REVIEW FROM PARAGRAFO JOURNAL

The literary canon of recent centuries was created by keeping at a distance almost everything that was not written by an elite – not necessarily economic, but certainly cultural, with access to already canonical readings, schooling and at least some conditions for the exercise of writing. The exception, reserved for literary studies and institutionalized only with Romanticism, allowed certain forms of oral literature, the romance novel and other so-called popular forms to be approached, but always maintaining a “safe distance”. Only as the 20th century advanced, when disciplinary boundaries began to show signs of rupture in an attempt to perceive the world in a more complete (and complex) way, did this approach prove to be insufficient.

Quickly going through the discussion of apocalyptic and integrated theories that Umberto Eco promoted and the theories and counter-theories that followed him, there is no need to ostracize so-called canonical authors and books, but it will be worth recognizing that theirs is a world where salons frequented mainly by white, educated men, Europeans or generously exported, on the ride of some grand undertaking, to lands occupied in other parts of the globe. Of course, in some of these points, other canons already existed, older or grander, and just think about the territory we call China today, but if we don't even bring these into consideration as often as we should, what opening do we have left to other horizons?

If there is no opening, we already know, there are those who force the gates. Asian Workers Stories, an anthology of texts organized and edited by Luka Lei Zhang for Hardball Press, has this potential. The texts gathered here are by authors from many origins in this vast territory that is Asia, from China to Indonesia, passing through Bangladesh, Singapore, Thailand or the Philippines. The styles vary, from intense realism to metaphor, from the narration of ancient stories brought to the present to the painful record of everyday life and dreams. The settings also vary, between factories, agricultural fields, houses that will never belong to the person writing, roads or other roads that are traveled in search of something that never seems to be consummated.

Between fiction and non-fiction, there are narratives that impress with the delicacy of the language in permanent confrontation with what it describes, as in the story “The Grave”, by Hamiruddin Middya. Others, especially those set in factories, such as “A Night on Sun Island”, by Wan Huashan, impose a rhythm that accompanies the repetition of tasks, cutting it off, suddenly, with the tragic and disorganized density that runs deep in the thoughts of those who narrate.

In non-fiction, daily stories such as that of Md Sharif Uddin, in “Stranger Life in Singapore”, stand out, illustrative of permanent despair, but also of the way in which these lives that take place in overcrowded and unhealthy dormitories where they only go out for the intense and poorly paid workday, they are the basis that sustains cities so often presented as exemplary (Singapore, in this case, which is not the only case).

Not all narratives are extraordinary in the way they structure and work with language, something to be expected in any anthology made up of several authors, but even in these cases, like in Wiset Sanmano's story, with an almost childlike innocence in the outcome, the voice who takes the floor in a field where it would be impossible not to hear it is still powerful.

What unites these texts and gives them coherence when grouped in this way are the living conditions of the characters (real or fictional), the rights that are denied to them on a daily basis, and the fact that these conditions are the guarantee of the functioning of a world system – of which we, those who read these texts from a distance, now gathered in a volume that we can buy from one of the major online retailers, are also beneficiaries, with greater or lesser awareness of it.

It also unites them, this assumed gesture of taking the floor, claiming speech and writing and giving them a place in this global space that we have stopped calling polis. In this unity, which fully justifies an anthology, it is, however, diversity that is necessary. Faced with the complexity of the characters and their psychological characterizations, the twists and turns of some plots and above all the multiple ways of using language, rich in polysemy, discursive modes and historical, cultural and social references, the reading of this book cannot be held hostage by any classificatory enthusiasm that organizes the texts into a sociological category and ignores that not only do they have an intrinsic literary value, but this value is part of the context in which they were born.

The reality of labor exploitation of workers, migrants or not, is not new, of course, and is not restricted to Asia. However, this global awareness shared by millions who are forced to abandon their home territories in order to survive, forcibly entering a system of intensive exploitation that begins with its own, extending to natural and structural resources, whose depletion and destruction intensify the need for more people to abandon the places where they live in order to survive. It's a rigged wheel of fortune, always leaving those who were already fleeing these places we call the global South upside down. That this shared consciousness is assumed in the first person and transformed into literature is something new in recent years. Therefore, if the reality that originates these texts is not structurally new, its contours are, in a certain way. The migration of people fleeing the devastation caused by the climate crisis, wars and extreme poverty (often a consequence of the climate and war conflicts, although not exclusively) is, on a scale that today we know is something new, and everything indicates that it will tend to intensify. It will not make sense, therefore, to compare these texts with others whose reality and context of production are miles away. But if such an exercise contributes to their health, dignity and often their lives in European factories in the 19th century, these workers who take the floor in each of the texts in Asian Workers Stories also seem to have little to lose beyond their chains.

Paragrafo, SARA FIGUEIREDO COSTA

Working class stories are often pigeonholed as low-quality narratives about gritty reality or even worse, collectively labelled as a leftist propaganda. Asian Workers Stories challenges such perception. It is an anthology of 11 pieces of fiction and 5 pieces of non-fiction by Asian workers about their diverse lives, dreams, and hopes. 

In the historical landscape of Asian modern literature, progressive authors wrote stories that highlight the economic hardship of the working people, class inequality, and the tension between different social classes. For example, the 1929 short story “Kani Kosen” 蟹工船 (“The Crab Cannery Ship”) by Kobayashi Takiji 小林多喜二describes the horrible working conditions of crab cannery workers in Hokkaido (Japan). By giving voices to marginalized communities, these stories serve as a chronicle of struggles against social and economic inequality.

In colonized Southeast Asia, progressive authors attended to the social injustices experienced by native working populations due to the industrialization processes under Western high imperialism in the region (1890s-1930s). For example, Lope K. Santos’1906 novel Banaag at Sikat (Radiance and Sunrise) contains a plain-spoken message of social agitation that illustrates “the struggle between progress and reaction, exploiters and exploited, capital and labor” (Mojares 1998: 224) in the early years of American rule. The 1929 short story “Răng con chó của nhà tư sản” (“The Teeth of an Upper-Class Family’s Dog”) by Nguyễn Công Hoan illustrates the economic and social injustices experienced by the Vietnamese under the French colonial rule. The 1930 novella Masih koerang berat? (Not heavy yet?) by Roli-’ah (a pseudonym) describes the intolerable working condition in a shop in Bandung (Java) under a “devilish bloodsucking boss” which pushed workers demanding an 8-hour workday – the first global modern campaign for labor rights that found its way in the colony as part of the native workers’ resistances against factory discipline. 

As the impacts of the Great Depression hit the colonies, native authors reacted to the grim reality of the struggling colonial capitalism by dramatizing the depleted lives of the working people and their resistance, despite the tightening nature of political oppression (including stringent censorship) in the late colonial period (see Yamamoto 2019; Keo 2021). The 1936 novel Giông tố (Storm) by Vũ Trọng Phụng clearly reflects the author’s “hatred of class privilege and obsessive concern with the relationship between colonial capitalism and the deterioration of sexual morality” in French Indochina (Zinoman 2003: 128). The 1937 novella Merah (Red) by the Sino-Malay author Liem Khing Hoo 林慶和 recounts the story of a prijaji-turned-union activist who detested the capitalist greed of his fiancée’s father, a cigarette factory boss, and resented the colonial state apparatus. Vi Huyền Đắc’s 1939 play Kim tiền (Metallic Money) dramatizes the story of a ruthless coal mine owner who in the end was killed by the striking workers – and hence, the colonial secret police banned it to be staged (Nguyen 2016: 33). By challenging the oppressive structures of economic imperialism, these stories serve both as an emancipating medium for organizing native workers, and as a powerful tool for advocacy to claim their rights. 

Writing in this dual tradition of struggle and advocacy, contemporary working-class authors in Asia, as presented in Asian Workers Stories, reflect the vicissitudes of labor migration, flexible labor market, and social vulnerability – which are the inevitable consequences of “Compress Development” (Whittaker et al., 2020), i.e. the development path taken by many Asian countries that brings a rapid pace of economic development yet offers narrow and piecemeal social protection programs. 

Issues in inter-Asia labor migration – ranging from recruitment, job placement, working conditions, and social supports for migrants – are well reflected in many stories in this anthology. Both Zakir Hossain Khokan in his short story, “Rain”, and Md Mukul Hossine in his “Ship Phobia” tell the tragic stories of male Bangladeshi migrant workers in Singapore. Based on his decade-long experiences and observations as a Bangladeshi worker in Singapore, Md Sharif Uddin in his short essay, “Stranger Life in Singapore,” describes the “subhuman lives” of migrant workers in the country. These stories underscore Singapore’s migrant worker policy in welcoming male Bangladeshi workers on fixed-term employment contracts to maintain a steady supply of “cheap” labor for the country’s labor-intensive sectors, especially in the marine and construction sectors. The use of low-wage temporary migrant workers suits both the contingent needs of the industries and the surveillance power of the state that deny them accessing long-term residence rights and citizenship, within the framework of the country’s authoritarian capitalism. 

In the context of feminization of migration, scholars have noted the steady increase in the number of female migrants in East and Southeast Asia from the late 1970s. Their voices, however, are often unheard and ignored. Asian Workers Stories offers us a window to listen to their voices and understand their lives. 

Rolinda Onates Española in her short stories, “The Kind of Home” and “New Year in the Air”, Janelyn Dupingay in her “What Draws Us Home”, and Julie Ann in her essay, “A Cherished Experience,” collectively illustrate the emotional turmoil of Filipina migrant mothers, as the breadwinner in the family, who had to work abroad in Singapore and leave their children at home for the duration of their long stints. Both Indah Yosevina in her story, “A Tinge of Farris Wheel”, and Stefani J Alvares in “The Autobiography of the Other Lady Gaga & Other Dagli from Saudi Arabia” recount stories of (Southeast Asian) migrant workers in Saudi Arabia who had to endure physical, sexual, and mental abuses on daily basis. These stories highlight the challenging conditions of many female and transgender workers, in their search for better income to support their families, who have to sacrifice their personal needs, ambitions and dreams by working overseas for many years of their lives. 

As flexible labor market is forcefully implemented in many parts of factory economies in Asia in the belief that such policy will increase efficiency and create jobs, Wan Huashan’s short story, “A Night on Sun Island,” and Shengzi (a pseudonym)’s “Notes from the Factory” show us the dark side of the coin: the gruesome working conditions in the global supply chain factories of our time. They chronologize the sense of alienation caused by low-wage and long-hour work, the lack of job security and social mobility, and the erosion of personal dignity. As such, they can be read as a testimony to the dehumanization of young workers and the manufacturing of their consent under factory discipline to create obedient labor. 

But workers are not passive victims. Wiset Sanmano’s short story, “Thongphun’s Prestigious Path,” and Mengyu’s essay, “My Experiences as a Domestic Worker,” showcase how characters fight to retain their self-worth despite societal forces working against them. They illustrate how workers are actively making changes and building alliances with other social groups to break the cycle of vulnerability. In the tradition of advocacy, these stories highlight the continuing importance of the working-class literary production as part of their collective action against exploitation.

Asian Workers Stories is a celebration of remarkable stories by working class authors as they collectively highlight social resilience, the desire for a better life, and the possibility of change. In this celebration, its editor, Zhang Luka Lei, deserves our high praise for bringing these stories to a wider audience.  JAFAR SURYOMENGGOLO