NIU Southeast Asian

"Light Out" and Modern Vietnamese Stories, 1930–1954, translated by Quan Manh Ha and Paul Christiansen, with an essay by Ng Văn Giá, is the first anthology in English of colonial Vietnamese literature written by canonical authors. Light Out depicts colonial exploitation, impoverished peasants at the mercy of precarious crop cycles, and institutionalized corruption that pits peasants against village officials. Set over the course of a few days, the novella presents an intimate look into the rural society in northern Vietnam during the height of French colonialism, exposing the brutal realities of the period and the impact such deprivations have on the human spirit. The eighteen short stories included in this book thematically delineate colonial abuses, class discrimination, patriarchal expectations, and livelihoods tethered to an unstable environment. Aesthetically, they illuminate the impact of French literary traditions and Western thought on Vietnamese traditions of storytelling.

A Sense of Place and Belonging examines a marginalized society, Chiang Tung (Keng Tung) in the Eastern Shan State of Myanmar, between the dominant cultures of the Burmese, Chinese, and Siamese/Thai. Chiang Tung sits at the historic borderland known as the Golden Triangle, an area marked by drug trade, human trafficking, and civil war. Hiding a glorious literary and visual cultural tradition from the fourteenth century, Chiang Tung is remarkable for how well it has maintained its Buddhist culture in the turbulent history of war and forced resettlement that formed northern Southeast Asia. Klemens Karlsson examines the connection between the Buddhist traditions, the ancient cult of territory spirits-a cult of the earth, place, and village that forms a kind of religious map-and the monsoon culture of wet rice irrigation. Tying together myths and memories told by local people and written in local chronicles with the unique performance of the Songkran festival, which dramatizes a symbolic agreement between Tai Khuen people and the indigenous Lua/Lawa people, A Sense of Place and Belonging presents a historical, political, religious, and cultural context connecting the present with the past, the local with the global, and tradition with change and transformation.

Inside Voices, a play by Nabilah Said, blends dark comedy and magic realism in its subversive portrayal of three Singaporean Muslim women challenging the bounds of freedom, feminism and faith in a place that isn't home. It was first performed as part of the 2019 VAULT Festival, London. Also available in the collection Plays from VAULT 4.

On the eve of her coronation, Victoria is having a bath. Out of her chimney falls Edward 'The Boy' Jones. Again. Adored by the tabloids and hated by the establishment, his repeated break-ins to the palace remain a mystery to all. Except Victoria. An epic romcom, Victoria's Knickers tells the story of an unlikely romance between the Queen of England and a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Will the teenage lovers survive a power-crazed Lord Conroy, the Chartists and Prince Albert? Set against the backdrop of an uncertain England and with original songs from Chris Cookson, Josh Azouz's play Victoria's Knickers is an irreverent tale of passion and violence told with an anarchic heart and a razor-sharp wit. The play premiered at Soho Theatre, London, in October 2018, performed by the National Youth Theatre and directed by Ned Bennett.

The Saigon Sisters offers the narratives of a group of privileged women who were immersed in a French lycée and later rebelled and fought for independence, starting with France's occupation of Vietnam and continuing through U.S. involvement and life after war ends in 1975. Tracing the lives of nine women, The Saigon Sisters reveals these women's stories as they forsook safety and comfort to struggle for independence, and describes how they adapted to life in the jungle, whether facing bombing raids, malaria, deadly snakes, or other trials. How did they juggle double lives working for the resistance in Saigon? How could they endure having to rely on family members to raise their own children? Why, after being sent to study abroad by anxious parents, did several women choose to return to serve their country? How could they bear open-ended separation from their husbands? How did they cope with sending their children to villages to escape the bombings of Hanoi? In spite of the maelstrom of war, how did they forge careers? And how, in spite of dislocation and distrust following the end of the war in 1975, did these women find each other and rekindle their friendships? Patricia D. Norland answers these questions and more in this powerful and personal approach to history.