Book event: The Sum of Our Follies

Yes, we are not calling it a book launch (it is such a cliche), but a book event. Shih-Li will talk about the process of writing her book, which she says took longer than she expected. We can imagine the process and thoroughly enjoyed editing her work (which turned out to be minimal). No sledgehammer work here, nor slash and burn.

Details:

Speaker: Shih-Li Kow (Author)
Venue: Silverfish Books, 28-1 Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur. Tel: 03-228 448 37
Date and time: Saturday, 12 April 2014, 5.30pm.
Admission is free.

About the author:

Shih-Li Kow is a home-grown Malaysian writing sensation who came to light with her first book of short stories, Ripples and other stories, in 2009, which was immediately shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award that year, beating Ali Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro to the list.

Shih-Li Kow's short stories have appeared in several anthologies since her first publication in 2007. She currently works in real estate management and lives in Kuala Lumpur with her extended family, cat and a beehive.

About the book:

Stylish, subtle and funny, Shih-Li is an amazing storyteller. The Sum of Our Follies is the story of characters living in a backwater town, Lubok Sayong, in Malaysia with no claim to fame apart from its annual floods, a dubious legend and entrenched mediocrity, struggling with modernity; one that could be compared to the little towns and characters of Amado and Narayan, with just a touch of Calvino. It is not surprising that it attracted much interest in Frankfurt in October last year, and Italian rights have been sold. (All this before the manuscript was finalised and published!)

An extract:

“Call us Tim and Peggy,” they said. Mami kept getting their names wrong and she called them Tom and Jerry. I thought that she did it on purpose. I wondered if Tim and Peggy shared my suspicion. They wanted to know about the house. Everyone who came wanted to know about the house.
“My father built this house. He was an unnatural man,” said Mami.
“An unnatural man?” Mr Miller raised his eyebrows at his wife. They didn’t know that Mami used the word ‘unnatural’ a lot. They must have thought she meant her father was a perv.
“Yes, unnatural. Funny funny, you know. Not normal, not your usual father. He built this house for the loves of his life,” explained Mami. “He had many loves in his life, but the greatest were these four. The rest, he did not marry. More interestingly … eh … Jerry, was that these four agreed to marry him, considering he was not half as good-looking as your Mr Tom here. My father was as ugly as a monkey crossed with goat, but he was very charming. He could talk birds down from trees.”

Rabindranath Tagore book event by Prof Dr MA Quayum

(This event is in early May, but I may not have enough time to send out the mailers before that because I will be back from the US just then.)

Speaker: Prof Dr MA Quayum (of the International Islamic University Malaysia)
Venue: Silverfish Books, 28-1, Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur
Date and Time: Saturday, 3 May, 2014 at 5.30 pm
Admission is free.

The book, The Ruined Nest and other stories was planned to be released in 2013, 100 years after Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. But Prof Quayum, the perfectionist that he is, decided it would be better to publish a good book late than rush one out that we're not fully satisfied. This is in full agreement with the ethos of Silverfish Books. The date for the book event was not picked accidentally, as the 153rd anniversary of Tagore's birthday would fall on 7 May, 2014.

After reading just one of the 20 short stories (the title story is actually a novella), we were convinced that this was not the work of a journeyman translator but by a master and a lifelong scholar of the works of Rabindranath Tagore. Add this to the fact that Prof Quayum is a native Bengali speaker and a professor of English, and we have a work that can only be described as beautiful. Although universally acknowledged for his poems, and dubbed gurudev (master teacher), kabiguru (master poet) and bishwaskabi (world poet), Tagore was a master of the short story form in Bengali, having written 95 and compared favourably to Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant.

Praise for Prof Quayum from The Daily Star, Bangladesh. (There are literally dozens of them, but this is one we like).

In any translation it is very difficult to keep intact the sense of each context. Quayum’s translation is as close as one can get: clear, contemporary and accessible to a modern English-reading global audience. It is not handicapped by the ignorance of the translator of certain delicate nuances of the Bengali language, especially in the context of intimate household expressions. There is commendable fidelity and honesty in Quayum’s translation. It once again opens up the possibility of discovering a relevance of Tagore's creations more than a century after they were composed…. Without hesitation I recommend Professor Quayum’s volume as an authoritative and eminently readable translation, an essential Tagore for collectors. It should find a place on every discerning reader’s shelf.   

About the author

Mohammad A. Quayum is professor of English at International Islamic University Malaysia, and Adjunct of Professor in the School of Humanities, at Flinders University, Australia. He has previously taught at universities in Bangladesh, Singapore and the United States. Quayum is the author, editor or translator of 27 books far too numerous to be listed here. His essays on American and Postcolonial Literatures have appeared in prominent literary journals in Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, the UK and the USA. Quayum is a leading literary scholar in South and Southeast Asia. He is the Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, and is on the Advisory Board of several distinguished literary journal around the world.

Silverfish Public Talk -- March 2014

Topic: Uneasy Alliances, Writers and the University: A Report from Both Sides of the (Diasporic) Border by Shirley Lim
Venue: Silverfish Books Sdn Bhd, 28-1, Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur. Tel: 03-22844837
Date & time: Saturday, 15 March, 2014 at 5.30pm

An abstract by Ms Lim says: "While writing is often constructed as a solitary endeavour undertaken by an individual talent, works of literature, particularly contemporary fiction and poetry, achieve their reputation and after-life through the circuits of public reception, often with academics and scholars as gatekeepers. This talk looks at the cognitive dissonance, complicity and negotiations undertaken in that relationship in the U.S., and asks what and why is the state of that relationship in Malaysia."

Okay. If that was a mouthful, Shirley clarifies: This will NOT be an academic paper with endless citations, but an Alice through the Looking Glass, let's go down that rabbit hole together evening ...

As Malaysians, we like to claim Shirley Lim as our own. Universities teach her books, she continues to sell steadily in our bookshops, and she has lots of friends and relatives here. If Lin Yutang was right when he said, "What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?" then she is thoroughly Malaysian. Yet, by citizenship she's American, and a proud one at that.

Her biodata is a mile long, so we shall simply highlight a few points.(If you want to know more, look here.) She was born in 1944 in Malacca, Malaysia, and describes herself as "a wild girl who ran with the boys and alone through the streets" (Among the White Moon Faces, 49). In interviews, she has talked about her "stubborn spirit" that she utilized in school, making her a leader as well as an outcast. She has reportedly said, "Growing up when I did, there weren't many other recreational alternatives, and I had a pretty unhappy childhood ... Reading was a huge solace, retreat, escape. I was a really obsessive reader. Somewhere along the line, I had a sense I should write about things I knew rather than read about things I didn't know. I wanted to write my own voice, my own community."

Her early education was at a Catholic convent school under the British colonial education system. She won a federal scholarship to the University of Malaya which she attended from 1964 to 1969, earning a BA with First Class Honors in English. In 1969, at the age of twenty-four, she entered graduate school at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, earning her Ph.D. in English and American Literature in 1973.

She says that poetry is her driving passion. "That was my first form of literary expression and is the most primal for me." Her first poem was written and then published in the Malacca Times when she was ten. Her first book of poetry, Crossing the Peninsula and Other Poems, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1980. She was the first woman and the first Asian to receive the award.

Shirley Lim is disarming, articulate, intelligent and a wonderful human being. So, come, let's go down that rabbit hole together with a glass of red -- bring a bottle  if you can! -- or tea, or water (plain or sugared).

Admission is free, but do RSVP by replying this email, or call Phek Chin at the number above. (We need to know how many chairs we need to put out.)

The Shirley Lim writing workshop is here again

This is the third time we are holding a writing workshop by Shirley Lim. The last two were sold very quietly. She is a very good teacher indeed.

Sources, Selves and Stories: Mimesis and Mirrors.
Silverfish 2014 Writers Workshop, facilitator Shirley Geok-lin Lim.
Sunday, March 16, 2014, 9.30am -- 5.00pm. (One-day workshop)
Fee: MYR: 400.00 (Earlybird fee of MYR360.00 will apply to fully paid registrations before 5 March 2014)
Limited to 16 participants.
Registration link: http://www.silverfishbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13&products_id=1987

The day’s prompt is writing on what you know, what you see, what you don’t know, and what others see. The time is dedicated to generating writing as content and as literary stylistics. The workshop is structured as quadrants, with individual, small group and whole workshop activities.

Schedule summary:

9.30 am --11.00 am: The first quarter is composed of introductions, as others see you, as you see yourself, and to know your own strengths and goals.
11.00 am --1.00 pm: The second quarter will focus on time spent on writing, either beginning a new project or working with an on-going project.
1.00 pm -- 2.00 pm: Lunch break
2.00 pm  -- 3.15 pm: The third quarter is workshop-focused: small group sharing, critiquing, revisioning the big picture, and minding/mining the particulars.
3.15 pm -- 4.15 pm: The last quarter is rewriting the workshop project: reframing, cutting, expanding, refining, and polishing.
4.15 pm -- 5.00 pm: The last segment of the workshop is celebrating your work with readings and final assessments on takeaways.

About the facilitator:
Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s  (Fulbright and Wien International Scholar; Ph.D. Brandeis University) Crossing the Peninsula received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. She’s published seven poetry collections; three books of short stories; two novels (Joss and Gold and Sister Swing); a children’s novel, Princess Shawl, translated into Chinese; and The Shirley Lim Collection. Her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces, received the American Book Award. Author of two critical studies, she edited/co-edited Reading the Literatures of Asian America; Approaches to Kingston’s The Woman Warrior; Transnational Asia Pacific; Power, Race and Gender in Academe; Transnational Asian American Literature; The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Women's Anthology (1990 American Book Award winner); Writing Singapore; and other volumes; edited/co-edited Journal of Transnational American Studies and other journals. She served as Women’s Studies Chair (UCSB) and Chair Professor of English (HKU) and is Research Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara. Awarded the Multiethnic Literatures of the United States Lifetime Achievement Award and UCSB Faculty Research Lecture Award, she has taught at CUNY, SUNY, MIT, National Institute of Education (NTU), National Sun Yat-Sen University, National University of Singapore, and City University of Hong Kong.

Silverfish Public Talk -- Rehman Rashid

     Silverfish Public Talk -- January 2014

Topic: Articulating a Nation
Venue: Silverfish Books Sdn Bhd, 28-1, Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur. Tel: 03-22844837
Date & time: Saturday, 18 January, 2014 at 5.30pm

Rehman Rashid's A Malaysian Journey, when it was first published in 1993, practically exploded on the Malaysian cultural and literary conciousness with its warts and all, non-tourism approach to the society and culture. It was a nation we all knew existed, which we loved (and still do) immensely, but dared not (and many of us still dare not) speak its name. It was a book that dared to escape (no, tear off) long-existing literary (and cultural) shackles of parochialism that had confined us to our own race and religion for so long, and to embrace our real identity as all-inclusive Malaysians. A Malaysian Journey told us that it's all right to love ourselves for what we are; no apologies needed. One could say, it was a much-awaited (and needed) turning point in Malaysian literature.

Rehman Rashid's A Malaysian Journey commemorated its 20th anniversary in 2013, with a new edition in hardback, with a new preface and end-paper maps. The book, that was hailed as a 'modern Malaysian classic', still is now, perhaps more than ever before, speaking to a new generation of readers, explaining why things are the way they are in this country.

The author's topic for the public talk at Silverfish Books, Articulating a Nation,  will focus "on the need to speak for others in a nation now composed entirely of them." A reviewer wrote in Amazon.com that "as more Malaysians become like Rehman, the accuracy of this book will fade into fable." Sorry, not happening. More Malaysians are, certainly, thinking like Rehman Rashid, but we are also seeing more circling of wagons.

Expect Rehman Rashid to be articulate and engaging. It will be an interesting evening. (Bring a bottle of red if you can!)

Admission is free, but do email us if you are attending, for us to estimate the numbers.