
Bollywood films, this article maps the trajectories of care and examines the alternative mothering
strategies adopted by mothers of children with disabilities to take care of their children and
themselves. A critical examination of these on-screen mothers provides an insight into the
shifting discourses of mothering practices in India.

Fear and Disillusionment: Cultural Memory and Trauma of the Indian Emergency in M. Mukundan’s Delhi: A Soliloquy

Nikhitha Mary Mathew — 2023-12-30

Due to the dearth of official records and historical narratives, Indian emergency is often counted as one of the ‘deleted moments’ of Indian history. The role of Indian emergency fiction in producing counter-history of the time by recording cultural memory is a point of discussion in the circles of memory studies. This paper attempts to bring to light how M. Mukundan’s JCB Prize-winning novel Delhi: A Soliloquy presents a cultural counter-memory of the period, with a special focus on how the Malayali minority in Delhi faced political tumult. Reading through the lens of memory and trauma, this paper analyses how the novel adds to the existing corpus of Indian emergency fiction, which lacked regional representation. Theorists Jenny Edkins, Bridgit Neuman, Alieda Assmann, Piotr Sztompka, Linda Shortt, and Astrid Erll are quoted to analyse the representation of cultural memory and trauma within the work.

“Taste of your Hometown”: Evoking Nostalgia through the Diner Space in Midnight Diner

Gunjan Gupta — 2023-12-30

Food, Memory, Space, and Storytelling are intertwined. They are formed and reformed, produced and reproduced, and their nuances shape and are shaped by individual experiences. The paper looks at this curious intersection in a Japanese web series, The Midnight Diner, an adaptation of a Manga by Yaro Abe. A tiny not-so-popular restaurant in one of the back lanes in Tokyo, serves from midnight to 7 am, makes several important connections between food and memory as the customers come with specific food cravings and the Master (the owner-chef of the Diner) is happy to customize. The space of the diner acquires different meanings as do the dishes the customer relish. The taste, smell, texture, ingredients, and dishes evoke not just the memories of food and people from the past of these characters but also the place and the setting (where the character belongs to). Each episode introduces a new character with a new story and the past that they deal with while the food is prepared and consumed. The stories about people in this show and around the world might be based on individual experiences but the emotions are both individual and universal at the same time.

Imagining Indian Nation-State: Rereading Qurratulain Hyder’s Select Novels in Contemporary Scenario

Sk Sagir Ali — 2023-12-30

Given the contemporary hyper-nationalist ambiance in the Indian subcontinent, the reading of Qurratulain Hyder is significant, especially from the decolonial nationalist perspective of her selected translated Urdu novels. The paper examines the events and metaphors in both novels through a decolonial and transmodern lens. This approach entails establishing a relationship between history and human experience. Additionally, the paper suggests a more intricate connection between modernity and the manifold cultural aspects of the Nation-State while acknowledging the "essential ambivalence within the system of differences" as discussed by Laclau (1996, 38) as well as its impact on various disciplinary frameworks. It examines religion, culture, and ethnicity in pre-modern India as a more permeable affair with the proponent of an inclusive, tolerant Indian culture, where several nations, worldviews, and religions come together, reconcile, inter-marry, break up, and grow apart under the emergence of nationalist consciousness.

Are You a Designer Bride? Power Relations Between Popular Media and the Indian Bride

Jhilam Chattaraj — 2023-12-30

Abstract:

In recent years, the bride has become a representative fashion icon of clothing, cosmetic and entertainment industry in India. Designers like Sabyasachi Mukherjee, seem to project the bride’s access to bridal couture as a symbol of empowerment, emancipation and even nationalism. However, statistics would prove that Indian brides still carry the burden of cultural evils like dowry, domestic abuse, psychological pressures of marriage and child-bearing. Television shows like “Band, Baaja, Baraat,” lavish weddings of Bollywood actors like Anushka Sharma and Deepika Padukone have evoked new aspirational images in the imagination of the Indian middleclass. The present paper attempts to question the proliferation of wedding couture as a symbol of power and resistance to power. It aims to explore the route maps of capitalist desire and the seduction of women into this ambiguous role-play; are fashionable brides dressed in hot pants foolish consumers or artful minds who bend patriarchal structures even if for a short time? The paper will be premised on theories of popular culture, post-feminism, everyday feminism and cultural studies. It will enable us to address the reductive approach of contemporary capitalism towards complicated ideas of gender, class, caste, money, religion and region in Indian marriages. It will refer to ideas by Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinman, Stephanie Genz, Maitrayee Chaudhuri, Bharati Chibber, Santosh Desai to investigate into the empowering images of young brides as curated and exhibited by popular media.

Key Words: bride, couture, media, feminism, fashion, India

"Can Lightning Strike?" The Importance of Ludonarrative Design in Improving Women’s Representation in Videogames

Yang Safia Mior Azli — 2023-12-30

At E3 2006, Square Enix (SE) shocked the game world with its first ever heroine to headline a mainline Final Fantasy game. Its game director, Motomu Toriyama, believed that Final Fantasy 13 (FF13) would provide a unique gaming experience because fans would be able to play as the strong and enigmatic Lightning - a departure from the cute and innocent female characters that are usually found in the franchise. At the time, this was considered a step forward for gender inclusivity in videogames. Despite being a technologically advanced nation where videogames are consumed at all ages, Japan has a long-standing issue when it comes to addressing gender inequality; the problem is challenging due to the country’s strong collectivist mindset that upholds conservative gender ideals. Considering this, we are interested to study how FF13 depicts Lightning as an empowering figure when the context it comes from is rife with sexism. In order to determine whether Lightning’s portrayal as a hero is empowering or problematic, we will be focusing on how her hero’s journey is constructed through the analysis of FF13’s ludonarrative features.

EDITORIAL

Mary Susan Philip — 2023-12-30

EDITORIAL: The Power of Memory