WOMEN AND CREATIVITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
While creativity as a construct has been an elusive one to researchers, many agree to its singular qualities of producing something concretely innovative, adaptive, and responsive to the times. That gender may have an impact on the creative process further vexes the area of study when identities and roles are examined for how they may hinder or enhance an individual’s potentials. Yet despite the many attempts to analyze and systematize the creative process, there are questions that remain unsolved and concerns poorly examined.
In this panel of artists (novelist, poet, and filmmaker) and academics (gender and culture specialists), issues of gender and creativity will be explored against their daily struggles and triumphs as women in Southeast Asia. By sharing their personal stories and insights, the three artists will try to elucidate on the creative process of their respective artistic fields, and explore as well questions of how socio-political and environmental conditions may foster or thwart creativity.
Panel members:
Malaysian writer: Chuah Guat Eng
Filipino poet: Dinah Roma
Thai film director: Ing K.
Moderator/ Discussant: Associate Prof. Dr Shakila Abdul Manan
Chuah Guat Eng is a professional writer and writing consultant. Her writing career spans three spheres: corporate, literary, and academic. Most of her working life has been spent in the corporate world, but she has been writing fiction for her own pleasure from her youth. She took up fiction writing seriously after 1992, when four short stories she submitted for the Shell-New Straits Times Short Story Competition were short-listed and published. Her published books include two novels, Echoes of Silence (1994, republished 2009), and its sequel, Days of Change (2010); and three short- story collections, Tales from the Baram River (2001), a collection of Sarawak folktales re-told for children; The Old House and Other Stories (2008), and Dream Stuff (2014). Some of her short stories have been translated into Slovene, Spanish, Malay and Chinese. Currently, she runs novel-writing workshops and is working on her third novel, Whispers of Truth, a sequel to the first two novels.
Dinah Roma is a professor of literature and creative writing at De La Salle University where she is also currently the chair of the Department of Literature. She is the author of three books of poetry: (A Feast of Origins), which won the 2004 Philippine National Book Award for Poetry in English; (Geographies of Light), whose core collection won a Carlos Palanca Award for Poetry in English; and, her most recent collection "Naming the Ruins", published by Vagabond Press, an Australian independent literary press, was launched recently in Sydney and Manila. Her scholarly research interests include travel theory and narratives for which she have received grants from Sumitomo Foundation, Japan Foundation, and the National University of Singapore.
Thai writer-director Ing K has made five documentaries: ‘Thailand for Sale’ (writer); ‘Green Menace, the Untold Story of Golf’ (director); ‘Casino Cambodia’ (director); ‘Citizen Juling’ (director) and ‘Censor Must Die’ (director), and two narrative features: ‘My Teacher Eats Biscuits’ (director) and ‘Shakespeare Must Die’ (director), both of which are banned in Thailand, the former for “religious disrespect”, the latter as a threat to national security. She is suing the government to unban ‘Shakespeare Must Die’
Shakila Abdul Manan (PhD) is Associate Professor of English Language Studies at the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Widely published, her main research interests are in the areas of stylistics, critical discourse analysis, gender and postcolonial studies. Currently, she is the Chief Editor of the Journal of Malaysian Studies and is a fellow with the Women’s Development and Research Centre (KANITA) which is based in Universiti Sains Malaysia.