Dancing to the gongs of the South China Sea (PDF) is an unfinished piece that’s a work-in-progress, a culmination of works explored in an 8-week creative writing class with Sharon Bakar’s Words on Fire to “Finding the Flow”. I’m immensely grateful and thankful for Sharon’s guidance and the sharing sessions from my fellow classmates. Enjoy this piece.
Spoilers – Please read this after you’ve read the piece, not before. Here’s a little backstory to how I came about to this tale. I was inspired by a series of uncannily unplanned events:
First, I started reading the Booker Prize winner, “Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” by Sri Lankan in Singapore, Shehan Karunatilaka.
I loved this picture of the two boys in Sarong and their bubu fishing traps, so selected this from Sharon’s Pinterest for a piece 2 weeks back.
I thought I’d try a genre I’ve hardly done – Sci-fi / mystery / romance / horror.
I was at a baby shower for my cousin’s daughter and her father-in-law Mr. Duong and his wife. They met and fell in love in Malaysia at a refugee camp. Duong told me how his boat of 25 people broke into pieces 3-hours after they left shore, and they floated on wooden boards to land in Terengganu. After many years of waiting, they were accepted to be resettled in Australia. Their resilience is unimaginable! I’m so in awe of them. After much research, I was enlightened about an island named Bidong in the East Coast of Terengganu, a.k.a. Hell Isle.
I love sotong sumbat!!!
I’m sharing this here because amongst other things that happen in life, writing fiction is one of the hardest things to do, and it has been a personal mission to attempt, to try and never give up at that.
This is a part of a bigger project that I’m working on, one that seeks to tell a tale about wars and peace, love and mythical beings with life in-between against a backdrop of the South China Sea. Wish me luck and thank you for your support.
Welcome to Episode Two of Season Five of the Listen by Heart Podcast, where we feature Stories from Women of the South China Sea. Shivani Sivagurunathan is an author and educator, Head of School, Assistant Professor; Research Director; Director of Postgraduate Studies; Senior Tutor, Faculty of Arts at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia and has an interest in post-colonial literature and in particular literature surrounding the topics of Indian diaspora and contemplative pedagogy.
Shivani has been writing and publishing fiction and poetry for twenty years, and teaching for twelve years. Her first book, Wildlife on Coal Island, was published by UPM Press in 2011 and republished by HarperCollins India in 2012. The Indian writer Tabish Khair, described the book as ‘R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi, turned into an island, meets Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book in this highly readable collection of stories by a new and distinctive voice from Malaysia’.
In the podcast, Shivani gives some insight to growing up as a Sri Lankan Malaysian in a coastal town, Port Dickson.
Book Launch of Yalpanam (YouTube credit: University of Nottingham (Malaysia Campus)
Her second book, Yalpanam, is her first novel and it was published by Penguin Southeast Asia in September 2021.
Her short stories and poems have appeared in numerous international journals and magazines including Cha: An Asian Literary Magazine, Agenda, Construction Literary Magazine and many others.
Subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform and if you’d like to encourage us on, find out how you can support the production. Thank you.
Our purpose: Listen by Heart Podcast is an audio project that sets out to record and archive stories from women of the South China Sea, an area of much interest lately. As we document and record all of these stories, we will also be digitising and creating an online presence for women of Southeast Asian heritage and honouring the women who came before them.
Listen By Heart Podcast aims to serve as the Sentinels of the South China Sea, keeping our region at peace.
Production Credits
An open-source project created, narrated and produced by Jasmine H. Low (jasminelow.com). An AsiaFitnessToday.com Podcast Production. Supported by GoInternationalGroup.com. Website by WebPROjx.com.
Would you have a tale to share or know somebody who does? Do you identify as a woman with heritage from the nations encircling the contentious South China Sea? Wherever you are in the world, we’d love to hear from you…
Welcome to Season Five of the Listen by Heart Podcast, where we feature Stories from Women of the South China Sea. Shivani Sivagurunathan is an author and educator, Head of School, Assistant Professor; Research Director; Director of Postgraduate Studies; Senior Tutor, Faculty of Arts at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia and has an interest in post-colonial literature and in particular literature surrounding the topics of Indian diaspora and contemplative pedagogy.
Shivani has been writing and publishing fiction and poetry for twenty years, and teaching for twelve years. Her first book, Wildlife on Coal Island, was published by UPM Press in 2011 and republished by HarperCollins India in 2012. The Indian writer Tabish Khair, described the book as ‘R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi, turned into an island, meets Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book in this highly readable collection of stories by a new and distinctive voice from Malaysia’.
Her second book, Yalpanam, is her first novel and it was published by Penguin Southeast Asia in September 2021.
Her short stories and poems have appeared in numerous international journals and magazines including Cha: An Asian Literary Magazine, Agenda, Construction Literary Magazine and many others.
Subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform and if you’d like to encourage us on, find out how you can support the production. Thank you.
Our purpose: Listen by Heart Podcast is an audio project that sets out to record and archive stories from women of the South China Sea, an area of much interest lately. As we document and record all of these stories, we will also be digitising and creating an online presence for women of Southeast Asian heritage and honouring the women who came before them.
bListen By Heart Podcast aims to serve as the Sentinels of the South China Sea, keeping our region at peace.
Production Credits
An open-source project created, narrated and produced by Jasmine H. Low (jasminelow.com). An AsiaFitnessToday.com Podcast Production. Supported by GoInternationalGroup.com. Website by WebPROjx.com.
Would you have a tale to share or know somebody who does? Do you identify as a woman with heritage from the nations encircling the contentious South China Sea? Wherever you are in the world, we’d love to hear from you…
Author, Hotelier and the 2022 Epigram Book’s Fiction Prize Recipient
Release date: 31 August 2022
Welcome to Season Four of the Listen by Heart Podcast, where we feature Stories from Women of the South China Sea. Podcast host, Jasmine Low welcomes Karina Robles Bahrin, a Malaysian author and hotelier who has been selected as the 2022 Epigram Book’s Fiction Prize recipient. We offer our congratulations to Karina for winning the prize for her first novel – written in lockdown!
INTRO Welcome and thank you for joining me on the Listen by Heart Podcast. I’m your host, Jasmine Low. It began as Listen to your Heart – a project that began as a TEDx Talk in 2016 albeit a botched recording and my nervous energy that translated into giggles. It was unplanned and it was one of those strings of serendipitous events that started when my mum was diagnosed with a non-malignant brain tumour that needed to be removed. A fixer sort, that sent me on a tumble of a search for answers. Why did the tumour grow, what would she need to recover, does our body heal on its own, how do dietary nutrition or the lack of affect cell growth and the marvel of vibrational frequencies within us and surrounding us – as ethereal as this may sound! That has translated into this, Listen by Heart Podcast.
I’d like to share with you, a FAMOUS SPEECH that NELSON MANDELA NEVER GAVE… it’s titled Our Deepest Fear and for the records, my research shows that this passage was often attributed to Nelson Mandela but it was in fact a quote in a New York Times bestselling book titled ‘A Return To Love’by Marianne Williamson published in 1992. Marianne is an American author, lecturer and co-founder of a volunteer food delivery program in Los Angeles and a Peace Alliance.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Thanks to the author Marianne Williamson, for this quote that has made its way into the hearts of so many people.
Introducing to you Karina Robles Bahrin Wong (she drops the Wong in the public eye only for brevity). And in 1992, the same year that Marianne Williamson published, ‘A Return to Love’, Karina Robles Bahrin graduates from Stanford.
PJ to the Bay Area
Bachelors in International Relations, Class of 1992, Stanford University, California, USA
Recipient of Public Services Department of Malaysia scholarship
Stanford-In-Oxford Summer Programme, 1991
Assunta Secondary School, Class of 1986, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
Life in the fast lane
Public Relations
Karina built a career for over twenty years in the field of public relations. Some of her career highlights include:
Media relations liaison for Asia tours of notable corporate figures including: Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Bill Gates
Head of Communications for Bursa Malaysia from 2004–2008, inclusive of the company’s IPO debut.
Media relations lead for the Force of Nature Concert 2005 in aid of tsunami victims. Star-studded line-up included Backstreet Boys, Black-Eyed Peas, Eric Benet, Jackie Chan, Ruth Sahanaya, Sheila Majid & Wyclef Jean
Lead media relations consultant for the inaugural Malaysian Idol competition
Boardrooms to bedrooms
Entrepreneurship
Co-owner and founder of La Pari-Pari, one of Langkawi’s best-known independent small hotels since 2012, which has won multiple awards from TripAdvisor, Agoda and Booking.com
Co-owner of fatCUPID, one of Langkawi’s top 2021 restaurants as ranked by Prestige Malaysia
Co-owner of Kebun Republik, Langkawi’s first indoor cold-room pesticide-free farm supplying temperate climate vegetables to local businesses on the island
Involvement in the Arts
Founder of the Suatukalacommunity initiative (2015 to present) that has impacted over 1,000 workshop participants and audience.
Past programmes include workshops by David Lok (Studio DL), Ruby Subramaniam (visual artist), KL Shakespeare Players, Elaine Foster & Sheena Baharudin (spoken word poets) and Lina Tan (Red Comms)
Public arts performance & exhibition showcases: Suatukala Showcase (2015) and Suatukala In The Park (2017)
Recipient of ArtsFAS/Yayasan Hasanah grant to produce a musical theatre production—Pulau Sri— which was staged on November 27, 2021 in Langkawi to an audience of over 100. The show was later screened on a Facebook live session with the show’s co-creators and producer.
2021/2022 recipient of the CENDANA PRISMA grant for a Langkawi-wide story creation and theatre production competition to be launched in March 2022
Participant of Aunt Lute x POC United Prepping to Publish workshop with Sonora Jha, Professor of Journalist at Seattle University and author of How To Raise A Feminist Son (2021)
Winner of the Epigram Fiction Prize 2022 (the novel, The Accidental Malay published by Epigram is available at book stores in Malaysia from August 2022).
Published short stories:
“A Woman In Five Pieces”– Urban Odysseys: KL Stories (MPH Publishing) & KL Noir: Blue (Fixi Books)
“A Subtle Degree of Restraint”– title story (MPH Publishing)
“A Little Warm Death” & “The Proper Care of Princesses”–Malaysian Tales Retold & Remixed (ZI Publishing)
The Interview
My Identity, Who I am
From one big island to one of 99 in Langkawi, Kedah, we chat with Karina about where home is, her 10 years on the big island of Langkawi, her childhood and growing up in a mixed culture family.
Karina’s mother’s family with grandma in the middle.Karina’s paternal grandma (extreme left) with her son, daughter and mother.Karina’s paternal grandparents on their 50th wedding anniversary circa 1980. One big happy family! Robles, Bahrin and Wong.The author asserts her rights to the images provided above.
The Women Who Came Before Me
We uncover Karina’s paternal and maternal history and learned about: – Her mother and her mother’s mother; the Philippine side of the family. – Her father’s mother; the Malay, Negeri Sembilan and Chinese side of the family. – Their education and hers.
Leaving a Legacy
In the interview, we discuss her early career, memorable highlights of her corporate life and at 40, how she uprooted and moved to Langkawi to become a hotelier.
‘The Accidental Malay’, 11 years in its making, is her first fiction novel and it was written when the world and Langkawi was very much in lockdown.
How to take care of Princesses
Karina reads an 8-minute excerpt from her delightful short story, “How to take care of Princesses”, first published in Daphne Lee’s Malaysian Tales Retold & Remixed collection of short stories (ZI Publications).
I hope you’ll enjoy this podcast as much as we did producing it!
Help us spread the word!
Promo for sms/socials:
AFT Podcasts podcast host Jasmine Low brings you on an audio journey with Karina Robles Bahrin – Malaysian Author, Hotelier and 2022 Winner of the Epigram Book’s Fiction Prize. Listen and subscribe to the Listen by Heart Podcast on your favourite platform: Apple podcasts https://bit.ly/listenbyheartpodcast, Spotify spoti.fi/3yfxWNZ, Google podcasts bit.ly/3la7C46, Player FM https://bit.ly/listenbyheartplayerfm or via YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SZoO5Io5J1g. Thank you!
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, an AFT Podcastproduction.
Subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform and if you’d like to encourage us on, find out how you can support the production. Thank you!
Our purpose: Listen by Heart Podcast is an audio project that sets out to record and archive stories from women of the South China Sea, an area of much interest lately. As we document and record all of these stories, we will also be digitising and creating an online presence for women of Southeast Asian heritage and honouring the women who came before them.
Our Mission: Listen By Heart Podcast aims to serve as the Sentinels of the South China Sea, keeping our region at peace, and our mental health in check.
Would you have a tale to share or know somebody who does? Do you identify as a woman with heritage from the nations encircling the contentious South China Sea? Wherever you are in the world, we’d love to hear from you…
And here we are, the fifth and final episode. “It’s not about me,” reminds the author, Guat. Writing Echoes of Silence, she wanted to explore that emotion of how she, like many others felt lost at one time, as the children of colonialism, an establishment that left behind their orphaned children as Malaya gained its independence. The author indulges listeners in a very personal manner, where she narrates excerpts from her second Malaysian novel about the blossoming of a love affair that was inter-ethnic and inter-geographical between Ai Lian, and her Michael Templeton.
—
Dr. Chuah Guat Eng is a Malaysian novelist and professional writer who read English Literature at University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, and she has a PhD from the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia). Guat Eng has two novels – Echoes of Silence published in 1994 in English, and translated recently into Italian and German. Her other novel, Days of Change came out in 2010. She also has three collections of short stories. They are Tales from the Baram River (2001), The Old House and Other Stories (2008), and Dream Stuff (2014). Some of her short stories have been translated into other languages, including Malay, Chinese, Slovene, and Spanish. She’s currently working on her third novel, and occasionally teaches subjects related to literature and creative writing at a local university.
Echoes of Silence is also available in Italian and German.
Guat Eng has two novels – Echoes of Silence published in 1994 in English, and translated recently into Italian and German. Her other novel, Days of Change came out in 2010. She also has three collections of short stories. They are Tales from the Baram River (2001), The Old Houseand Other Stories (2008), and Dream Stuff (2014). Some of her short stories have been translated into other languages, including Malay, Chinese, Slovene, and Spanish. She’s currently working on her third novel, and occasionally teaches subjects related to literature and creative writing at a local university.
To purchase a digital PDF copy of Guat Eng’s books directly from the author, contact us.
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Three of Listen by Heart: Voices of Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Chuah Guat Eng.
Subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform and if you’d like to encourage us on, find out how you can support the production. Thank you.
Our purpose: Listen by Heart Podcast is an audio project that sets out to record and archive stories from women of the South China Sea, an area of much interest lately. As we document and record all of these stories, we will also be digitising and creating an online presence for women of Southeast Asian heritage and honouring the women who came before them.
Our Mission: Listen By Heart Podcast aims to serve as the Sentinels of the South China Sea, keeping our region at peace. Production Credits An open-source project created, narrated and produced by Jasmine H. Low (jasminelow.com).
Would you have a tale to share or know somebody who does? Do you identify as a woman with heritage from the nations encircling the contentious South China Seas? We’d love to hear from you… SEND VOICE MESSAGE — Send in a voice message requires you to set up an account with Anchor.FM, a company affiliated with Spotify.
May the fourth conversation with Dr. Chuah Guat Eng guide you. A teacher, Mr. V. K. Arumugam was one such man who opened the windows of her mind. Guat shares her experience about being a woman in a man’s world, and her opinion on gender equality. She believes that everyone deserves equal opportunities yet we should never strive to be equal because we are not born equal. Not letting fate be the decider, Guat’s proposition is that we are given equal opportunities, make use of those opportunities and become what we are supposed to be, and how we are supposed to be is dictated by our genes, our education, background, language we speak and so on.
The invention of robots will make us more human, she says. She also discusses tall poppy syndrome amongst people and even countries like the United States and China. Even twins are not equal, how can we all strive for equality?
Background
Dr. Chuah Guat Eng is a Malaysian novelist and professional writer who read English Literature at University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, and she has a PhD from the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia). Guat Eng has two novels – Echoes of Silence published in 1994 in English, and translated recently into Italian and German. Her other novel, Days of Change came out in 2010. She also has three collections of short stories. They are Tales from the Baram River (2001), The Old House and Other Stories (2008), and Dream Stuff (2014). Some of her short stories have been translated into other languages, including Malay, Chinese, Slovene, and Spanish. She’s currently working on her third novel, and occasionally teaches subjects related to literature and creative writing at a local university.
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Three of Listen by Heart: Voices of Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Chuah Guat Eng.
Subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform and if you’d like to encourage us on, find out how you can support the production. Thank you.
Our purpose: Listen by Heart Podcast is an audio project that sets out to record and archive stories from women of the South China Sea, an area of much interest lately. As we document and record all of these stories, we will also be digitising and creating an online presence for women of Southeast Asian heritage and honouring the women who came before them.
Our Mission: Listen By Heart Podcast aims to serve as the Sentinels of the South China Sea, keeping our region at peace. Production Credits An open-source project created, narrated and produced by Jasmine H. Low (jasminelow.com).
Would you have a tale to share or know somebody who does? Do you identify as a woman with heritage from the nations encircling the contentious South China Seas? We’d love to hear from you… SEND VOICE MESSAGE — Send in a voice message requires you to set up an account with Anchor.FM, a company affiliated with Spotify.
In this third episode, Dr. Chuah Guat Eng details her PhD Thesis: A Zen Approach to Reading Fiction is a reading procedure originally proposed as her Masters thesis proposal submitted to the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia). She cites an example of how many literary critics have approached the works by Joseph Conrad. In multi-ethnic Malaysia, Guat wanted to explore the use of a Buddhist inspired, Zen-based method to approach works by fiction authors, without imposing one’s own culture or values on the text. She poses the question on how one is able to gain deeper insights into an author’s text when the approach is Zen-based.
Background
Dr. Chuah Guat Eng is a Malaysian novelist and professional writer who read English Literature at University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, and she has a PhD from the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia). Guat Eng has two novels – Echoes of Silence published in 1994 in English, and translated recently into Italian and German. Her other novel, Days of Change came out in 2010. She also has three collections of short stories. They are Tales from the Baram River (2001), The Old House and Other Stories (2008), and Dream Stuff (2014). Some of her short stories have been translated into other languages, including Malay, Chinese, Slovene, and Spanish. She’s currently working on her third novel, and occasionally teaches subjects related to literature and creative writing at a local university.
To purchase a digital PDF copy of Guat Eng’s books directly from the author, contact us.
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Three of Listen by Heart: Voices of Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Chuah Guat Eng.
Subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform and if you’d like to encourage us on, find out how you can support the production. Thank you.
Our purpose: Listen by Heart Podcast is an audio project that sets out to record and archive stories from women of the South China Sea, an area of much interest lately. As we document and record all of these stories, we will also be digitising and creating an online presence for women of Southeast Asian heritage and honouring the women who came before them.
Our Mission: Listen By Heart Podcast aims to serve as the Sentinels of the South China Sea, keeping our region at peace. Production Credits An open-source project created, narrated and produced by Jasmine H. Low (jasminelow.com).
Would you have a tale to share or know somebody who does? Do you identify as a woman with heritage from the nations encircling the contentious South China Seas? We’d love to hear from you… SEND VOICE MESSAGE — Send in a voice message requires you to set up an account with Anchor.FM, a company affiliated with Spotify.
In this second episode, Chuah Guat Eng shares about competitiveness, her mother Wee Siew Lan and how one can tell from surnames of the Nanyang Chinese, if they are from Singapore or the northern states of Perlis, Kedah or Penang in Malaysia, the naming of Guat Eng and her sisters, finding her cultural identity inspired by an old school teacher, Mr. V. K. Arumugam, who passed her a copy of Lin YuTang’s “The Importance of Living”. An awakening had Guat realising what it meant to be Chinese, and that it wasn’t just about Pearl S. Buck. Guat also speaks about her time studying in Germany.
Background
Dr. Chuah Guat Eng is a Malaysian novelist and professional writer who read English Literature at University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, and she has a PhD from the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia). Guat Eng has two novels – Echoes of Silence published in 1994 in English, and translated recently into Italian and German. Her other novel, Days of Change came out in 2010. She also has three collections of short stories. They are Tales from the Baram River (2001), The Old House and Other Stories (2008), and Dream Stuff (2014). Some of her short stories have been translated into other languages, including Malay, Chinese, Slovene, and Spanish. She’s currently working on her third novel, and occasionally teaches subjects related to literature and creative writing at a local university.
To purchase a digital PDF copy of Guat Eng’s books directly from the author, contact us.
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Three of Listen by Heart: Voices of Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Chuah Guat Eng.
Subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform and if you’d like to encourage us on, find out how you can support the production. Thank you.
Our purpose: Listen by Heart Podcast is an audio project that sets out to record and archive stories from women of the South China Sea, an area of much interest lately. As we document and record all of these stories, we will also be digitising and creating an online presence for women of Southeast Asian heritage and honouring the women who came before them.
Our Mission: Listen By Heart Podcast aims to serve as the Sentinels of the South China Sea, keeping our region at peace. Production Credits An open-source project created, narrated and produced by Jasmine H. Low (jasminelow.com).
Would you have a tale to share or know somebody who does? Do you identify as a woman with heritage from the nations encircling the contentious South China Seas? We’d love to hear from you… SEND VOICE MESSAGE — Send in a voice message requires you to set up an account with Anchor.FM, a company affiliated with Spotify.
Welcome to Season Three of the Listen by Heart Podcast, where we feature Stories from Women of the South China Sea. Podcast host Jasmine Low is joined by Dr. Chuah Guat Eng, a Malaysian novelist and professional writer. Her experience spans three fields of writing; commercial and corporate, academic and literary. She read English Literature at University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, German Literature at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. In 2008, she received a PhD from the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) for her thesis, ‘From Conflict to Insight – A Zen-based Reading Procedure for the Analysis of Fiction’. From January 2011 to March 2013, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at University Putra Malaysia, focusing on Malaysian novels in English. Most of her professional life was spent in the corporate world as writer and as a creative communication consultant. She specialised in the development of strategies for advertising and promotion campaigns, corporate brand building programs and the synergising of corporate business aims.
Books by Chuah Guat Eng
Guat Eng has two novels – Echoes of Silence published in 1994 in English, and translated recently into Italian and German. Her other novel, Days of Change came out in 2010. She also has three collections of short stories. They are Tales from the Baram River (2001), The Old Houseand Other Stories (2008), and Dream Stuff (2014). Some of her short stories have been translated into other languages, including Malay, Chinese, Slovene, and Spanish. She’s currently working on her third novel, and occasionally teaches subjects related to literature and creative writing at a local university.
To purchase a digital PDF copy of Guat Eng’s books directly from the author, contact us.
In this episode
Born in 1943 in Rembau, Negeri Sembilan in Malaysia, Guat Eng grew up in Port Klang, formerly known as Port Swettenham. This episodes delves into Guat Eng’s early childhood, her growing up years, her father who was a train station master, being Peranakan and English-educated, the Anglo-Siam Treaty, British Malaya, cancel culture, her time studying in Germany, her advertising career and more. This is a part of a five-part episodic series.
You may also visit her blog, or contact us for further information, or order copies of her books.
About the Listen by Heart Podcast
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Three of Listen by Heart: Voices of Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Chuah Guat Eng.
Subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform and if you’d like to encourage us on, find out how you can support the production. Thank you.
Our purpose: Listen by Heart Podcast is an audio project that sets out to record and archive stories from women of the South China Sea, an area of much interest lately. As we document and record all of these stories, we will also be digitising and creating an online presence for women of Southeast Asian heritage and honouring the women who came before them.
Our Mission: Listen By Heart Podcast aims to serve as the Sentinels of the South China Sea, keeping our region at peace. Production Credits An open-source project created, narrated and produced by Jasmine H. Low (jasminelow.com).
Would you have a tale to share or know somebody who does? Do you identify as a woman with heritage from the nations encircling the contentious South China Seas? We’d love to hear from you… SEND VOICE MESSAGE — Send in a voice message requires you to set up an account with Anchor.FM, a company affiliated with Spotify.
Warning: To Aboriginal & Torres Straits Islander readers, the following article contains images and voices of people who have passed away.
🖤 On August 9th 2021, International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples themed ‘Leaving No One Behind’ left me thinking of our future, and of the concept of freedom.
💛 Motherland
It’s August 30th, Malaysia’s Merdeka Day. A quick dip into historical events would show the timeline from when the British East India Company made a deal in 1786 with the Sultanate of Kedah, a state bordering Malaya and Thailand, to form the first of what would be the Straits Settlement, comprising of Malacca and Singapore later on. And that is history, as told by text books.
Blindsided in school textbooks are stories about the indigenous peoples, like the Orang Aslis and Orang Asals, leaving generations of children growing up without much knowledge or understanding for the cultures of the first people. Where were they in history? What happened? Didn’t they also fight for peace during WWII? They make up 13.8% of Malaysia’s 32 million population so it’s a good question to raise and a strong reason to lobby for indigenous peoples and their stories to be told in schools, at the workplace and local community programs.
💙 Heartland
Coming from migrant stock, Australia is my heartland. It always has a place in my heart. I quickly learned that there were two events in the one same city; Sorry Day in La Perouse south of Sydney and Australia Day in the harbour front of Gadigal Land. How can one celebrate when another is somber? This juxtaposition of thought camps remains the crux of January 26th for me personally.
❤️ Homeland
A dedication to all Malaysians, especially Malaysia’s indigenous communities. As a Malaysian-born, I’ve been conscious of its long dumbed-down history of land rights among the aboriginal native orang asli and orang asal. I’ve seen friends tell through personal experiences, through documentaries they’d shoot, horrendous tales of blockades in the centre of the Earth as termed by the Temiars in the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia, blocking tree loggers from pulling roots out from their earth, their land, which was licensed out to commercial loggers. These brave individuals would set up blockades ala man versus tractor.
The song “From little things, big things grow” by Kev Carmody & Paul Kelly, remade by Ziggy Ramo and Electric Fields keeps the fire burning for the other people fighting land rights and there needs to be fires burning long through the nights for this fight to be fought.
On the eve of this 64th Merdeka Day in Malaysia, I’ve had this song translated into Bahasa Malaysia, and written this short piece to show respect to a culture if not protected, will be forever lost. It’s really baby steps forward but giant strides backwards if we allow our last remaining forests, ancestral land for the first peoples of Malaysia, what’s left of it, to be plummaged with no recourse. There is no turning back if we let it happen. We must not let it happen. Protect it at all costs just like how the tree huggers, Chipko activists in the 1970s in India did.
