More reviews, more sales

I had fun at PENA House on Saturday (malamnya I was in Raub celebrating my school's 60th year anniversary.Can you imagine it's older than Malaysia?). Seronok jumpa kawan-kawan sealiran. Kausalya and I took to the stage again. Nostalgic.We were always performing.Kami lah Lantai.At Pena function, some funny characters I have not met, I met (Tan Sri Adam is a good example). Dato Baha and Dato Othman Kelantan and Dato Ahmad Sebi were there as well.Yang best dengar Dato Dr. Hassan Ahmad Affandi bercakap.It was a pleasure listening to him. :)

I was in a panel session with Prof Irwan and Dr Chong on nasib sastera 50 tahun akan datang.Managed to sell some books. Ha ha..this would be the best part, I guess.Then bumped into a review on one of the Art of Naming poems which is also published in Voices of Resistance (Ca, USA). The review came out in Postcolonial Text, Vol 3, No. 2 (2007) and I quote Masood Raja of Kent State University:

Part Four, Re-Claiming our bodies/Re-claiming our sexualities, deals with, as is obvious, women's bodies and sexuality, most sensitive subjects in Muslim societies. The challenge to a stereotypical view of the Muslim womanhood becomes obvious in a few lines of Nor Faridah Abdul Manaf's poem "The Veil, My Body":

It's just a piece of cloth
But after Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Maluku, Kosovo
This is all I have. (246)

The Muslim female identity is constructed within the larger imperatives of native patriarchy and the international power politics, and in such a complex scenario any reading of the female Muslim subject will have to be much more nuanced and complex. Voices of Resistance brilliantly places itself in between the two extremes of politics of representation --West and the Islamic East -- and lets the female Muslim subject speak for herself.The collection, besides being interesting for non-academic reader, will be a useful text in fields as diverse as literature, politics, cultural studies, women studies and studies of gender.