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.
Welcome to the final episode of Season Two of the Listen by Heart Podcast, where we feature Stories from Women of the South China Sea. Written and narrated by Dr. Ann Lee, this story was published amongst 16 others in Malaysian Folk Tales: Retold & Remixed, edited by Daphne Lee, published by ZI Publications (2011). Su and her natural love for swimming is based on the folktale about a girl who was kidnapped by an orangutan. The irony is that her abductor reveals its bubbly and very loving character.
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Two of Listen by Heart: Voices of the Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Ann Lee.
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). 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 Seas? We’d love to hear from you…
Welcome to Season Two of the Listen by Heart Podcast, where we feature Stories from Women of the South China Sea. In episode five, podcast host Jasmine Low speaks to Dr. Ann Lee about gender and sexuality and if her grandmother may have known anyone who was queer. Ann talks about her university days in London, attending a writer’s workshop with Hanif Kureishi and being around “people like us”.
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Two of Listen by Heart: Voices of the Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Ann Lee.
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). 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 Seas? We’d love to hear from you…
Welcome to Season Two of the Listen by Heart Podcast, where we feature Stories from the Women of the South China Sea. It’s episode four and podcast host Jasmine Low speaks to Dr. Ann Lee about her family.
Born of mixed parentage, Dr. Ann recalls stories of her family: her maternal side in North Borneo and Sabah, Malaysia, as well as her paternal side from Salford, Manchester in England. For example, her maternal great-grandmother, a Hakka Chinese known as Madam Voo Hock Liam, was born in 1882 and became renowned as a fierce and determined character. She later married Chan Yau Lam, originally a stonemason in Papar, North Borneo. He became a respected leader (kapitan cina), and set up an English language school at a time when this was unpopular. (There is a photo of him shaking hands with England’s Duchess of Kent on her visit to ‘British North Borneo’.) On the other hand, little is known of her paternal great-grandmother but her paternal great-grandfather did not believe in education for girls. Ann’s paternal grandmother did not continue school beyond her early teens, though she went on to qualify as a swimmer for the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam.
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Two of Listen by Heart: Voices of the Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Ann Lee.
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). 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 Seas? We’d love to hear from you…
Welcome to Season Two of the Listen by Heart Podcast, where we feature Stories from the Women of the South China Seas. In this episode, Dr. Ann Lee talks about BOH Cameronian award-winning play Tarap Man as featured in Southeast Asian Plays (Aurora Metro), plays and their mobility.
Keyword mentions: Tarap Man, Kadazan, Telegu, Hakka, Hang Li Poh, Mahi Ramakrishnan (filmmaker), Dr. Grace Chin (Universiti Sains Malaysia), New York International Fringe Festival, Leow Puay Tin, Huzir Sulaiman, Jit Murad, Shahimah Idris, Apartheid, Critique, Translations of Plays, Booker Prize, South Pacific, Upin & Ipin…
Producer’s note:
Dear listeners, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, South Pacific, as mentioned in this podcast was based on Tales of the South Pacific, a Pulitzer Prize-winner by James A. Michener who was a US Navy officer stationed at the New Hebrides Islands (now known as Vanuatu). The story was adapted and produced into the popular 1958 movie and filmed on Kauai. Not the South China Seas nor Marshall Islands as intimated. Thank you.
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Two of Listen by Heart: Voices of the Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Ann Lee.
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). 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 Seas? We’d love to hear from you…
Welcome to Season Two of the Listen by Heart Podcast, where we feature Stories from the Women of the South China Seas. In this episode, podcast host Jasmine Low has a conversation with Dr. Ann Lee, and we establish that it was in September 1994 when Kuali Works, an all-women arts company specialising in theatre, TV and publications in Malaysia was founded. Ann Lee, Karen Quah, Goh Soon Siew, Anita Zafina Mat Fadzil, and Shahimah (Charmaine W) Idris took the name of ‘Kuali Works’ from a household product that can be found in most, if not all Malaysian households, irrespective of colour or creed: the kuali or wok. We liked the tastiness of ‘creating food for thought’, reads a paragraph in Sex, Stage & State: Kuali Works plays and this is what we explore in this episode – what went on behind the creation of food for thought.
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Two of Listen by Heart: Voices of the Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Ann Lee.
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). 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 Seas? We’d love to hear from you…
Welcome to Season Two of the Listen by Heart Podcast, where we feature Stories from the Women of the South China Sea. Podcast host Jasmine Low introduces Dr. Ann Lee in this first episode.
Ann speaks about her career including national newsreader to an MC of the Closing Ceremony of the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games. She has also had a career in advertising and public relations, the pinnacle of which was working as Associate Creative Director in a team that developed a voter education campaign for the African National Congress (ANC), helping to ensure that Nelson Mandela won the first modern democratic elections in South Africa with a landslide win (despite years of Apartheid disallowing education for the majority population).
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Two of Listen by Heart: Voices of the Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Ann Lee.
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). 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 Seas? We’d love to hear from you…
Trailer out now with episodes 1-6 streaming from 1st August, 2021.
Summary:
Welcome to Season Two of the Listen by Heart Podcast, where we feature Stories from the Women of the South China Sea. Podcast host Jasmine Low introduces Dr. Ann Lee, and they chat about Ann’s short story that was published in Malaysian Folk Tales: Retold & Remixed, edited by Daphne Lee and published by ZI Publications (2011). Su and her Natural Love for Swimming is based on the folktale about a girl who was kidnapped by an orangutan, and will be narrated in a later episode.
Subscribe to this podcast for prompts when a new episode is released.
Biography
Born in Tawau, Malaysia, Ann Lee is a playwright, researcher and lecturer. Her plays are published in Sex, Stage & State: Kuali Works plays (Parama Adhi Perkasa, 2011) and Southeast Asian Plays (Aurora Metro, 2016). She was Artistic Director of Kuali Works, an all-women theatre group for over a decade and is immediate past Protem Chair of the Women Writers Committee, PEN Malaysia (chapter of PEN international). She is also a committee member of ReformARTsi, an independent coalition of over 100 Malaysian arts organisations and individuals, advocating reform in arts education, arts funding, and freedom of expression.
Dr. Ann Lee, award-winning playwright & researcher
Ann completed a doctorate in Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is writing a book on political humour in Indonesia and Malaysia. She also holds a MSc in History of Science, Medicine and Technology (Oxon). Ann is a past Fellow of the Asia Leadership Fellow Program (Japan Foundation and International House of Japan).
She has also had a career in advertising and public relations, the pinnacle of which was working as Associate Creative Director in a team that developed a voter education campaign for the African National Congress (ANC), helping to ensure that Nelson Mandela won the first modern democratic elections in South Africa with a landslide win (despite years of Apartheid disallowing education for the majority population).
Early days in theatre
Ann began writing for theatre as a member of the Royal Court Young Activists theatre group, London, where she joined a writers’ workshop with then writer-in-residence Hanif Kureishi.
An Asia Leadership Fellow (ALFP, 2001), she spent time in Tokyo with colleagues from China, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand, and presented her research on ‘the ghosts of Asian values’.
Asia Leadership Fellow (2001)
Kuali Works produced her first plays, including the critically acclaimed, Kuala Lumpur Knock-Out, about a young factory worker who dreams of boxing Mike Tyson (which received a Director’s Exchange Award from the Australian High Commission, Kuala Lumpur); Hang Li Poh – Melakan Princess, a re-telling of the myth of the Emperor of China’s daughter who married the Sultan of Malacca; and From Table Mountain to Teluk Intan by Shahimah Charmaine Idris (with Lee, Sue Ingleton and Jo Kukathas), based on the true story of a Cape Malay child in South Africa who leaves apartheid but ends up on the ‘right side’ of the tracks to face her most difficult trial. The last play Lee directed was Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, which was banned in Malaysia in 2002. Her last full-length play, Tarap Man, won a ‘Best Original Script’ award at the 2007 Boh Cameronian Arts Awards, Malaysia. She is working on a new full-length play, provisionally titled Not Far Now. Lee’s work for the stage has been performed/read at the Asian Monodrama Festival, Commonwealth Games Theatre Festival, Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, Sydney Writers Festival, and the New York International Fringe Festival.
In our conversation while preparing for this podcast, Dr. Ann Lee shares more about the concepts behind her work. Her doctorate thesis is grounded in humour studies, epidemiological studies and Southeast Asian studies. Entitled ‘Outbreaks of satire: a political epidemiology of dissent in theatre, television, and social media memes (Malaysia and Indonesia, 1989 – 2018)’, she identifies rhetoric about health and well-being, and how this is used to support and denigrate the satirical.
Born of mixed parentage, Dr. Ann recalls stories of her family: her maternal side in North Borneo and Sabah, Malaysia, as well as her paternal side from Salford, Manchester in England. For example, her maternal great-grandmother, a Hakka Chinese known as Madam Voo Hock Liam, was born in 1882 and became renowned as a fierce and determined character. She later married Chan Yau Lam, originally a stonemason in Papar, North Borneo. He became a respected leader (kapitan cina), and set up an English language school at a time when this was unpopular. (There is a photo of him shaking hands with England’s Duchess of Kent on her visit to ‘British North Borneo’.) On the other hand, little is known of her paternal great-grandmother but her paternal great-grandfather did not believe in education for girls. Ann’s paternal grandmother did not continue school beyond her early teens, though she went onto qualify as a swimmer for the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam.
Before and since her doctorate, Ann has also been working on a new play. Titled Not Far Now, the play is inspired by the real-life story of a medical student from the East Indies, fighting for independence from the Dutch who later became a political prisoner – and also an orderly – in Germany’s Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen WW2 concentration camps.
***
About the Listen by Heart Podcast
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Season Two of Listen by Heart: Voices of the Women of the South China Sea with Dr. Ann Lee.
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). 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 Seas? We’d love to hear from you…
Here’s a conversation recorded one afternoon as I chat with Shirl while she eats — her favourite thing to do! We speak in English, Malay and Hokkien. This is an experimental concept, where podcast host/producer Jasmine H. Low records periods during her day as a carer for mum… The first few seconds are sounds recorded while Jasmine escapes for a coffee break at the beach while Shirl sleeps. These in-between moments give room for much thought, reflection and creativity. A step forward usually means a push off of faith, gaining momentum and power for a larger stride. It also requires trust to move ahead in search for another door to open. It’s that unknown lull, that time at sea travelling from one place place to an unknown land, eager in anticipation. I think of the women before me, my mother’s mother, my mother and in this recording, I asked about her comfort foods from her mother’s time. It seems the making of, the eating and convening over food provided much comfort for the women from my family. I hope you have enjoyed listening to this first Season, where I feature my own personal poetry, stories and conversations with mum.
Over the course of the next few seasons, I shall be introducing a long list of amazing women with heritage from countries surrounding the South China Seas.
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Listen by Heart: Voices of the Women of the South China Sea.
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). 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 Seas? We’d love to hear from you…
Girl Gungho: Identity is a quirky teaser, fiction laced with some real-life experiences about growing up in Kuala Lumpur in the 80s, the yearn to find balance and gender equality and the big move from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney as a student.
You have been listening to Jasmine Low’s Audio Journey experience, presenting Listen by Heart: Voices of the Women of the South China Sea.
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). 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 Seas? We’d love to hear from you…
![Dr. Ann Lee, Award-winning Playwright & Lecturer | Listen by Heart Podcast S2 [INTRO]](https://i0.wp.com/i.ytimg.com/vi/rb1dxVqENqg/hqdefault.jpg?w=580&ssl=1)
