From Max Crosbie-Jones on Art Review, “Why aren’t the literary scenes of Southeast Asia getting more regional and global traction?” (April 4, 2024):

Try as international book publishers might, Southeast Asia’s literary scenes cannot easily be distilled to a marketable essence – or bound together. Take the S.E.A. Write Award, for example, a prestigious literary accolade that was, until recently, presented annually at Bangkok’s storied Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Since 1979, novelists from across the ASEAN region have gathered for a ceremony that is arguably as infuriating as it is inspiring: no scheme for translating each country’s winning novel into any other language exists. As a result, an award that seeks to expand readership and foster a sense of literary unity in diversity is, in fact, a recurring reminder of how Southeast Asia’s manifest pluralism, its myriad languages and motley cultural histories, hinders such intraregional exchanges. Southeast Asia in this context is an unedifying construct: a winning Thai or Indonesian novel will still only be read in Thai or Indonesian, and so the literary worlds of participating nations remain siloed from one another.

In another interrelated context, however, a strong sense of unity does exist: common among the region’s networked community of literary translators is a sense of grievance at their relative invisibility on the world literature stage. Some of their output is bearing fruit – you could point to the 2016 Man Booker nomination of Eka Kurniawan’s Man Tiger, or 2022’s Out of the Shadows of Angkor, an unprecedented compendium of Cambodian prose and poetry, or the uptick in English translations of sui generis Thai novels, among other releases and milestones – and yet their global footprint remains small.

From a review by George Chigas on Out of the Shadow of Angkor (October 12, 2023):

“Out of the Shadows of Angkor is an ambitious project whose 352 pages comprise a double issue of Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, edited by Frank Steward and published by University of Hawai’i Press. Previously, in 2004, Manoa published a collection of Cambodian writing entitled In the Shadow of Angkor, which focused on contemporary writing and included several brief interviews conducted by the guest editor, Sharon May. Sharon May is also the guest editor for Out of the Shadows of Angkor. The titles of the two issues refer to the greater importance attributed to the temples of Angkor, thereby overshadowing the appreciation of Cambodia’s rich literary heritage.

…

Since Out of the Shadows is primarily intended for English readers of the Cambodian diaspora, many of the selected writings in the modern section were produced by Cambodian writers whose families fled Cambodia and were resettled in the US, France, Canada, Australia, etc. The second half of the poetry section includes poems written in English by Chat pierSath, BK Tuon, Princess Moon, Greg Santos, among others. Their work speaks to the experience of liminality, displacement and trauma as they struggle to come to terms with their “hyphenated identities” and traumatic past.”

From “One for the Aging,” a review by Chris McKinney in Midweek (April 14, 2021):

“Like most good writers, Farber worries. [He] frets about the very foundations of human nature. Our propensity to trample more than advance. Our anthropomorphic tendencies. But he doesn’t lecture. His tone is more observational and speculative. Age has not diminished his curiosity nor his ability to reflect either.

If you feel like getting your think on, read Acting My Age.”

From, “An Office in the Ocean,” an interview in The Hawaiʻi Review of Books with Pat Matsueda and Thomas Faber:

“While Thomas Farber has been dividing his time between Hawai‘i, Boston, and the Bay Area for the last 40-plus years, his life can seem more aquatic than terrestrial. I saw him for years in black swim cap and goggles before we ever exchanged a word, gradually merging the man in the Tongg’s swimming channel with the guy behind the gorgeously written and intellectually immersive The Face of the Deep, followed by On Water and Through a Liquid Mirror—my favorites of his 27 books. The latter is a collaborative venture featuring striking underwater photography by lifetime collaborator Wayne Levin, whose work also adorns Acting My Age, Farber’s new book; both include Levin’s totemic photos of famed North Shore lifeguard, bodysurfer, and artist Mark Cunningham diving beneath cloud-like boils from a breaking wave—a style of photography so imitated that it’s gone mainstream. Acting My Age also includes photos by Geoffrey Fricker, whose work on Maui is also showcased. Acting My Age is published by Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing (University of Hawai‘i Press). This interview took place in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, in summer 2021.” —D.W.

From “Mount Fuji Is the Gift to Writers That Keeps on Giving,” a review by Stephen Mansfield in Japan Times (May 19, 2018):

“In the pages of the richly nourishing ‘Mountain/Home,’ a new compilation of translations from Japan, we have a book that truly endorses Robert Graves’ contention that, ‘a well-chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine.’ The book begins with a selection of writings relating to Mount Fuji. An emotive symbol of beauty and natural perfection, the mountain has been deified, but also trashed, its environs disfigured by factories, highways, train lines and urban congestion.…Throughout, even when it appears to recede, Mount Fuji stands sentinel. ‘The collection,’ series editor Frank Stewart asserts, ‘circles back to earlier literature, ending with Mutsuo Takahashi’s meditations on the humble beauty of the home, with Mount Fuji in the background.’“

From a review by Diane Goodman that appeared in the American Book Review (May-June 2017):

“Zhang Yihe writes, ‘…when I finished writing ‘‘The Woman Yang,” I was exhausted, body and soul’ and this confession comes as no surprise. It’s hard to imagine the emotional toll (re)telling these stories took on the woman who lived so much of them. ‘The Woman Liu’ and ‘The Woman Yang’ are compelling examinations of love, fear, sacrifice and survival, betrayal, compassion, manipulation, friendship, and trust and sometimes even a kind of redemption. But maybe most of all, ‘Red Peonies: Two Novellas of China’ are a powerful testimony to the fortitude of the female spirit.“

From “Fine Design Unites Many Hawaii Book Award Winners” by Mindy Pennybacker for the Star-Advertiser (June 25, 2017):

“The winner in the nonfiction category was ‘Curve of the Hook: An Archaeologist in Polynesia’ (University of Hawai‘i Press), by Bishop Museum senior anthropologist Yosihiko Sinoto with Hiroshi Aramata, edited and translated from the original Japanese by Frank Stewart and Madoka Nagadō. This completely new edition in English was also produced and designed by [Barbara] Pope, whose work informed and unified decades’ worth of interviews, journal entries, drawings and archival photographs in an affecting, wide-ranging life story.“

From a review by Jennifer Goodlander for Asian Theatre Journal (vol. 33, no. 1):

“Islands of Imagination: Volume One: Modern Indonesian Plays provides an accessible introduction to theatrical activity outside of traditional forms such as wayang or topeng happening in Indonesia in the twentieth century. This collection is part of a larger trend of publications focusing on or anthologizing modern Asian drama—including several notable books and anthologies of modern Indonesian drama. The work of translation is often undervalued in academia—but as this collection demonstrates, these resources are vital to the study and teaching of world theatre….
    Islands of Imagination presents a dynamic range of modern Indonesian drama in translation. Short biographies of the playwrights and the excellent introduction provide some insight into the theatrical and historical context of the plays and inspire the reader to learn more about these interesting plays. The anthology demonstrates the vitality of Indonesian dramatic literature and these plays not only would be an excellent addition to a course focusing on theatre history or Asian performance but also would interest theatre scholars and artists seeking new plays to read and stage.“

From “Dreamweaver” by Muneeza Shamsie for Dawn:

“Intizar Husain (1923-2016) was a towering figure in Pakistani letters, a master storyteller, who has left behind an astonishing body of fiction which transcends time and place and yet is firmly rooted in Pakistan and the era in which he lived Story Is a Vagabond is guest-edited by Alok Bhalla, Asif Farrukhi and Nishat Zaidi. It brings together a varied and thought-provoking selection of Husain’s work translated from Urdu into English, framed by Alok Bhalla’s illuminating Introduction and Afterword. Bhalla describes Partition as “the single most important event to disrupt his [Intizar Husain’s] life and shape his creative self”. He also provides many insights into the cultural plurality of Husain’s writing which incorporates Sufi legends, Vedic lore and Jataka tales….

The subtle and sophisticated stories are replete with stunning descriptions and invariably move in intricate loops which are unified by metaphor, parable, or theme. ‘The Boat’ unites and reconstructs the great legends of the great flood in different cultures, to tell of Gilgamesh, Noah and Manu. Each escapes from the rising waters in a boat, albeit in different circumstances, only to be confronted with the uncertainty of the unknown.“

Excerpts from “Sparking Illuminations” by Ken Rodgers of Kyoto Journal, for Writersinkyoto.com:

“Mānoa is a journal that’s much more than a magazine: every issue is an exuberantly oversized paperback slab of a book, packed with dazzlingly illuminative writings. Editors Frank Stewart and Pat Matsueda succeed brilliantly in providing curated insights, with the astute assistance of local guest editors and skilled translators, into non-Western (mostly Asian/Pacific) literature—and a welcome cultural antidote to the tropes of more familiar English-language publishing.…
   The very notable recent Starry Island: New Writing from Singapore (Mānoa 26:2), guest-edited by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, showcases 30 delightfully contemporary writers from that ‘anomalous, confounding, and paradoxical society’.…A valuable and eye-opening introduction to ‘Sing Lit,’ this anthology is a party, a phantasmagorical post-modern salon which readers are privileged to gatecrash.…
   Story Is a Vagabond (Mānoa 27:1), guest-edited by Alok Bhalla, Asif Farrukhi, and Nishat Zaidi, is a timely collection of fiction, essays and drama by Intizar Husain, a leading Urdu writer from Uttar Pradesh who migrated (with some reluctance, it seems) to Lahore, Pakistan, at the time of Partition. While present-day Pakistan is notorious for fundamentalist cultural death squads, nationalist fanaticism and gender-gap extremism, Husain’s stories reach back to a deeper tradition of tolerance and mutual respect, within a literary history of shared sources, where vagabond tales passed between Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist societies in spiritual coexistence.…
   The series’ most recent issue, The Colors of Dawn: Twentieth-Century Korean Poety (Mānoa 27:2), was guest-edited by translator Brother Anthony of Taizé (another [Kyoto Journal] contributor) and Chung Eun-Gwi. It’s essentially a reasoned catalog of the (mostly male) modern poets of South Korea, set against the tumultuous changes that have wrenched the country’s psyche since 1910, including annexation by Japan, the Korean War, postwar dictatorships, the struggle to achieve democracy, and to achieve economic stability.…Throughout, one is in awe of the way that political and social commentary is integral to the poets’ perceived role…but so often necessarily distilled into forms that read ostensibly as purely personal (yet still powerful) observations.“

From “Taming the Tiger: Exploring the Possibilities for Art in a Concrete Jungle” by Arielle Stambler for Cha: An Asian Literary Journal:

“[Many pieces in Starry Island: New Writing from Singapore] engage with this power of art to contemplate (and perhaps compensate for) loss—whether it be of the wilderness, of one’s home country or of one’s native language. A number of these are selections from books of flash fiction, such as Alfian Sa’at’s Malay Sketches and O Thiam Chin’s Under the Sun (both of which have previously been reviewed in Cha). These selections, often taken out of the context in which they were originally published, provide illuminating new juxtapositions, asking readers to put together their own pictures of the worlds these authors describe. In fact, the entire anthology can be viewed as a collage, displaying Singaporean writers’ work in multiple narrative forms and engaging readers to see Singapore as itself a pastiche of different cultures and international influences.

But, to its credit, the anthology does not push any one definition of Singaporean literature and contains the musings of authors who struggle with this definition.“

From “A New Anthology of Northwest Voices” by Eric de Place for Sightline Daily:

“I’m looking forward to my evenings this winter because I’ll be settling in with Cascadia: The Life and Breath of the World, a new anthology of Northwest writers and artists put out by the University of Hawaiʻi Press.

Many of the region’s better-known voices are included, but this isn’t a volume of greatest hits. It’s a quieter and more meditative collection presenting lesser-known work from some of the most expressive Cascadians, often in genres other than the ones we’re accustomed to. So we find a memoir by Emily Carr (accompanied by a few sketches) alongside an essay by Gary Snyder. The volume includes both poems and a lecture by Robert Bringhurst, voices from the First Nations, like Chief William K’HHalserten Sepass and Eden Robinson, and dozens of others, some well-known (like Barry Lopez) and many I’ve never encountered.“

From a review by Sherra Wong for NewPages:

“The choice of freedom as a theme [for On Freedom: Spirit, Art, and State] is a delicate one, especially for a journal dedicated to literature from and about Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas. It is difficult to come to the issue without fearing that it would teeter on the edge of cliché, simplification, and propaganda. But the strength of Mānoa lies in its juxtaposition of work that was translated into English and work originally written in English. Those who set out to write for their compatriots are not tempted to exoticize or over-explain, and the American writers in this issue exercise admirable judgment in molding their perceptions of the overseas into their work. That is also honest and true. To tell it like it is: that, surely, is a measure of freedom.”

From a review by Susan Bouterey for the International Journal of Okinawan Studies:

“If English translations of Okinawan literature are rare, full anthologies in English are rarer still. The first collection of Okinawan literature in English translation, Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature from Okinawa (Michael Molasky and Steve Rabson, eds.) appeared in 2000. This was followed in 2009 by Voices from Okinawa (Frank Stewart and Yamazato Katsunori, eds.), an anthology of literature by Okinawan Americans. Living Spirit, intended as a companion volume to Voices, is the third anthology, and only the second in English translation, to emerge to date. As such, this collection is of immeasurable value. What gives Living Spirit even greater significance is the sheer variety and scope of the collection when compared with its predecessors, and arguably literary anthologies in general. Indeed, this collection could be said to transcend the boundaries prescribed by the term ‘literature,’ even in its broader application.”

From “Stories of Forgetting, Remembering and Ritual,” by Vinita Ramani Mohan for Kyoto Journal:

“Mānoa’s Maps of Reconciliation…is an issue that looks ahead or forwards to imagine and create realities that are an appropriate response to what guest editor Barry Lopez calls the “vetted doctrines and the ruthlessness of reason,” (p. ix, Editor’s Note) that we have thus far been subject to and find ourselves complicit in propagating. Yet, in this issue we are very much looking backwards, turning our heads and opening our ears to see and hear the reiterations for reconciliation and peace found in the essays, poems, plays and photographs of writers and artists who have been uttering it for decades.
   What are we not hearing? Why is there an absence of dialogue between the people who craft legislation and set up tribunals or commissions and the artists who speak for their communities? Why do these legislators and administrators not look deeper at the collective acts of engaging in indigenous, local and deeply personal forms of reconciliation—a word that at any rate may be untranslatable into languages other than English? The essays in this edition of Mānoa do not profess to answer this question or redress this gap, this lack of communication. Instead, as a whole, they fill the void created by a one-size-fits-all approach to justice, peace and reconciliation concocted by governments and the United Nations.…
   Overall, this is a marvelous issue of Mānoa that carries us from the Pacific Islands to Asia, South Africa and Latin America to provide readers with a brief, but entirely resonant glimpse into rituals of reconciliation. One wonders whether copies should be sent to tribunal and truth commission administrators.“

From a review by Cameron Muir of Where the Rivers Meet: New Writing from Australia for Australian Humanities Review (August 2007):

“The Asia Pacific region is vast and diverse, yet dominant Australian culture seems to place our continent somewhere just off the west coast of the USA rather than south of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. In the first article of the collection Deborah Bird Rose reminds us that long before Australia was on any map of the Pacific, its place in the world was well known. It pleased me to see an anthropologist included in a journal whose temper is overwhelmingly literary. It is one of the most important pieces in this collection for showcasing the richness of Australian culture because it is one of the few contributions to discuss Australia’s pre-invasion society and its cultural continuity through processes of colonisation. We are presented with a suite of stories about literature, or the high art of a remote people and the last songs of dingoes…. In the end it is a mournful piece because the material remnants of these stories have been partly destroyed, and we get the sense that the recording of the dingo’s song that ‘cries out the anguish of exile and disapora, of those who can never go home again’ (p. 5) is already an artefact left over from a creature that will soon have no place in this country. ‘Where the rivers meet’ serves as a versatile metaphor and it encompasses the confluence of cultures, histories, emotions and styles  that this collection draws together from writing that struggles to deal with Australia’s colonial past and continuing processes of rift and reconciliation….As an Australian I started to think that some of the material in this issue of Mānoa was a bit familiar. I know the smell of eucalypts and dust, and I know what it is like to drive for seven hours and feel you are under the same sky. I know the politics of being a beneficiary of another’s dispossession…. This book is for the world, and the Pacific in particular, to see what we are up to, a bit of insight into our art, history, politics, people and environment.“

From “Reaching a Broader Audience,” a review for The Cambodia Daily (June 2004):

“Authors from the 1950s and 1960s were featured in the 220-page book to show that, at the time, ‘there was a sophisticated goup of Cambodian writers who were daring and innovative and of international importance,’ said Frank Stewart, the book’s co-editor. In the Shadow of Angkor also presents works from contemporary authors who write in either Khmer or English. A poem by U Sam Oeur describes the despair he felt in 1991, with Cambodia torn apart and its people’s lives shattered. ‘At dusk, at dawn, we drank rice wine,’ he writes; ‘inside we bore agonies.’ A text by Venerable Maha Ghosananda speaks of the deities choosing Santidevaputra, the god of peace, to rule the universe because ‘they understood that peace is the strongest force in the universe.’ A scholar who was nominated four times for the Nobel peace prize, Maha Ghosananda was elected Cambodia’s Buddhist supreme patriarch in 1988.”