On Reading/History

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  • oh no we dont

    oh no we dont

    i used to keep the flowers they brought at midnight because nine pm the sun still shines i was grateful i was hopeful sometimes defeated but hail lord of the blue ocean and green grass is here with us i wish for their happiness but evil takes prayer away so they become a sad monster… Read more

  • A Litany of Letting Go

    A Litany of Letting Go

    Letter Five, paraphrased The I sounds her cries. “I am part of your fate. Whether our love is worth it or not is irrelevant. So what if there’s someone nicer than you or prettier than you–it doesn’t change a thing. Come and hurt me more. You still mean the same to me. I belong to… Read more

  • Motion Sickness

    Motion Sickness

    I suffered from vertigo in the middle of answering an exam question about the history and historiography of translation in Southeast Asia. The world spun. My guts hurled up. I threw acid fluid from my mouth. I closed my eyes. The light hurt. “Sayang, I need Dramamine” so my head could stop saying to itself… Read more

  • Vicente Rafael, “Contracting Colonialism”

    Vicente Rafael, “Contracting Colonialism”

    Conversion is translation is conversion. Contracting Colonialism by Vicente Rafael is about the uneasy relationship between translation and conversion in the Spanish colonization of the Tagalog speakers of the Philippines from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. By reading curated Spanish and Tagalog sources during the period, Rafael examines “the impact of evangelization… Read more

  • Slice-of-Life

    Slice-of-Life

    10 February 1934. It was a Saturday afternoon, a twelve-year old girl walking on the street of Kepatihan-School, Djember. At the same time a man asked his assistant to put a car on his garage. The assistant did not have a driving license and inexperienced in driving. What he didn’t know: the break apparently wasn’t… Read more

  • Feeling Time

    Feeling Time

    When Brigitta Isabella wrote her piece in May 2016, I was in the middle of preparing for my travel to Manchester, UK, to study international development. I, back then, had no serious interest in history as a question because I was still convinced I would do work on policy analysis and such and such. “1955,… Read more