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A review by misspalah
The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia by Joyce Chng
4.0
“First, Espana sought to gain influence through trade and technology. Now they attempted again to insinuate their faith of a cold and distant god? fighting a battle of blood and violence against armored men was simple compared to this”.
- The Last Aswang by Alessa Hinlo
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.
There are 12 stories in this book. Many of these stories are written by Filipino but we also have Thai, Vietnamese, and Malaysian listed as the authors. In the introduction of the book, the editors mentioned that they are recognizing Southeast Asia as former colonies but to push back against this idea that we must acknowledge the superiority of the Colonizer Empire, hence steampunk genre is the way to do it. So that we can provide alternate history of world from Southeast Asian Perspective. Colonisation is evil and the book highlighted that there is a lot of changes and damage caused by these invaders (be it Spanish, French, Dutch and British). These colonizers glorifying it as a means for the expansion of empire. Hence, their POV were often stated that all this modernization happened because of us, the conquerers. This book is an attempt to brought us readers to look to the impact of those who were being conquered. These 12 stories flipped it around and claim back their narrative in resisting oppression and colonization. The book is where the marginalized voices get to assert their narrative. This is why you can see that there are a lot of women as main characters in the story - those who wanted to write their own destiny, those who wanted to protect their family, those who eager to learn and those who wanted their voice to be heard. There are 5 stories that i love and wondering if these author ever had an intention to write it as novel. The first one is Alessa Hinlo's "The Last Aswang”. Taken from Filipino Folklore, Aswang is a shape-shifting evil creatures like vampires. The intention of the story is to show the creeping predations of colonialism. The second one is is Olivia Ho's "Working Woman," a story of main character’s journey in finding her own freedom and identity. The emphasis of how colonial outlook sees brown women's bodies as objects won me over. The third one is The Chamber of Souls" by ZM Quynh, a story based on refugees fleeing home from persecution. They were rescued and rehomed by some sort of mythological beings. It is almost like a gigantic ‘bunian’ who managed to hide you from the naked eye. Nghi Vo's "Life Under Glass" is another favourite of mine. It told the story a researcher who encountered Dragon while collecting a live animal specimen. The story is a simple one but the possibility of the world which dragons exist carried out so many possibilities in her POV. Last but not least, "Spider Here" by Robert Liow brought us into the story of a young disabled girl, Dai Ji. She builds casings—animal parts combined with steampunk technology. It has almost the same feels like how Victor Frankenstein builds the creature in his laboratory.Overall, The SEA is ours is an engaging anthology. I may not love every single stories in it but i think the fault is all mine. I dont usually read science fiction/fantasy and i know that steampunk sub genre is considered to be between of these 2 genres. However, i will still highly recommend this book. It is non euro centric steampunk and unapologetically Southeast Asian but still let readers to evaluate the real cost of the imperialism itself.
- The Last Aswang by Alessa Hinlo
.
.
There are 12 stories in this book. Many of these stories are written by Filipino but we also have Thai, Vietnamese, and Malaysian listed as the authors. In the introduction of the book, the editors mentioned that they are recognizing Southeast Asia as former colonies but to push back against this idea that we must acknowledge the superiority of the Colonizer Empire, hence steampunk genre is the way to do it. So that we can provide alternate history of world from Southeast Asian Perspective. Colonisation is evil and the book highlighted that there is a lot of changes and damage caused by these invaders (be it Spanish, French, Dutch and British). These colonizers glorifying it as a means for the expansion of empire. Hence, their POV were often stated that all this modernization happened because of us, the conquerers. This book is an attempt to brought us readers to look to the impact of those who were being conquered. These 12 stories flipped it around and claim back their narrative in resisting oppression and colonization. The book is where the marginalized voices get to assert their narrative. This is why you can see that there are a lot of women as main characters in the story - those who wanted to write their own destiny, those who wanted to protect their family, those who eager to learn and those who wanted their voice to be heard. There are 5 stories that i love and wondering if these author ever had an intention to write it as novel. The first one is Alessa Hinlo's "The Last Aswang”. Taken from Filipino Folklore, Aswang is a shape-shifting evil creatures like vampires. The intention of the story is to show the creeping predations of colonialism. The second one is is Olivia Ho's "Working Woman," a story of main character’s journey in finding her own freedom and identity. The emphasis of how colonial outlook sees brown women's bodies as objects won me over. The third one is The Chamber of Souls" by ZM Quynh, a story based on refugees fleeing home from persecution. They were rescued and rehomed by some sort of mythological beings. It is almost like a gigantic ‘bunian’ who managed to hide you from the naked eye. Nghi Vo's "Life Under Glass" is another favourite of mine. It told the story a researcher who encountered Dragon while collecting a live animal specimen. The story is a simple one but the possibility of the world which dragons exist carried out so many possibilities in her POV. Last but not least, "Spider Here" by Robert Liow brought us into the story of a young disabled girl, Dai Ji. She builds casings—animal parts combined with steampunk technology. It has almost the same feels like how Victor Frankenstein builds the creature in his laboratory.Overall, The SEA is ours is an engaging anthology. I may not love every single stories in it but i think the fault is all mine. I dont usually read science fiction/fantasy and i know that steampunk sub genre is considered to be between of these 2 genres. However, i will still highly recommend this book. It is non euro centric steampunk and unapologetically Southeast Asian but still let readers to evaluate the real cost of the imperialism itself.