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More reviews by Nigel Collett
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Body2Body by Jerome Kugan and Pang Khee Teik (eds.)
Even in largely Muslim-controlled and socially conservative Malaysia, the social ground is shifting. Slowly maybe, but enough to have begun to produce the beginnings of a queer culture (by which I mean a cultural sub-set of those of any sexual diversity, lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, or LGBT). The arts as always lead the way; film, the plastic arts and now literature are showing early signs of a liberalization of attitude in a country where the law lags way behind; gay sex, for example, remains illegal in Malaysia, though, unless you happen to be a politician who has made himself particular enemies within the system you are unlikely to face prosecution. This year saw the second Seksualiti Merdeka (sexual rights) conference in Kuala Lumpur, and the launch of the first anthology of queer short stories to be published in Malaysia, BODY2BODY. The brainchild of Matahari Books publisher and film-maker Amir Mohammed, and the book's two editors, writer Jerome Kugan and arts programme director Pang Khee Teik (both of KL's The Annexe Gallery), BODY2BODY took six years to come to fruition after the initial call for contributors went out on the net in 2003.
Response to this call was slow and patchy, and many contributors were too nervous to fulfill the team's requirement that the author must identify her or himself. The team was so discouraged that it gave up once, but in November 2008, after Amir Mohammed had started work as a publisher, work resumed and the result is with us now. From its KL birthplace, the book hopped to Singapore, and was launched at the month-long Indignation LGBT festival that ran from August to September this year. It is now on general release.
The criteria for acceptance set by the editors were wide; in paraphrase, almost anything except verse reflecting the queer life of Malaysia or Malaysians. As a result, the variety of work and language in this 240-page volume is very wide. Twenty-three writers of all genders and many races neatly reflect Malaysia's ethnic and social diversity. Each has a chapter to her or himself. None of them are very long, anything between four and seventeen pages with about ten being the norm, so this is a book into which to dip and to which you can return again and again; perfect for a plane trip to KL, perhaps! Each entry is very different; short stories predominate (there are nineteen of these) but there are also four essay-style chapters. The language employed is similarly diverse: English, of course, is the framework from which all the stories hang, but this is the English of modern Malaysia, a language that shows off its infusion of Malay and Chinese vocabulary and its idiom of the street. If you are unfamiliar with the patois, you will need to glide over it as you read, soaking up the flavour rather than puzzling over every word or phrase. For the devotees of South East Asia, the slang will delight.
As will the view revealed of the world from which this book lifts the lid, a world mostly hidden in the Malaysian society seen by outsiders, one with its own societal and family pressures, its personal anguish and its nowadays thankfully steadily growing personal freedom and joy. Transgender figures much more strongly here than one would have supposed; Malay society is revealed as being not too far removed from the Thai in this respect. Eroticism there is aplenty, of course, and sometimes as steamily as one would hope from the tropics, and the book's title, taken from the form of body massage where the practitioner uses his or her whole body as a massage tool, does not disappoint. It may not be only our minds that the authors are seeking to massage! There is here much that is touching and sad: the opening story by Brian Gomez, "What Do Gay People Eat", takes a wry look at the confusion in a traditional Indian family faced with being introduced to their son's boyfriend; Abirami Durai's "Have You Seen My Son" features a favourite son who returns from London as a woman and is met but not recognized by his unknowing Malay parents. There is satire and humour to leaven the seriousness: Faizad Nik Abdul Aziz's :The Friendship Dictator" takes a pot shot at the "ex-gay" movement and its effects on those who hope to change their natures; Zed Adam gives us an objective view of human sexuality in "The Old Fig Council", where animals observe the foolishness of human behaviour and point up its faults.
Groundbreaking is a much overused word, but one that is fully justified in this brave collection. We look forward with both interest and pleasure to what will grow from the furrows newly ploughed by BODY2BODY.
Nigel Collett
02/02/2010
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