One thing I’ve accepted about myself somewhat recently is that I am a slow writer. Of course “slowness” is relative. I know many who are even slower than me, those of whom who would consider me a “fast” writer. That slowness, however, is not necessarily in the act of drafting itself, which in my case can be quick and productive, but rather in the re-drafting, revising, editing, reflecting, proofreading, sometimes letting others read, then sending off to publish. Each stage can take longer, pushing the other along forward. Another thing I’ve come to accept about myself is that in order to publish I sometimes need to be prompted to write and publish for colleagues and friends. This means accepting invitations to write in special issues in journals and edited volumes. One of them is this year’s first publication: an article as part of a Special Issue on mobility in Southeast Asian women’s literature (co-edited by Ann Ang, Angelia Poon and Hannah Ho), in the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, titled ‘Parallel lives, global actors: Overseas travel in the autobiographical writings of Malay women political figures‘, in which I engage with the well-trodden area of Shamsiah Fakeh and Aishah Ghani’s memoirs to find the political influence in the places they have gone to abroad that have shaped their political identity and trajectory as life-long communist and ethno-nationalist, respectively. The following is the abstract:
This article examines the political autobiographies of two pioneering Malay female political figures, Shamsiah Fakeh (1924–2008) and Aishah Ghani (1923–2013), who were contemporaries from a young age following a similar trajectory in politics. However, they took very different ideological standpoints towards bringing Malaya into independence in 1957. The article discusses the function of the transnational political autobiography, and how Shamisah Fakeh and Aishah Ghani used their life-writings to shape themselves as anti-colonial figures and global actors in the wider world. It argues that their narrations of their time abroad can be flagged as “points of recognition” that were formative to these political figures. These points connect to create their autobiographical identities and the distinctive ideological cartographies that set them apart. In essence, this article frames Aishah Ghani and Shamsiah Fakeh as bona fide “global actors”, figures who travelled, participated in, and shaped world historical events.
Alicia Izharuddin 