I have a piece called "Living Heritages" in The Lifted Brow's "Feeder's Digest". I was commissioned to write this piece by Ellen van Neerven. It was a humbling experience for me, as it was an opportunity to deepen a friendship & dared me to trust my writing better.
"Living Heritages" is a creative non fiction piece on how development is consuming Melaka. It's also a sketch of my friend, an anarchist and democracy agitator, history and heritage activist Bert Tan of the 18 539 strong FB group Malaysian Heritage and History Club. In my writing, I was trying to be 'objective', but was gently guided by Ellen to answer a very sensitive qs regarding my return after being away for so long, by a simple poetic insertion. The poetic insertions became quiet reflections accompanying the prose. It was humbling to work with Ellen also because at the tail end of the final draft, Ellen was subjected to racist abuse from NSW HSC students post exams who launched social media attacks regarding their poem "Mango" from Comfort Food. During this time, I received an invitation to contribute to a tribute about Ellen's work from Gomeroi poet and law scholar Alison Whittaker, facilitated by TLB's online editor Linh Nguyen. The usual contributor fee for an online piece was donated to the Indigenous Literary Foundation, and TLB donated the same amount of money to the ILF. In solidarity with Ellen and and this tribute, I've also decided to donate my contributor's fee to the the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and IndigenousX. ** See "Ellen van Neerven" in The Lifted Brow for the full tribute.
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