Dear Mui Poopoksakul,
I just read your introduction to the November 2016 issue of "Words Without Borders" and it was like finding an oasis in an endless desert. Like you, I also love literature so when I was in Thailand and learning the Thai language I went to bookstores all over to find a novel to practice my reading skills and understand more about the everyday Thai perspective. I was disappointed every time I walked into a Se-ed or other Bangkok bookstore because all I saw was this:
If it was written in Thai by a native Thai person then it was generally a self-help book, a ghost story comic or basically anything but the kind of authentically Thai story of everyday life that captures a moment in time the way Tom Sawyer did. I had heard of "Four Reigns" (สี่แผ่นดิน) as the only book that shop owners could think of that matched my criteria but the shops never had it in stock to buy.
I just assumed that Thailand didn't have novels or that there were very few. Then, I found the November 2016 issue of "Words Without Borders" and I realized that Thailand had many thriving writers creating novels and tributes to everyday life in Thailand. Win Lyovarin's short story, "Life's Lexicon: Everyman's Bangkok Edition" about how the system failures of the free market and governments make him feel like most of Bangkok consists of enslaved robots really connected with my own learning of capitalisms failure to protect elephants and the environment. As I read, I wanted to simultaneously laugh, cry, and re-contemplate my own existence. That's what good literature does to a person after all.
As soon as the moment of joyful discovery ended, I felt a sense of betrayal by those book stores in Bangkok. Why didn't they have any of these stories from their own nation? I agree with you that more Thai books need to be translated but before we can get to the step of getting the West to read Thai novels, we need to get the people of Thailand reading Thai novels. So, the problem we must start with is the drought of Thai novels and the fact that the brilliant ones that do exist don't get enough market exposure or public interest.
My fellow student, Mitchell Bayles, had an experience with digital networks used for content curation. He showed how the curation of video game titles into groups of reviews on YouTube greatly affected which games he decided to play. I think we can leverage online networks such as YouTube and Facebook to get people in Thailand talking about their own literature.
By putting together content reviews for new books coming out in an exciting and less academic way (like on YouTube or Facebook) we might get people to go back to the sources and read "Four Reigns" after watching the musical or read a new novel about adolescence in growing Bangkok in a format of a novel that helps people live a more contemplative and meaningful existence. That has always been one of the purposes for the novel, to help people be more self-reflective and get to experience brave new worlds of other perspectives that they would never understand without these great writers.
My hope is that you will do what you can to not only get high quality Thai novels translated and recognized abroad but also get Thai people excited about writing novels and reading them and then maybe we will see more of these works of homage to everyday Thailand in bookstores.
Sincerely,
A Hopeful Reader
I'm quite itrigued by this, because it does seem very odd that Thai people would not be reading works from their own country and culture. An idea perhaps you could explore more is why this is the case?
ReplyDeleteI don't know hardly anything about Thailand and the people there, but perhaps as global culture has become more and more of a factor in peoples' lives they have become enamored by the faraway and the fantastic in a similar way to how people were in the Romantic period? I've seen this phenomenon in my own life - one of my sisters has been teaching herself Japanese just because she is enamored by their culture. A cousin of mine wanted nothing more than to save up some money and explore the faraway lands of Europe.
While I agree that all people should have an appreciation for their own culture, when put in this light I can hardly blame the Thai for wanting to explore something new - something fantastic.
I enjoyed this article and I agree that other nations have some great input on many topics and as we become more connected digitally, we can resort to crowdsourcing and networking, we can really take advantage of other pools of knowledge and perspective. The issue is that as things become more readily available human nature usually causes us to forget about these tools we have at our fingertips. What might appear mysterious and alluring can become dull as there are more connections made in the world. While this is the case it is important to bring these different cultures back into perspective. While it can be important for Thai’s to enjoy their own literature, I disagree that marketing needs to be done first in Thailand. In order to grab the attention of the American audience you should be presenting this material to the American audience.
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