Lack of appreciation towards Malaysian literature a worrying phenomenon

I’m writing this in a train. The day before, I hopped on the Amtrak California Zephyr in Chicago Union Station, heading to Emeryville in California. The train takes 51 hours to get to the destination, excluding delays.

But this time, the journey itself is the destination, the part I’m looking forward to the most.

So far the ride has been comfortable and rewarding: there’s leg room, power outlets, cafe, dining service, and stunning views of the American landscape, especially those national parks and mountains in the West. This is something you can’t get traveling by bus or plane.

But this essay is not about the train travel. Rather, it’s about an encounter with a certain passenger.

I first noticed him when I was walking around the coach. He was scribbling something in his tiny notebook. The next time I came to the lounge, he had a copy of Thoreau’s “Walden and Civil Disobedience’ on his table.

There’s something about people with literary books. They take the time to labor through the pages of the written words. They possess the patience to listen and understand the author, and the fine craft to appreciate what was said and unsaid.

I finally gathered the will to talk to this guy after the sun had set. His name is Ramin and he’s from Iran. I told him that his namesake (Ramin Karimloo) is a famous Broadway actor.

He was traveling too, and we chatted about our travels. After, we talked about literature – Russian, American, and of course, Iranian (Persian).

His eyes beamed with pride as he told me about Shiraz, nicknamed “the city of poets”. At least two famous poets, Hafez and Saadi, are from Shiraz.

Luckily I have read bits of Rumi and Nizami and was able to keep up with his discussion on Layla and Majnun. Although he spoke with disappointment about how Iranian literature has suffered since the 1979 revolution (according to him, religious authority and censorship tends to come in a pair), I can sense how proud he is with his country’s literary tradition.

I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing that he did not ask me about Malaysian literature.

What would I have said to him? I honestly don’t know. And I don’t think I can share his enthusiasm and knowledge about his country’s literature.

The only national laureate that I have read is A. Samad Said. Even then, it’s only one of his many works (“Salina”).

Usually I’m reluctant to generalis my experience but in this case, I’m pretty sure that my ignorance of our national literature is shared by most of my peers, and perhaps Malaysians in general.

We read short stories and trimmed version of major literary works in our school. But we never really instilled a love for literature, let alone our own literature.

Everyone, from the ministry down to the school officials, teachers, and parents, seemed to neglect literature and cast it aside as something insignificant. But if we do not appreciate our own poets, writers, and literary works, who else would? Who can we blame if not ourselves when our history is forgotten?

Then, there’s also the problem of language barriers. Many non-Malays do not make an effort to improve their Malay after SPM. Our mastery of the language is limited to casual conversation. Most of us have not read any book in Malay after we are done with secondary school.

Among the Malays, one would have thought that they are the ones who will most appreciate their literary tradition. But beneath the facade of ethnic pride and supremacist rhetoric, the Malays have mostly forgotten the history of their literature, too.

Ismail Hussein, writing in 1966, has this to say: The present interest of the Malay people towards their own traditional literature has been very mixed. On the one side there is the group of ardent nationalists who are eagerly grabbing anything that come in their way and trying to reconstruct it into a glorious cultural past at the expense of precision and historical accuracy. A member of this group will tell us of the rich literary heritage of the Malay people, but the probability is that he himself has not read four texts of this heritage and can hardly name twenty titles of that rich literature. On the other side, there is the group of young forward-looking people who are only interested in the present and the future, who are anxiously trying to forget the past, because the past has brought them nothing but embarrassment.” (Excerpt from  Ismail Hussein's “The Study of Traditional Malay Literature”).

Then there’s the question of “What exactly could be considered Malaysian literature?”

Even though America is a nation of immigrants, they mostly write in the same language. The same cannot be said of Malaysian writers.

Can any published work by a Malaysian author be considered Malaysian literature? That should be the case, but there seems to be a lack of appreciation for Malaysians writing in English, Chinese, Tamil or any other language. For example, Tan Twan Eng’s first novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech, Serbian and French.

One wonders why there isn’t a Malay translation in spite of the fact that the story is set in Penang.

His second novel was shortlisted for the same prize, and won the Man Asian Literary Prize as well as the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. I may have limited knowledge about Malaysian literature, but it seems to me that few current Malaysian authors are as internationally recognised as Tan Twan Eng. If he keeps on writing the good stuff, can he be eligible for the national laureate award?

I would just make a few more passing points. When the Interlok saga exploded, I thought it was uncalled for. If white Americans used to call their fellow countrymen a bunch of “niggers”, a literary work should not be censored because it contains the N-word. The literary piece just describes the way things were, and if anything, the future generation should be exposed to the crimes of the past so as not to repeat them.

Another case of over-sensitivity involves the usage of the Malay language. Malaysians, especially the Malays, should be proud when others want to write in the national language. But what we are seeing in recent times is that some people are afraid that certain works written or translated into Malay could “confuse” the people.

When Uthaya Sankar SB writes about Indian mythologies in Malay, certain people complain about it being “sesat” despite the fact that the ancient Malay epics are full of such mythological elements.

Another local author, Faisal Tehrani, has been repeatedly censored and his books banned by the Home Ministry for containing “foreign elements”. Such mentality would not carry us very far.

I hope there will be a day when I can speak of my country’s literature with as much enthusiasm, interest and knowledge as Ramin does.

Recently, an independent book publisher, Fixi, has reprinted Usman Awang’s works. With luck, I would want to get copies of Usman Awang, Shahnon Ahmad, and Munshi Abdullah’s literary works when I return home. If you have additional suggestions, let me know!

For now, the Iranian traveler and I parted ways and both of us knew that we would probably never meet again. I promised that I would look up his favorite Persian poem, “Vis and Ramin”, and said goodbye.– May 30 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.