This month’s The Nightstand picks from Jen Soriano
Getting to know Southeast Asian literature
Nearly all of my sources this month told me that attempting to cover Southeast Asian literature in one iteration would be a near-impossibility. Still, I forged ahead, armed with what my immigrant parents would call good old blind American can-do-it-tiveness. And then, I had a talk with Alvin Pang, a Singaporean writer and scholar. Pang started with a mini-linguistics lesson: He reminded me that Southeast Asia comprises many different languages, over 11 countries, and multiple ethnicities and cultures.
“All these differences matter not because of the ethnic differences, but because it does mean that the language of administration and therefore the languages of schooling and culture vary tremendously across Southeast Asia,” Pang said. He clarified: Talking about the literature of Southeast Asia is a little like talking about African literature, when one must also consider Francophone, Anglophone, and Lusophone Africa. Parts of Southeast Asia were also colonized in this same fashion. I
