Things in my Tabs

[jhameia]

Steampunkinetics: Building Art into Science

Tobias Buckell's A Game of Rats and Dragon

Bullish Life: When Men Are Too Emotional To Have A Rational Argument

PDF of Racism Without Racisms: Color-Blind Racism And the Persistence of Racial Inequality In the United States by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

A reading of a veyr old Malaysian poem, "Si Tenggang's Homecoming" which I had to read in secondary school. And over the years I just started grousing so much about it. Frankly, we should never have read it in English literature and instead used the Malay version which would've made a hella lot more sense.

AfroSF: Science Fiction By African Writers is now out for Kindle!

Comments

[karcy.livejournal.com]

Muhammad Haji Salleh's poems generally sound very passive in English, but he is one of the few well-recognized writers in Malay who try to translate his own poetry into English.

I liked Si Tenggang's Homecoming, but the way the literature syllabus is taught in the Malaysian system is terrible. It's more destructive than helpful.

Anyway, it's no longer in the syllabus now :(. I guess it's too difficult. :(

[fantasyecho.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I LIKED Si Tenggang's Homecoming when I first studied it. Hit all the right points of alienation. But now I just dislike it so much, and find it so self-absorbed. The passivity, you're right, it does sound very passive, and I should probably go look for the Malay version, really drives it in.

And yes, now that I think back on how it was taught, it was just.... bleh. I don't know, so much of it went into "how to interpret this poem" and less on what the poem actually did.

I went into a bookstore that sold schoolbooks and browser the selection for secondary school literature and wanted to walk out vomiting. I mean, sure some of the stories they gave us were hard to relate to, but the stories they're reading now, BARF.

[karcy.livejournal.com]

I've taught the national literature syllabus for upper secondary before, and I would say the major difference (and problem) with the literature syllabus in Malaysia is that it is content-based, whereas literature should be skills-based. (I also taught the British syllabus, and the focus is skills-oriented).

[fantasyecho.livejournal.com]

Yes. There is room for content-based crit, but kids should be taught a wide variety of ways to read, not just the one which is imo super-limiting.

I got a book on Malay lit crit which I haven't read through at all because the first chapter is all about .... reading the Quran (which in Malay lit crit apparently is limited to talking about its perfect, rather than actually talking about its relevance or exegesis) so it's been slow reading.

[karcy.livejournal.com]

My experience with literary criticism and theory in Malay is weird. The framework is either too Western, or doesn't seem to have much of a framework to begin with (but it may be due to my limitations in the field).

I think Goenawan Muhamad has written a great essay on the pantun that serves as excellent framework for Malay traditional literature. I don't know if it's easily available; mine came included in a limited edition book on erotic pantun published by Obscura.

[fantasyecho.livejournal.com]

I'll keep an eye out for it, thanks. And that book in general sounds intriguing.