Lloyd Fernando

Biography of Lloyd Fernando

Lloyd Fernando was born to a Sinhalese family in Sri Lanka in 1926. In 1938, his family migrated to Singapore. Mr. Fernando was educated at St Patrick’s in Singapore, with the Japanese occupation interrupting that education from 1943 to 1945. During the Japanese attack on Singapore, Mr. Fernando’s father was killed. During the Japanese occupation, Fernando worked in a variety of manual labor jobs.
Lloyd Fernando thereafter graduated from the University of Malaya in Singapore, and subsequently served as an instructor at the Singapore Polytechnic. Lloyd Fernando became an assistant lecturer at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur in 1960. Mr. Fernando was awarded a scholarship at Leeds University, UK where he received his PhD.
In 1967 Fernando was appointed to serve as a professor at the English Department of the University of Malaya, where he served until his retirement in 1978. Subsequently, Mr. Fernando studied law at City University in the United Kingdom and then at Middle Temple, returning to Malaysia with two law degrees, whereupon he was employed by a law firm, and thereafter started a separate law practice business. In 1997, Mr. Fernando had a stroke and ceased his professional activities. He passed away  on  28th February in 2008, leaving behind his wife,Marie, two daughters and four grandchildren.

About Lloyd Fernando

 Lloyd Fernando was one of the major writers of the tradition in Malaysia  besides Wong Phui Nam and Lee Kok Liang. He was instrumental in instilling inspiration in many of the younger writers when he was a professor of English at the University of Malaya.His several edited anthologies also played a significant role in the formative years of the tradition. Lloyd Fernando was perhaps the best known of the Malaysian literary critics in the English language, having published numerous articles both at home and abroad. Lloyd Fernando was a trailblazer, a pathfinder in  Malaysian literature and culture and for his many contributions for English writings in the country, especially during the early years of Malaysia's independence.



Lloyd Fernando's list of works
 Scorpion Orchid-1976, first published by Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) in 1976. The novel is set in Singapore in the 1950s.
New Women in  the late Victorian novel -1977
Cultures in Conflict-1986
Green is the Colour-1993, is a track on Pink Floyd's 1969,
Soundtrack from the Film More
Twenty-Two Malaysian Stories: an anthology of writing in English(editor)


Summary of Scorpion Orchid

The plot entwines four young men of differing ethnic make-up: Santinathan is a Tamil Guan Kheng a Chinese, Sabran a Malay and Peter D'Almeida a Eurasian. The four of them were former schoolmates and now attends the Singapore university, all in their third year. The story follows them as they become embroiled with the racial riots in Singapore during the 1950s. A distinctive feature of Scorpion Orchid lies in fourteen italicized passages of varying length, drawn from traditional Malayan texts and interwoven into the narrative.

Summary of Green Is The Colour

This novel is about  racial and religious tolerance set against the shadow of the 1969 riots in Kuala Lumpur. A story of humanity struggling against the cold inhumanity of closed minds.

The central concern of this work is how people of different races face the challenges of living side by side. After the infamous May 13, an artificial togetherness has been created to prevent more such occurrence. Then, fresh violence breaks out and into this are thrown several characters of different races, religions and political affiliations, and different levels of tolerance. An uncompromising look at Malaysia's past, it articulates with keen insight some unexpressed truths about how we see each other in a multi-racial world. A Malaysian classic.


Something about Scorpion Orchid and Green Is The Colour

Green Is The Colour was set in the tumultuous,even savage aftermath of the May 1969 racial riots in Malaysia, this novels explores the  issues of racial violence and political strife  through its multi-racial characters, in particular, Yun Ming, Siti Sara,Omar and Dahlan. Out of an environment of paranoia and suspicion,how might a unified country emerge? Scorpion Orchid was written when English was in the doldrums and writers in the language were exposed to the deep futility of pursuing it as a creative medium,forcing many of them to either emigrate( Ee Tiang Hong and Shirley Lim),choose silence( Wong Phui Nam,who stopped writing for over two decades), or cross over to the Malay language(Muhammad Haji Salleh, who quizzically concluded,"Should I lick the hand that strangles my language and culture"{Nor Faridah and Quayum , 124}). Despite this overwhelming crisis, Fernando decided to stay the course and  bring out his novel, not so much as a  marker of challenge to the country's language policy,but rather out of a simple conviction that a writer is not free to choose his language but must write in one in which he "not only thinks but also feels in the depths of {his}beings". 
Fernando cultivates a similar message for  Scorpion Orchid and Green Is The Colour that they should view themselves first and foremost as Malaysians,only then as  Malays, Chinese, Indians,or Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus  and Christians. Prioritising their national identity is vital for Malaysians to overcome their narrow selfishness, prejudice and hatred  and to learn to view their cultural  diversity as a boon.


Works cited

Fernando, Lloyd. Green Is The Colour. Singapore:  Epigrams Books,2012.Print.

Quayum, Mohammad A., Rosli Talif , and Noritah Omar. Petals of Hibiscus:A Representative Anthology of Malaysian Literature in English. Petaling Jaya: Pearson, 2003.Print.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Fernando

 

Biography of Sybil Kathigasu and summary of her autobiography

Biography of Sybil Kathigasu

Sybil Kathigasu was born Sybil Medan Daly to an Irish-Eurasian planter (Joseph Daly) and a French-Eurasian midwife (Beatrice Matilda Daly née Martin) on 3 September 1899 in Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia. Her middle name reflects her birthplace, Medan. Her paternal grandparents were an Irishman and a Eurasian woman while her maternal grandparents were a Frenchman (Pierre Louie Martin) and a Eurasian woman (Evelyn Adeline Martin née Morrett). She was the fifth child and the only girl. She was trained as a nurse and midwife and spoke Cantonese fluently. She and her husband, Dr. Abdon Clement Kathigasu, operated a clinic at No 141 Brewster Road (now Jalan Sultan Idris Shah) in Ipoh from 1926 until theJapanese invasion of Malaya.She  is the only Malayan woman to be ever awarded with the George Medal for bravery.
 Sybil Kathigasu died on 4 June 1948 aged 48 in Britain and her body was buried in Lanark, Scotland. Her body was later returned in 1949 to Ipoh and reburied at the Roman Catholic cemetery beside St Michael's Church opposite the Main Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (now SMK Convent) on Brewster Road (now Jalan Sultan Idris Shah) in Ipoh. Her published works are No Dram of Mercy (Neville Spearman, 1954; reprinted Oxford University Press, 1983 and Prometheus Enterprises, 2006) and Faces of Courage: A Revealing Historical Appreciation of Colonial Malaya's Legendary Kathigasu Family by Norma Miraflor & Ian Ward (2006).

No Dram of Mercy is Sybil Kathigasu's autobiography
 No Dram of Mercy is a book, written by Sybil Kathigasu, describing what the Japanese did in Malaya  and how the Kathigasu family and other Malayans endured and responded. It powerfully laid out how the Japanese targeted theChinese community in Malaya and how this drove the Chinese into the jungles to collaborate with the communists against the Japanese. Published in Britain in 1954, about 5 years after Sybil died, No Dram of Mercy contains a foreword by Richard Winstedt and an Introduction by Geoffrey E Cator.
 Why 'No Dram of Mercy' was written: A prayer that Sybil records in the book reveals why she wrote No Dram of Mercy, a title derived from a few lines in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice:

"Great Saint Anthony, please intercede for me with the Infant Jesus to give me the strength and courage to bear bravely what God's Holy Will has ordained for me. Let me face death, if I must, in the spirit of the Holy Martyrs. But if I am spared to write a book about what I have undergone, I promise that the proceeds from the sale of the book shall go to building a church in your name, in Ipoh, and, if there is any over when the church is completed, to the relief of the poor and suffering, whatever their race or religion. Please help me, Saint Anthony." — Kathigasu, Sybil. No Dram of Mercy (2006), pp. 162. Prometheus)

 At the time Sybil uttered the prayer, she was being held in Batu Gajah prison, awaiting trial against the 3 charges proffered against her:

1. acting as a spy on behalf of and in cooperation with the enemy agents in Malaya;
2. giving medical attention and other assistance to the Communist guerrillas and outlaws; and
3. possessing a radio set, listening to enemy broadcasts, and disseminating enemy propaganda.

 Four key attractions of No Dram of Mercy: No Dram of Mercy illuminates because it recounts the way the Japanese retained junior public servants (such as the police) in office, and how the Chinese were specially the targets of the Japanese.
 No Dram of Mercy inspires because it shows us that if we are true humanitarians, we can help our needy neighbors, even if we do not agree with their goals (Sybil herself was an ardent supporter of the British imperialists)
 No Dram of Mercy is readable. Written in the first person in simple English, it is broken into 20 short chapters, with an average length of 9 pages, illustrated with evocative photos of people and places.
 No Dram of Mercy is relevant because it comes across as honest storytelling by a "race-less" (Eurasian) lady who expended her life on behalf of people of different ethnicities in multi-racial Malaya.
 An enigma: No Dram of Mercy is somewhat enigmatic because it is not clear how the manuscript took shape. It does not have an author's preface, so we don't know who reviewed her manuscript, who worked with her on it, and who endured neglect, while she was writing. It doesn't have a foreword by her husband or daughters, whom we know outlived Sybil.
 No Dram of Mercy is also enigmatic because it does not reveal why she was treated so kindly by the British. Was it because her father was Irish and her brother, a soldier who died on the battlefield in Turkey (Gallipoli)?Perhaps the Brits did what the Communists requested.
During their interrogation and trial, Sybil and her husband did not reveal anything which could expose and weaken the resistance. It is no wonder that the communists called Sybil "mother" (page 80).


External links

• The Malaysian Insider: Sybil Kathigasu and Chin Peng: Imperialism and Umnoputra - Rama Ramanathan

Biography of Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng and summmaries of their novels

Biography of Tash Aw


Tash Aw, whose full name is Aw Ta-Shi is a Malaysian writer living in London. He was born in Taipei,

 Taiwan, to Malaysian parents, he grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before moving to England to study law at Jesus College, Cambridge and at the University of Warwick and then moved to London to write. After graduating he worked at a number of jobs, including as a lawyer for four years whilst writing his debut novel, which he completed during the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia.

His first novel, The Harmony Silk Factory, was published in 2005. He was longlisted

for the 2005 Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Whitbread Book Awards First Novel Award as well as the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel (Asia Pacific region).

His second novel, titled Map of the Invisible World, was released in May 2009 whereas his 2013 novel "Five Star Billionaire" was longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize.

 Short stories

   "To The City", Granta, 100 (Winter 2007)

   "Sail", A Public Space, Issue 13 (Summer 2011)

   "Tian Huaiyi", McSweeney's 42 (December 2012)

Essays

  "Look East, Look To The Future", Granta.com, May 25, 2012

  "My Hero, Rudy Hartono", The Guardian, August 9, 2013

Summaries of his novels

 The Harmony Silk Factory(2005)

"The Harmony Silk Factory is the textiles store run by Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant living in a rural region of Malaya, a British colony in Southeast Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. The factory is the most impressive and truly amazing structure in the region, and to the inhabitants of the Kinta Valley Johnny Lim is a hero-a Communist who fought the Japanese when they invaded, ready to sacrifice his life for the welfare of his people. But to his son, Jasper, Johnny is a crook and a collaborator who betrayed the very people he pretended to serve, and the Harmony Silk Factory is merely a front for his father's illegal businesses. Centering on Johnny from three perspectives-those of his grown son; his wife, Snow, the most beautiful woman in the Kinta Valley (through her diary entries); and his best and only friend, an Englishman adrift named Peter Wormwood-the novel reveals the difficulty of knowing another human being, and how our assumptions about others also determine who we are. "

Map of the Invisible World( 2009)
 This is the second novel by Tash Aw was released in 2009. It is about two brothers, Adam and Johan, who were abandoned by their mother as children, and later separated when they were adopted by different families in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Five Star Billionaire(2013)

Five Star Billionaire depicts the Chinese dream in a snakes-and-ladders universe of opportunity and ruin, through the eyes of Chinese Malaysians – from tycoons to factory girls – trying their luck in the new China. For Aw, whose own ancestors made the reverse journey out of southern China to Malaya, and who moved to England as a student in the early 1990s, this novel is about the people he grew up with, and is his "most personal" book. 

Biography of Tan Twan Eng

 Tan Twan Eng is a Malaysian author of fiction born in Penang in 1972.Tan studied law at the University of London, and later worked as an advocate and solicitor in one of Kuala Lumpur's law firms before becoming a full-time writer.He has a first-dan ranking in aikido and lives in Cape Town.

Summaries of his novels

Gift of Rain( 2007)

Tan Twan Eng's first novel,  The Gift of Rain, published in 2007, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. It is set in Penang before and during the Japanese Occupation of Malaya in Second World War. The Gift of Rain has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech, Serbian and French.

 It concerns Philip Hutton, of mixed Chinese-English heritage, and his relationship with Endo-San, a Japanese diplomat who teaches him aikido. As war looms and the Japanese invade, both Endo-San and Philip find themselves torn between their loyalty to each other and to their country and family respectively. Philip decides to assist the Japanese and Endo-San in administering the country in an attempt to keep his family safe, but wherever possible passes intelligence to the guerilla fighters of  Force 136 which include his best friend Kon.

The Garden of Evening Mists(2012)

The Garden of Evening Mists is the second novel by Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng, published in January 2012. The protagonist of the novel is the judge Yun Ling Teoh, who was a Japanese prisoner during Second World War, and later served as an apprentice of a Japanese gardener. As the story begins, she is trying to make sense of her life and experiences. The novel takes place during three different time periods: the late 1980s, when the main character writes down her story, the early 1950s, when the main action takes place, and Second World War, which provides the backdrop for the story.^[1]

Synopsis( further reading)

Newly retired Supreme Court Judge Yun Ling Teoh returns to theCameron Highlands of Malaya, where she spent a few months several years earlier. Oncoming aphasia is forcing her to deal with unsettled business from her youth while she is still able to remember. She starts writing her memoires, and agrees to meet with Japanese preofessor Yoshikawa Tatsuji. Tatsuji is interested in the life and works of artist Nakamura Aritomo, who used to be the gardener of the Japanese Emperor, but moved to this area to build his own garden.
During the Japanese Occupation of Malays, Yun Ling was in a Japanese civilian internment camp with her sister, Yun Hong. Yun Hong did not make it out alive, and after the war was over, Yun Ling decided to fulfil a promise made to her sister: to build a Japanese garden in their home in Kuala Lumpur. She travelled to the highlands to visit family friend Magnus Pretorius, an ex-patriate South African tea farmer who knew Aritomo. Aritomo refused to work for Yun Ling, but agreed to take her on as an apprentice, so she could later build her own garden. In spite of her resentment against the Japanese, she agreed to work for Aritomo, and later became his lover.
During the conversations with Tatsuji, it comes out that Aritomo was involved in a covert Japanese program during the war, to hide looted treasures from occupied territories. The rumours of this so-called "Golden Lily" program were widespread, and Magnus was killed trying to save his family from the Communist guerilla, who came looking for the gold. Aritomo never talked about the treasure to Yun Ling, but gradually it becomes clear that he might have left a clue to its location. Before he disappeared into the jungle, he made a horimono tattoo on her back. It now appears this tattoo might contain a map to the location of the treasure. Yun Ling decides that, before she dies, she must make sure that no-one will be able to get their hand on her body, and the map. In the meantime, she sets out to restore Aritomo's dilapidated garden.