The mission of the Mermaids International Rescue Alliance (MIRA) is to guard the ocean and protect the sea creatures. There are many mermaid members in MIRA from all over Asia, such as Princess Hwangok (Korea), Roro (Indonesia), Jiao (China), Ningyo (Japan), Songkhla (Thailand), Duyung (Malaysia), Sovann Macha (Cambodia), Sirena (the Philippines), and Mei (Taiwan).
Modern Singapore is the city in a garden, a biophilic and highly managed urban space that is home to a variety of animals, from mosquitoes to humans to polar bears. How has this coexistence worked as we enter the Anthropocene? How have human-animal relationships shaped Singapore society—socially, economically, politically and environmentally—over the last half century?
“For the first time in my life, I experienced the terror of international limbo, unable to enter any country. What would happen to me? Would I be trapped forever in an airport?” Japan’s 1972 termination of diplomatic ties with the Republic of China left 9,200 Chinese residents stateless. Author Chen Tienshi Lara was one of…
Who are the Bene Israel Jews of India? Where did they come from? How did they survive in India? Sweet Malida is a moving, multi-layered, richly sensory and informative collection of poems and short prose inspired by this ancient community to which the poet herself belongs.
Thailand is known internationally as a popular sex tourism destination. Yet, despite its size and reputation, remarkably little research has focused on the country’s sex industry over the past two decades. Based on original ethnographic data and other sources, Sex Tourism in Thailand is an expansive yet nuanced study of diverse sex markets and their…
Ayurveda enjoys a growing global appeal, and is often touted as ‘true’ and ‘time-tested’ by contemporary political actors, governments, social groups, practitioners and NGOs in India. With “indigenous” healing systems enjoying increasing state support today, an examination of the socio-political aspects of medicine, in particular Ayurveda, and its role in nation-building is critically important.
In this groundbreaking book, Sherali Tareen explores how leading South Asian Muslim scholars imagined and contested the possibilities and dangers of Hindu-Muslim friendship from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century. He argues that often what was at stake in Muslim scholarly discourse and debates on this subject were unresolved tensions and fissures over the place…
The trauma of Partition is an indelible part of the collective memory of the citizens of India and Pakistan and, later, Bangladesh. With over 15 million displaced and several million dead on both sides of the Radcliffe Line, this massive exodus remains forever a black mark in history. Partition and its aftermath have been central…
Symbols of Substance is a groundbreaking analysis of the political culture and political economy of the small Nayaka states that emerged and flourished in the Tamil country in the 16th and 1th centuries.
Mountain Songs embodies the intersecting narratives of migration and how it shapes one’s identity.
The Grip of Change is the English translation of Pazhaiyana Kazhithalum, the first full-length novel by P Sivakami, an important Tamil writer. This translation also features Asiriyar Kurippu, the sequel in which Sivakami revisits her work.
At last someone has found a practical application for virtual reality. Brian Kwok teaches design at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University and he has been studying Hong Kong’s neon signs and the culture that surrounds them. It has convinced him that they should be preserved. But how? Kwok has a really difficult row to hoe, and…
Kurdistan + 100 poses a question to contemporary Kurdish writers: Might the Kurds one day have a country to call their own? With 13 stories all set in the year 2046—exactly a century after the first glimmer of Kurdish independence, the short-lived Republic of Mahabad—this book offers a space for new expressions and new possibilities…
South of the Yangtze starts with the protagonist, Qian Yinan, taking the high-speed train through the landscape of Jiangnan (“South of the Yangtze River”) with her American husband. Now in her mid-thirties, Yinan recalls her first trip along the same route in the late 1980s, as well as her Shanghai childhood with her “historical counter-revolutionary”…
Through Indian life and culture, the epics of the subcontinent flow like the subterranean River Saraswati. Like Yuddhishthira, who is faced with the puzzling questions posed to him by the enigmatic Yaksha in the Mahabharata, the Indian Everyman, conscious of dharma and niti, is expected to find answers to ethical and existential dilemmas. While the…