In a few short weeks, some dear friends and I are embarking on a project that, we anticipate, will change the very way we will look at our country, our people and our own selves.
The degree to which you support this project is the degree to which it will succeed.
What is it about?
Tragically, Malaysia possesses one dominant story that has been told and retold a thousand times from KBSM right through to Media Prima. Call it ‘Muhibbah’, call it ‘Ali, Ah Chong and Muthu’, call it ‘Malaysia Truly Asia’, call it all these things that they have called it…but we believe the time has come to end this myopia.
“The problem with these stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” These are not Malaysia’s only stories!! And it is just as important to talk all these other stories that belong to you, your Thai-speaking neighbour from Kelantan, your ethnically confused sister-in-law from Sarawak, etcetera…!! Why is one writer’s story more important that anyone else’s? What if we could listen to the experiences of Malaysians in every nook and simpang of this country?
This project is about our country and our stories.
As the beautiful Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie stands serenely still, her typhoonic words cannot help but beat down upon the listener, cleansing and uplifting our imaginations, our very artistic, cultural and national futures, into the skies of a new paradigm.
“When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.”
Regain this paradise with us? Tell us your story?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie voiced a brilliant truth, applicable to nations, people, and ideas alike!
Ashraf, why do you always sound like a booming church minister barely restraining himself from telling a possibly inappropriate joke?
Haha! I think you’ve somehow managed to encapsulate my whole character in one question; It may be my excessive use of exclamation marks… :P
Now I recall how when I was 13, and was made to read Enid Blyton with 5 kids with all the adventures … totally disjoined from my life…