SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English
type: channel
description: SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English is an international peer-reviewed journal founded in 1980. It publishes scholarly articles and reviews, interviews, and other lively and critical interventions. Serving as an electronic journal from 2016, SARE aims to be a key critical forum for original research and fresh conversations from all over the world on the literatures, languages, and cultures of Southeast, South, and East Asia. It particularly welcomes theoretically-informed articles on the literary and other cultural productions of these regions. SARE has been committed from its inception to featuring original and unpublished poems and short fiction.
publisher: Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Malaya
language: en
publication name: SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English
issn: 0127-046X
copyright: Copyrights of all materials published in SARE are retained by the authors. Authors may republish their work or grant others permission to republish it. We would be grateful if republication is accompanied by an acknowledgment that the work was originally published in SARE.
items: EDITORIAL
items: Notes on Contributors
items: Narrativizing Memory’s End: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Indian English Dementia Narratives
items: Between Mothers and Daughters: Acts of Care and the Reclamation of Self in Geetanjali Shree’s Fiction
items: Mediated Transmissions and the Construction of the Disenfranchised Malaysian Tamil Child in the Film Jagat
items: Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me
items: NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
items: EDITORIAL Connections and Divisions Across Borders
items: A Book Review on Quan Manh Ha and Cab Tran's (editors) _The Colors of April: Fiction on the Vietnam War's Legacy 50 Years Later_
items: (Re)awakening of Naga Oral History and Culture: An Interview with Avinuo Kire
items: The Lover's Villanelle
items: “Most Lankans are Silent Seethers”: Haunting as Resistance, Spectral Temporality, and “the Dark Heart of Lanka” in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
items: Diary Poem, Hong Kong
items: Japan in the United States Reverse Course
items: The Economics of Oppression
items: Gagak Hitam
items: Of Clerics and Queens: Nghi Vo on Genre, Identity and Crafting Stories
items: Book Review His Majesty’s Headhunters: The Siege of Kohima that shaped World History by Mmhonlumo Kikon
items: Reimagining Animism
items: Flowers From Afar
items: Comedians Performing the Margins
items: The Postcolonial Millennium
items: Foodocracy and the Politics of Radical Care in The Black Soil
items: Precarious Lives of Rohingya Refugee Women Emerging as Caregivers: A Visual Analysis of the Refugee Webcomic I Am a Leader of My House
items: Precarious Oceans and Vulnerability: Micropolitics of Care in Romesh Gunesekera’s Reef
items: Aging, Alzheimer’s, and Precarity: Comprehending Vulnerabilities and Care Approaches in Select Indian Fictional Narratives
items: Symbiogenesis, Biocapitalism, and Subversion in Tabish Khair’s The Body by the Shore

EDITORIAL
type: item
description: -
subject: Editorial
  topic: section
creator: Sharifah Aishah Osman
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Sharifah Aishah Osman http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29
starting page: i
ending page: v

Notes on Contributors
type: item
description: Notes on Contributors NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS This section introduces the contributors to SARE Vol. 62, Issue 2 Dec (2025)
subject: Notes on Contributors
  topic: section
creator: Sharifah Aishah Osman
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Sharifah Aishah Osman http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29
starting page: 137
ending page: 140

Narrativizing Memory’s End: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Indian English Dementia Narratives
type: item
description: This paper provides an overview of contemporary Indian English narratives of dementia, exploring the complex interplay between narrative strategies and the representation of dementia subjectivity, reflecting wider socio-cultural attitudes toward the illness. The study examines Indian fiction and non-fiction published in English since the 21st century in the wake of a firm disability consciousness globally. By analysing six concurrent caregiver memoirs and fictional texts produced in the Indian literary scene, namely, In the Line of Alzheimer’s: The Mission Continues (2009) by S. P. Bhattacharjya, Krishna: Living with Alzheimer’s (2015) by Ranabir Samaddar, A World Within (2014) by Minakshi Chaudhry, Our Nana was a Nutcase (2015) by Ranjit Lal, Girl in White Cotton (2020) by Avni Doshi, and Mrs. C Remembers (2017) by Himanjali Sankar, the research underscores the challenges in representing the lived experiences of dementia vis-à-vis issues of identity, memory, and aging. The paper explores the ethical dilemmas in narrating dementia – balancing agency, limitations of empathy, and politics of representation, alongside the convergence of biomedical and socio-cultural discourses that influence how dementia is portrayed, understood and treated. The study concludes with insights into contemporary dementia narratives and suggests future interdisciplinary research directions within the Indian context.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Mousana Nightingale Chowdhury
creator: Payal Jain
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Mousana Nightingale Chowdhury , Payal Jain http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29
starting page: 52
ending page: 77

Between Mothers and Daughters: Acts of Care and the Reclamation of Self in Geetanjali Shree’s Fiction
type: item
description: This study will explore the multifaceted nature of caregiving, with a particular focus on the intergenerational exchange between mothers and daughters in Indian families. Caregiving is often understood as unpaid labour; however, it is actually a much more nuanced relational endeavour influenced by diverse factors in which it is situated, which may be emotional, cultural, and economic (Breier 2021). In these families, daughters are often seen as primary caregivers, a role that is reinforced by social norms and beliefs about intergenerational filial duty. Caregiving varies greatly among families, influenced by factors such as financial independence and dependency norms, often creating an unequal burden for women. This paper grapples with these issues by exploring Geetanjali Shree’s Mai (2017) and Tomb of Sand(2018), honouring the lived experiences of adult daughters who engage in the multifaceted and complex realities of caregiving. The narratives also reveal the complexity of caring for their mothers, particularly in relation to the mother’s struggle to reclaim her identity, which has been largely obscured by the normative role of caregiving.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: DEBASHRITA DEY
creator: Priyanka Tripathi
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Debashrita Dey, Priyanka Tripathi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29
starting page: 78
ending page: 105

Mediated Transmissions and the Construction of the Disenfranchised Malaysian Tamil Child in the Film Jagat
type: item
description: This article explores the filmic mediated transmissions of Malaysian Tamil working class childhood in the Malaysian Tamil feature film, Jagat (2015) as a significant platform for accessing and understanding the experience of Malaysian Indian children largely underrepresented in general scholarship of the community. We do this mainly through focusing on the perspective of the film’s main child protagonist. Film scenes and images are interpreted through a methodology incorporating the four-pillared Indian ideological concept of mātā, pitā, guru and daivam. We argue that the film highlights how the harsh realities confronting Malaysian Indian working-class families can greatly hinder the influence of parents, elders, role models, and religion in guiding children's development during their formative years. Through its various filmic constructions of a working-class Tamil childhood, Jagat serves to highlight the vicious cycle of social marginalization that takes seed early on. Such comprehensive understanding of the journey of disenfranchised Malaysian Tamil children is crucial for raising awareness and fostering empathy. This broader perspective may help shift the narrative from blame and accusations, which often focus solely on Indian gangsterism as an adult problem.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Janagi Komravaloo
creator: SHANTHINI PILLAI
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Janagi Komravaloo, Shanthini Pillai http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29
starting page: 1
ending page: 26

Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me
type: item
description: Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me (2025) is a deeply layered memoir of her mother, Mary Roy, a renowned educator, activist, and uncompromising feminist voice. Written in the aftermath of Mary Roy’s death in 2022, the text resists the conventional portrayal of the mother as purely nurturing and compassionate, instead presenting a figure marked by paradox and defiance. The memoir unfolds through a series of juxtapositions: love and estrangement, success and failure, insider and outsider, revealing the tensions that shaped their bond. At once personal and political, the book testifies to Roy’s own trajectory as writer-activist while foregrounding the enduring relevance of her mother’s grit as her strength in life. This review critically engages with Roy’s reframing of motherhood, her articulation of the personal as political, and the text’s broader resonances for gender studies and creative writing.
subject: Book Reviews
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Shilpa Nataraj
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Shilpa Nataraj https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29
starting page: 133
ending page: 136

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
type: item
description: NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS This section introduces the contributors to SARE Vol. 62, Issue 1 (2025), highlighting their diverse academic and creative backgrounds. From postgraduate students to senior scholars, their work spans comparative literature, folklore, ecocriticism, postcolonialism, indigenous storytelling, and translation, reflecting the journal’s transnational and interdisciplinary focus across Asia and beyond.
subject: Notes on Contributors
  topic: section
creator: Susan Philip
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Farid Mohammadi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-29
publication date: 2025-06-29
starting page: 148
ending page: 150
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol62no1.10

EDITORIAL Connections and Divisions Across Borders
type: item
description: EDITORIAL: Connections and Divisions Across Borders This farewell editorial reflects on SARE’s evolving role in connecting South, Southeast, and East Asian literatures and cultures. Highlighting articles on ecological entanglements, class oppression, transnational communities, and minority voices, it emphasizes recurring themes of unity amid division, and thanks colleagues while welcoming a new editorial team to continue SARE’s legacy.
subject: Editorial
  topic: section
creator: Susan Philip
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Farid Mohammadi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-29
publication date: 2025-06-29
starting page: i
ending page: v
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol62no1.1

A Book Review on Quan Manh Ha and Cab Tran's (editors) _The Colors of April: Fiction on the Vietnam War's Legacy 50 Years Later_
type: item
description: Abstract The Colors of April, edited by Quan Manh Ha and Cab Tran, is a pioneering anthology that includes a range of short stories that amplifies the voices of Vietnamese and Vietnamese American authors. In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of the Vietnam War (1975-2025), the book aims to challenge false conceptions of this war through the collection of multiple perspectives and stories that address how the war impacted different people, regardless of their political and militaristic affiliations. The major themes of this text include displacement, trauma, and transnational remembrance. This book also provides a broader understanding of war and seeks to highlight the political and ethical act of translational and multi-cultural literature—an act that demonstrates the humanity that is often forgotten in the turmoils of war.
subject: Book Reviews
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Broderick Smith
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Brody Smith http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-29
publication date: 2025-06-29
starting page: 139
ending page: 143
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol62no1.8

(Re)awakening of Naga Oral History and Culture: An Interview with Avinuo Kire
type: item
description: Naga literary works have their roots in oral traditions which serve as the repository of the Naga people’s Indigenous knowledge, cultural identity, beliefs, customs and festivals despite historical and modern upheavals. Among modern writers of Nagaland, Avinuo Kire is notable for her vivid portrayal of the oral tradition of storytelling that deftly combines Naga mythology, history, and folklore, thus making her works significant for comprehending the tenacity and depth of Naga’s cultural legacy and heritage. In this conversation, Kire talks about her deliberate contribution in positioning the Naga worldview through her writing, subverting prevailing grand narratives that frequently ignore Indigenous history and culture. The interview further emphasizes the significance of indigenous educational systems, such as the Morung, which were formerly essential for passing down traditional knowledge, values, and worldviews. Kire argues for the Morung system, which functions as a place of memory that can support cultural (re)awakening of Naga oral history, even though its traditional significance has been fading due to the arrival of Christianity and the spread of the Western education system in Nagaland.
subject: Interview
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Bhagyashree Saikia
creator: Binod Mishra
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Bhagyashree Saikia, Binod Mishra http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29
starting page: 115
ending page: 127

The Lover's Villanelle
type: item
description: -
subject: Fiction & Poetry
  topic: section
creator: Ayman Hareez Muhammad Adib
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Ratu Yousei http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29
starting page: 128
ending page: 128

“Most Lankans are Silent Seethers”: Haunting as Resistance, Spectral Temporality, and “the Dark Heart of Lanka” in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
type: item
description: This paper foregrounds Shehan Karunatilaka’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’s function as a reflection on the concept of haunting as resistance against forgetting, focusing on the notion of spectral temporality within the context of Sri Lanka itself as a spectral space informed by cultural amnesia. Leveraging Avery Gordon’s framework of ‘haunting’ through her work Ghostly Mattersas a component of social life, and Jacques Derrida’s specterintroduced in his work Specters of Marx, the paper follows traces of absent presences by interrogating the ways in which Sri Lanka’s ghosts demand reclamation of silenced events and delayed justice. This paper argues that The Seven Moons deploys haunting as a mode of political resistance through certain interconnected mechanisms rooted in Sri Lanka’s post-war context: enforced disappearance as state practice, photography as counter archive against institutional erasure, and the figure of Mahakali as expression of collective rage – all grounded in specific “sites of death”. It looks at enforced disappearance as a tool of state terror strategically employed by the Sri Lankan state, alongside laying bare distinctive triggers that actively participate in resisting institutionalized erasure. Finally, it evokes the haunting quality of certain sites of death suggesting their temporal discontinuity.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Shreyaa Gajraj
creator: Nagendra Kumar
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Shreyaa Gajraj, Nagendra Kumar http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29
starting page: 27
ending page: 51

Diary Poem, Hong Kong
type: item
description: -
subject: Fiction & Poetry
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Srinjay Chakravarti
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Srinjay Chakravarti http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29
starting page: 129
ending page: 132

Japan in the United States Reverse Course
type: item
description: This article examines how Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World (1986) represents the ambivalence of Ono, its Japanese narrator in postwar Japan, as he confronts his past role in creating propagandistic posters for the Japanese Empire’s militarism during the United States Reverse Course. After World War II, the US occupation of Japan (1945–1952), which marked the US Empire’s dismantling of the Japanese Empire, initially sought to demilitarise Japan. However, to counter communism, around 1947 or 1948, the US introduced the Reverse Course in Japan, which contradictorily relaxed its demilitarisation efforts and permitted remilitarisation. The Reverse Course’s contradictory messages about militarisation, this article argues, serve as the backdrop for Artist’s depiction of Ono’s ambivalence about his past involvement in Japanese militarism. Mobilising Laura Doyle’s inter-imperiality, the textual analysis demonstrates that, under the US Empire’s Reverse Course, Ono is ambivalent about admitting his past advocacy of the Japanese Empire’s militarism was wrong, despite acknowledging the ideology’s severe consequences in postwar Japan. It shows how the US Reverse Course perpetuated remnants of Japanese militarism after the war The findings fill the research gap of current scholarship on Artist, which is rarely grounded in Japan’s postwar history intertwined with the US.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Ngoi Hui Chien
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Hui Chien Ngoi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-29
publication date: 2025-06-29
starting page: 109
ending page: 135
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol62no1.6

The Economics of Oppression
type: item
description: This research paper examines gendered domestic servitude in the Pakistani social milieu through Uzma Aslam Khan’s debut novel The Story of Noble Rot, highlighting the subaltern subject positioning of female domestic workers within a deeply stratified society. It scrutinizes the contrasting lives of a maidservant and an affluent businessman’s wife to explore the rigid master-servant dynamic shaped by economic disparity and patriarchal control. The analysis delineates how patriarchal structures dictate women’s roles, showing that wealth does not always guarantee autonomy, nor does financial contribution ensure ascendancy within the household. The relationships Mrs. Masood and Malika hold, both with the men in their lives and with each other, emphasize the pervasive discrimination that continues to shape women’s lived experiences in contemporary Pakistani society. By focusing on the master-servant relationship and broader societal disparities, the paper underscores the structural inequalities that keep domestic workers in cycles of penury, limiting their social and financial mobility despite temporary shifts in power.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Fatima Hassan
creator: Shalini A/P Nadaswaran
creator: Sharifah Aishah Osman
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Fatima Hassan, Shalini A/P Nadaswaran, Sharifah Aishah Osman http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-29
publication date: 2025-06-29
starting page: 65
ending page: 85
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol62no1.4

Gagak Hitam
type: item
description: This poem is a Malay-English hybrid poem, predominantly in the Malay language, from the point of view of a crow in Malaysia, a so-called Malaysian. A line-by-line English translation has been provided for the Malay words, unless it sounds better to include or exclude certain parts, in which case (artistic) liberty has been taken and the lines do not match, though this is rare. Certain words have not been translated where the translation has been given in the original poem itself. This poem attempts to characterise the crow’s misgivings about humans in general, while at the same time lending itself some human qualities. Perhaps this crow may even be misanthropic in nature, though in manner and in scale, no more destructive (if not less) than humans. It can be argued that the crow, in highlighting its desire to add layers of meaning to its name, is also revealing its secret wish and intentions, in the way that humans too have desires.
subject: Fiction & Poetry
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Chee Kein (Arthur) Neong
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Chee Kein (Arthur) Neong http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-29
publication date: 2025-06-29
starting page: 136
ending page: 138
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol62no1.7

Of Clerics and Queens: Nghi Vo on Genre, Identity and Crafting Stories
type: item
description: Best known for her elegant storytelling, lush detail, and evocative prose, Nghi Vo is the acclaimed author of The Empress of Salt and Fortune, the first in an ongoing series of novellas called The Singing Hills Cycle. Her body of work also includes the novels Siren Queen, The Chosen and the Beautiful, and The City in Glass. She has won the Hugo Award, the Crawford Award, and the Ignyte Award, and her books have been repeatedly featured in NPR’s Best of the Year lists, securing her place as a significant and distinctive voice in speculative fiction. This interview was conducted via email between May and June 2024. It touches upon the nature of the genre and forms of fantasy fiction, the significance of being a POC (person of colour) writer of speculative fiction, queerness, and worldbuilding. Vo speaks of the importance of creating counternarratives, the collaborative creation of storyworlds by author and reader, about disruption, the importance of authoring yourself, and choosing the stories we tell about ourselves.
subject: Interview
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Rheanna Mathews
creator: Sharmila Narayana
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Rheanna Mathews, Sharmila Narayana http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29
starting page: 105
ending page: 114

Book Review His Majesty’s Headhunters: The Siege of Kohima that shaped World History by Mmhonlumo Kikon
type: item
description: Mmhonlumo Kikon’s His Majesty’s Headhunters: The Siege of Kohima that Shaped World History (2023) is a significant addition to the historiography of Northeast India, particularly in the context of colonialism and World War II. The book challenges dominant historical narratives by centering the agency of the Naga people in both resisting British imperialism and playing a decisive role in the Battle of Kohima. Through a combination of archival research and oral histories, Kikon reclaims the Indigenous perspective, offering a counter-narrative to colonial accounts that have long marginalized Naga voices. This review critically engages with Kikon’s methodological interventions, his argument on the erasure of Naga contributions, and the book’s broader implications for postcolonial and decolonial historiography.
subject: Book Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Lucy Keneikhrienuo Yhome
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Lucy Keneikhrienuo Yhome http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-29
publication date: 2025-06-29
starting page: 144
ending page: 147
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol62no1.9

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
type: item
description: NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
subject: Notes on Contributors
  topic: section
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Susan Philip http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
date: 2024-12-29
publication date: 2024-12-29
starting page: 138
ending page: 140
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol61no2.10

EDITORIAL
type: item
description: EDITORIAL: Minorities Speak Up This is not a special issue – and yet, entirely unplanned, we have a slate of articles which focus on minorities and how they resist authoritative impositions, whether in relation to ethnicity or gender or sexuality. Perhaps this reflects the zeitgeist. In a global landscape where minority rights and autonomy are increasingly under threat (think, for example, of the chilling slogan “Her body, my rights”), and where homeland and belonging are often precarious concepts at best (what does ‘home’ mean for Palestinians? Where is home for refugees and other displaced persons?), literature offers a space for acts of resistance. The fact that all five of the articles in this issue are concerned with acknowledging and centering this resistance in some form, speaks to the urgency and currency of these matters.
subject: Editorial
  topic: section
creator: Susan Philip
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Susan Philip http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-12-29
publication date: 2024-12-29
starting page: i
ending page: iv
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol61no2.1

Reimagining Animism
type: item
description: This paper explores the complex interplay between human consciousness, nature, and spiritual realms in folklore from the Malay world through the lens of the ecocritical psyche. By reimagining animism beyond colonialist interpretations, the study reveals a worldview where the psyche extends into the environment, and life, death, morality, and community are interconnected across vertical and horizontal axes. The vertical axis governs transitions between realms, with ancestors, death, and spiritual beliefs exemplifying the reciprocal relationship between the living and the spiritual world. In contrast, the horizontal axis highlights the community’s responsibility to maintain harmony, reflected through rituals like the Turun Ka Bondang ceremony and Ritual of Sebayuh. Through analyses of tales such as the crocodile “Buwaya” and “Kangkuksa Pelesit,” the paper also demonstrates how forces of good and evil are intertwined with cultural, ecological, and psychological dimensions. Fundamentally, Malay animism, as reflected in these stories, offers a sophisticated system of ecological and psychological integration, where balance is not fixed but actively cultivated. This study affirms that sustainable relationships with the natural world, spiritual realms, and communal life are essential for psychological wholeness and ecological harmony in the Malay cosmos.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Azalea Ahmad Kushairi
creator: Zainor Izat Zainal
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Azalea Ahmad Kushairi & Zainor Izat Zainal http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-29
publication date: 2025-06-29
starting page: 32
ending page: 64
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol62no1.3

Flowers From Afar
type: item
description: This essay explores the agency of the nonhuman—particularly flowers, both organic and artificial—in activating possibilities of a community. Considering the predominance of Eurowestern scholarship in the nonhuman turn, this essay takes as its critical point of departure the marginal context of the Philippines and its diaspora through selected material artistic and literary texts. The essay first examines the work Mayflowers (2021) which stages an encounter with Filipino migrants in various parts of the world through paper flowers, virtually allowing them to be in their home country during the COVID-19 pandemic. To further expound on the floral agency at work, the essay then reads the 1886 poem “A las flores de Heidelberg” by the Filipino patriot José Rizal, approaching it beyond its typical appreciation as a nostalgic ode to the Philippines through comparing it with the Thai poetic genre of nirat (นิราศ). In doing so, the flower is recognized to be a matter capable of yoking together distant subjects, allowing the unfolding an epiphytic community. To extend the prospect of the latter beyond mere nationalism, the essay takes a final turn to another community involved with the craft of making flowers in Central Thailand, juxtaposing them with the community of Filipino migrants brought together by Mayflowers, as to constellate their comparable plights toward a solidarity that is especially made visible by these nonhuman matters.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Christian Jil Repalda Benitez
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Christian Jil Repalda Benitez http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-29
publication date: 2025-06-29
starting page: 1
ending page: 31
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol62no1.2

Comedians Performing the Margins
type: item
description: This study compares the representations of gender in the comedic performances of Tito, Vic, and Joey (TVJ) from the Philippines and Dono, Kasino, and Indro (Warkop DKI) from Indonesia, using the framework of hegemonic masculinities. These trios embodied gendered identities that reflected and reinforced the strongman politics of the 1970s and 1980s under Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in the Philippines and Suharto in Indonesia. While both groups portrayed themselves as rebellious outliers and tricksters in the urban landscapes of Manila and Jakarta, their humor paradoxically served to bolster state power reinforcing traditional masculine dynamics. Through their performances, these comedians navigated a nuanced interplay between insubordination and subservience, which concealed far more insidious forms of tyranny and corruption within their respective socio-political contexts. This paper demonstrates how these comedic representations reveal and reinforce shared cultural practices in Southeast Asia, bridging the perceived divide between the Philippines and Indonesia despite their distinct religious and colonial histories.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Joseph Salazar
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Joseph Salazar http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-06-29
publication date: 2025-06-29
starting page: 86
ending page: 108
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol62no1.5

The Postcolonial Millennium
type: item
description: Review of The Postcolonial Millennium
subject: Book Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Pauline Newton
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Pauline Newton http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-12-29
publication date: 2024-12-29
starting page: 122
ending page: 127
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol61no2.7

Notes on Contributors
type: item
description: Notes on Contributors
subject: Notes on Contributors
  topic: section
creator: Susan Philip
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Susan Philip http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-06-30
publication date: 2024-06-30
starting page: 278
ending page: 286
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol61no1.21

Foodocracy and the Politics of Radical Care in The Black Soil
type: item
description: The paper examines the extractive forces that systematically erode the life conditions of the citizens of Perumalpuram village. Deprived of any rights, even the right to be identified as humans, the villagers are treated as wasted lives, good enough only to work without any monetary benefit, on the farms owned illegally by the village head, Sarkaraisamy, also known as the Master. Focussing on the food shortage and lack of affective bonds, the paper advocates a turn from governmentality to caremenatlity, the base of which is the creation, recognition, and promotion of foodocracy and networks of care. It identifies foodocracy as a reformative movement, exposing the structural inequity and disfranchisement and leading to enhanced vulnerability in Perumalpuram and the surrounding regions. That foodocracy should not be limited to this village but become a zeitgeist in the global fight for equal access to food is the central argument of this paper. That is to say, this paper underlines the need to make foodocracy a global movement for collective survival.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Om Prakash Dwivedi
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Om Prakash Dwivedi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-12-30
publication date: 2023-12-30
starting page: 133
ending page: 151
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol61no1.8

Precarious Lives of Rohingya Refugee Women Emerging as Caregivers: A Visual Analysis of the Refugee Webcomic I Am a Leader of My House
type: item
description: The paper offers a close analysis of the refugee webcomic titled I am a Leader of My House, produced online in 2021 by the non-profit organization PositiveNegatives in partnership with The New Humanitarian, to decipher the everyday struggle of Rohingya refugee women through the interaction of the two female protagonists, Romida and Hafsa whose roles as agentic survivors tend to transform the lives of other refugee women in the Cox’s Bazaar refugee camp in Bangladesh. Drawing on Judith Butler’s concepts of “precarity” and “frames of recognition” the paper textually and visually examines the individual challenges they face, as women emerging in leadership roles against the cultural and neoliberal norms, to “care” for the vulnerable women and children in the camps. The gendered dimension adds another layer to the form of life already burdened with a precarious legal status as women’s reproductive health, maternal care, and the specific challenges they face are often overlooked. The paper argues for recognizing such challenges and assigning them more responsibilities which can be a strategic and empathetic response to address their specific needs while it is also a culturally sensitive approach considering the conservative cultural norms and restricted interactions between genders in the Rohingya society.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Rishav Bali
creator: Isha Malhotra
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Rishav Bali & Isha Malhotra http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-06-30
publication date: 2024-06-30
starting page: 103
ending page: 132
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol61no1.7

Precarious Oceans and Vulnerability: Micropolitics of Care in Romesh Gunesekera’s Reef
type: item
description: Inoperative grammatology of post(g)locality followed by the incremental desires of neoliberal elites to marketize abundant oceanic resources scattered across the world renders the oceans extremely vulnerable—an appalling phenomenon which at once lays bare the vulnerability of the oceans conditioned by the strands of ‘precariousness’ and at times calls for the actualization of ‘micropolitics of care’—an ethically sound exercise which seems to be able to hold the oceans back from being economically subjected to the predatory ‘faces’ of contemporary neoliberal precarity. In this context, Romesh Gunesekera’s Reef is critically taken up to examine the rapid disappearance of coral reefs along with the illegal marketing of endangered marine species like dolphin so as to make readers aware of how the ocean stands at risk and moreover to put literary emphasis on the enactment of ‘micropolitics of care’ which seems to be able to effectively take on the wicked designs of contemporary neoliberal precarity for the greater sake of planetary consciousness.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Abhisek Ghosal
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Abhisek Ghosal http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-06-30
publication date: 2024-06-30
starting page: 80
ending page: 102
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol61no1.6

Aging, Alzheimer’s, and Precarity: Comprehending Vulnerabilities and Care Approaches in Select Indian Fictional Narratives
type: item
description: Aging and late-life realities are significantly determined by the experience of impairments, which introduces vulnerabilities, potentially resulting in a sense of devaluation due to dependence and an increased likelihood of facing disadvantages or unmet needs. The requirement for care, evaluated through instances of age-entailed cognitive and functional limitations, underlines the vulnerability associated with later age. Examining aging through the interpretive lens of precarity aids in configuring what it means to live a marginalized life with disabling conditions in contexts related to care, assistance, and support. With epidemiological studies emphasizing the projected surge of Alzheimer’s in India, the intersectional paradigm of critical disability studies and precarity studies have proffered new approaches to interpret, produce, and narrativize knowledge related to age-specific diseases, their diagnosis, and their treatment. This paper focuses on examining how fictional deliberations - Anuradha Sharma Pujari’s Jalsobi: In the Shadow of Light (2018) and Avni Doshi’s Girl in White Cotton (2019) - configure precarity through the markers of frailty, vulnerability, and increased dependency in older Indian women with diminishing cognitive capacities. It engages with the experientiality of cumulative losses -memory, functionality, and agency during old age, attempting to create alternative discourses of care that can confront and respond to the underlying vulnerabilities of conditions like Alzheimer’s.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
subject: Array
  topic: keywords
creator: Debashrita Dey
creator: Priyanka Tripathi
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Debashrita Dey, Priyanka Tripathi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-06-30
publication date: 2024-06-30
starting page: 49
ending page: 79
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol61no1.5

Symbiogenesis, Biocapitalism, and Subversion in Tabish Khair’s The Body by the Shore
type: item
description: Tabish Khair’s The Body by the Shore explores the widening gulf between the Islamic and the non-Islamic world and the equation of the Muslims with a threatening germ in a futuristic setting. Symbiosis (be it mutualism, commensalism or even parasitism) subverts an essentialist concept of ‘individuality’; interprets evolution of life forms as a collaborative process and foregrounds the idea of the Gaia as very much a living being. Khair’s speculative post-pandemic novel narrative is a scathing attack on biocapitalism, xenophobia and the twin forces of profit and privatization. The technicalities of molecularization have reduced human life to a series of digital chromosomal codes facilitating innovative ways of commoditization of life and furthering biocapitalism. The dystopian vision articulated by Khair in the novel asks for an intervention from a different perspective. Stuart Murray’s reconceptualization of Foucault’s “open and dynamic” “self-self” relation would act as liberation from the reductionism of biotechnology and allow the human self to slough off the state of domination of biocapitalism and look forward to a zone of fluidity and creativity.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Binayak Roy
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Binayak Roy http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-06-30
publication date: 2024-06-30
starting page: 28
ending page: 48
doi: 10.22452/sare.vol61no1.4