Survivor: The Malayan Rainforest with Jeremy Tiang

Welcome to episode 6 of the Mynah Podcast, brought to you by Mynah Magazine! Editors Ruby and Darren are joined by Jeremy Tiang to discuss his translation of Hai Fan’s Delicious Hunger, the offcuts of Singaporean history, multilingualism, and the Marxist conspiracy to make us all touch grass.Jeremy Tiang is a Singaporean novelist, playwright and translator from Chinese, currently based in New York City. He was awarded the Singapore Literature Prize for his novel State of Emergency and for his translation of Zhang Yueran's Cocoon, and he recently won an Obie Award for his play Salesman之死. To learn more about Jeremy and for more context on this episode, read our newsletter at mynahmag.substack.comSome notes on the podcast and additional resources:Jeremy’s translation of Hai Fan’s Delicious Hunger is out in Singapore now with Ethos Books. Hai Fan’s first novel, 雨林的背影, won the Singapore Literature Prize for Chinese Fiction last year. It’s set in the aftermath of the Hat Yai Peace Agreement (1989), following characters as they leave the rainforest, re-enter civilian life and reflect on the decades that they spent in the rainforest. Peace Villages and Friendship Villages refer to a group of settlements located in the mountains outside the southernmost Thai town of Betong, where many MCP cadres have lived since the Hat Yai Peace Agreement was signed by representatives of the MCP, the Thai government, and the Malaysian government in 1989. As Jeremy explains, different factions occupied the Friendship Villages—the Communist Party of Malaysia—and the Peace Villages—the Communist Party of Malaya, but they're friends again now. Jeremy’s novel State of Emergency follows a family as they navigate major political upheavals in Malaya, Singapore, and Malaysia. It will be published by ⁠World Editions⁠ in the US and UK in June this year. The⁠ Chinese edition⁠ was translated by Lim Woan Fei and Chen Si’an. It has also been ⁠translated into German⁠ by Susann Urban. The Transformative Justice Collective is a movement seeking the reform of Singapore’s criminal punishment system, starting with the abolition of the death penalty.For more notes on this episode, please read our newsletter.Mynah Magazine started as a print magazine for untold Singaporean stories in 2016. We’ve published four issues to date.Find out more about Mynah Magazine on our website: ⁠mynahmag.com ⁠Subscribe to the Mynah newsletter: ⁠mynahmag.substack.com ⁠Follow Mynah on Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/mynahmag⁠The music for The Mynah Podcast was written and recorded by⁠ Daniel Seah⁠.