When an article about a boy who was killed after being tagged by police as a drug runner lands on his desk, journalist Zechariah ‘Zeke’ Dipasupil feels the story deserves to be on the front page. He empathizes with the dead boy whose cries were unjustly silenced since he also lost his voice as a child.
He grew up without knowing his father and had to look after his mother who suffered from depression and other ailments. His fight to defend the weak and the voiceless caught in the middle of the government’s war against illegal drugs is reminiscent of the activist movement during the Martial Law years in the Philippines. Later, he meets his long lost grandmother who reveals the truth about his father.
As he struggles to rise above societal oppression, he finally finds the courage to respond to the many unsettling silences in his personal life
Archives: Books
Exploring Southeast Asia with Liu Kang: Master of Colour
EXPLORING SOUTHEAST ASIA WITH… is a series of narrative non-fiction picture books for young readers between the ages of seven and twelve. Each book will focus on one national artist, taking readers through the country’s history, the artist’ place within its history, and how art is a reflection of our times. Each book contains critical thinking questions comprising visual thinking strategies (VTS), an enquiry-based method to encourage children to think about the content and formal structure of the artworks. The series encourages young children to read about artists who had made an impact on the art scene in Southeast Asia.
The main character in this story is LIU KANG. Readers explore a segment of Singapore’s history through Liu Kang’s seminal work, Life By The River. The story takes readers through a slice of Liu Kang’s life in Singapore before the founding of the Nanyang style, an art movement that has become embedded in the art history of Singapore. Readers will see how Liu Kang struggled to find artistic inspiration in Malaya and how a trip to Bali changed his mind and perception of home. Weaved into the story is that of Singapore seen through the lens of the artist. Children will learn about pre-independence Singapore, its landscape, and people.
The Preying Birds
Mando Plaridel is the lead character in this novel of social consciousness. His character combines the qualities found in Simoun and Ibarra, the two lead characters in national hero Jose Rizal’s novels: Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Ibarra is the passive character in Rizal’s novels, while Simoun is the active propagandist who wakes up the people from their centuries-old sleep under Spanish colonialism.
After the war, society begins to know him as the brave editor of the Kampilan newspaper. He later becomes involved in the problems of the farmers with the abusive Monteros. Told from an omniscient point of view, Hernandez is able to enter the consciousness of the wealthy characters. He shows how the ruling classes-the politicians, landowners, judges, deputies and bishops-only protect their own interests, that is why they do not want to change the status quo.
Dr Sabio is the progressive president of a university founded by Mando, who used the treasure thrown into the sea at the end of Rizal’s second novel to help improve society. The money is used to fund Freedom University and set up Kampilan, the brave newspaper. The novel points to the cooperative system of land ownership as the way out for the landless poor. It implies that change can only begin when the eyes of society have been finally opened.
The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl
This series acts as an assiduous explorer, unearthing colossal cultural treasures. The ten typical Chinese folktales selected vividly present classic and ancient Chinese culture. The series is a must-read for all children.
The unique Chinese-style illustrations will engage children and the stories will instill wise oriental philosophies of life such as diligence, courage and kindness.
The books were written and illustrated by award-winning authors and artists. The team has won awards such as Feng Zikai Chinese Childen’s Picture Book Award, Hsin Yi Picture Book Award, Bingxin Children’s Literature Award and Hong Kong Youth Literary Awards. The series was reviewed by consultant Dr Wang Jing, a professor of children’s literature at Shanghai Normal University and a student of Mei Zihan, a renowned author of Chinese children’s literature.
The Story of Nian
This series acts as an assiduous explorer, unearthing colossal cultural treasures. The ten typical Chinese folktales selected vividly present classic and ancient Chinese culture. The series is a must-read for all children.
The unique Chinese-style illustrations will engage children and the stories will instill wise oriental philosophies of life such as diligence, courage and kindness.
The books were written and illustrated by award-winning authors and artists. The team has won awards such as Feng Zikai Chinese Childen’s Picture Book Award, Hsin Yi Picture Book Award, Bingxin Children’s Literature Award and Hong Kong Youth Literary Awards. The series was reviewed by consultant Dr Wang Jing, a professor of children’s literature at Shanghai Normal University and a student of Mei Zihan, a renowned author of Chinese children’s literature.
The Story of the Horse Head Fiddle
This series acts as an assiduous explorer, unearthing colossal cultural treasures. The ten typical Chinese folktales selected vividly present classic and ancient Chinese culture. The series is a must-read for all children.
The unique Chinese-style illustrations will engage children and the stories will instill wise oriental philosophies of life such as diligence, courage and kindness.
The books were written and illustrated by award-winning authors and artists. The team has won awards such as Feng Zikai Chinese Childen’s Picture Book Award, Hsin Yi Picture Book Award, Bingxin Children’s Literature Award and Hong Kong Youth Literary Awards. The series was reviewed by consultant Dr Wang Jing, a professor of children’s literature at Shanghai Normal University and a student of Mei Zihan, a renowned author of Chinese children’s literature.
The Story of the Chinese Zodiac
This series acts as an assiduous explorer, unearthing colossal cultural treasures. The ten typical Chinese folktales selected vividly present classic and ancient Chinese culture. The series is a must-read for all children.
The unique Chinese-style illustrations will engage children and the stories will instill wise oriental philosophies of life such as diligence, courage and kindness.
The books were written and illustrated by award-winning authors and artists. The team has won awards such as Feng Zikai Chinese Childen’s Picture Book Award, Hsin Yi Picture Book Award, Bingxin Children’s Literature Award and Hong Kong Youth Literary Awards. The series was reviewed by consultant Dr Wang Jing, a professor of children’s literature at Shanghai Normal University and a student of Mei Zihan, a renowned author of Chinese children’s literature.
The Long-haired Girl
This series acts as an assiduous explorer, unearthing colossal cultural treasures. The ten typical Chinese folktales selected vividly present classic and ancient Chinese culture. The series is a must-read for all children.
The unique Chinese-style illustrations will engage children and the stories will instill wise oriental philosophies of life such as diligence, courage and kindness.
The books were written and illustrated by award-winning authors and artists. The team has won awards such as Feng Zikai Chinese Childen’s Picture Book Award, Hsin Yi Picture Book Award, Bingxin Children’s Literature Award and Hong Kong Youth Literary Awards. The series was reviewed by consultant Dr Wang Jing, a professor of children’s literature at Shanghai Normal University and a student of Mei Zihan, a renowned author of Chinese children’s literature.
The Visible Invisibles
A domestic worker from the Philippines runs away from her husband who’s set out to kill her. A mine-blaster looks at his X-ray scan to realize that all he has earned from his sixteen years of work is a catalogue of chronic diseases. An undocumented factory worker in Malaysia takes refuge in the wild to escape from the police.
A construction worker in India is abducted and sold as a bride to a stranger. Migrant sex workers in Thailand scrimp to stretch their vanishing savings, having lost all their customers due to COVID-19. A cleaner from China struggles to cope with the cultural oddities while working in an Indian restaurant. Domestic workers in Singapore lament the hopelessness of finding love in a foreign land. A landscaper tries to rebuild his life with a reconstructed ‘alien’ face after he suffers a massive explosion. A project engineer who once hated his native village, now plants trees to preserve its nature.
Told in their own voices, the stories presented in this collection paint an intimate portrait of the lives of low-wage migrant workers in Asia. By exploring themes of employer-employee power imbalance, love, death, religion, racism, friendship, alienation, family dynamics, digital inequality, social liberties, and migration’s transformative capacity, the collected stories provide a nuanced understanding of domestic and international migration, one of the defining trends in our world today.
Indonesia Out of Exile
In 1981, a new company, Hasta Mitra, founded by three men just released from over a decade in prison, published a novel written in a prison camp by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The novel was This Earth of Mankind. It told the story of the early gestation of the Indonesian national awakening. The dictatorship eventually banned it after several months of tactical struggle by the three men, Pramoedya himself and the fighters of Hasta Mitra, Joeoef Isak and Hasyim Rachman. In defiance of the dictatorship, they went on to publish the three sequels to This Earth of Mankind, each time followed by another battle and then a ban.
This book tells of these men’s struggle, their arrests and imprisonment-the story of the writing of Pramoedya’s novels in Buru Island prison camp. They return from exile to a different Indonesia, its radical past suppressed and its people terrorised. Pramoedya’s epic novels starting with This Earth of Mankind then explodes onto the scene. Set in a time when even the idea of Indonesia had not yet formed, the book tells an inspiring creation story. The story of that early struggle and of the amazing effort to publish Pramoedya’s novels in the face of repression inspired a new generation of youth who succeeded in breaking the dictatorship. Today, a new generation is being inspired by those same books. So what comes next?