A Home for Imagination and Memory:
An African Writer-Critic¡¯s Impressions of Asia: Magazine of Asian Literature

Asia does not have an ambition to create specifically Asian discourses that will replace Western¡¦ values.
¡¦Asia may not be the very poem the will remember things unremembered, but we would like to become
home for that poem. Asia may not be the fierce spirit of the prose that struggles with our squalid daily
lives, but we would not give up being an enthusiastic supporter of that fierce spirit. Asia may not
become the center of the Asian imagination, but our ambition is to make all our spaces a forest of creative
imaginations emerging from Asian lands.
- Bang Hyun-seok, on behalf of the editorial board of Asia


For someone who styles himself a literary critic and thus has an almost reverential interest in language,
I find myself in the awkward position of having to review a journal of Asian literature published in the
Korean language and written in the indigenous Hangeul script to which I have neither an elementary
access by way of being able to decipher the alphabets nor understanding. I am sure that the use of the
word alphabet already betrays how little my knowledge is. However, I take consolation in the fact that I can
claim that this is a bilingual edition published under the same covers in both Korean and English. Since I
can read the English versions but not the Korean, I can at least say something about the version I can
read.

But, if the truth be told, this is poor consolation for a writer and literary critic because it is clear that the
original is written in Korean and that the English versions are translations. For students of literature,
translations are often regarded as something like a second-hand copy, a version that has lost something
in the rendition, even if that something is only the shimmer and shine of the original. My greater consolation
then is not in the excuse of a bilingual edition but in another position that I have more recently espoused
in connection with the study of African literature. In the past few years, I have tried to argue that one
of the fundamental questions that critics of African literature have to confront is the question of original
texts to which the literary-critical imagination is so tied. If we are not to foreswear literary analysis of the
increasingly large body of African literature that is written first in an indigenous language and then
translated into English (e.g. Ngugi¡¯s later novels), then we have to rethink the hierarchy between original
and translation in African writing, especially when original and translated text are produced by the same
author or with his or her endorsement. Since literature is a mode of intellectual inquiry that foregrounds
language and its literary deployment as its object of study, my argument has been that we can only study
these ¡®translated¡¯ texts as literary texts if we think of texts of this kind as existing in multiple originals.
Taking my true consolation from this, I could dispel some of my misgivings about doing this review.
So, though it is also true that this is only a review and not a literary analysis of the texts, I have the
confidence of this justification in imagining that even in English I have some kind of access to the
literary qualities of the original in whatever language it first appeared.


Encountering Asia

I first encountered Asia, so to speak, when a group of Korean writers and university professors visited
Cape Town in 2006. Then the magazine was still in its conception stage and I was impressed by the
fact that the editorial board considered Africa important enough to include in its initial exploratory
itinerary in preparation for the launch of the first issue of the magazine. The visiting group included
Bang Hyun-seok, who will later be the executive editor; and we exchanged views at some length
about African writing and Asian literature and about the need to cultivate ties of understanding
between Africa and Asia, especially between their writers and cultural workers. It was an important
meeting because there we were—a group of Korean writers and an African—in the large seminar
room of the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, speaking about literature, the
specificities of our parts of the world and the common ties that bind us in the contemporary world
order. For people so long divided by geography—a division consolidated by history and the cultural
power of the West that impacts upon us all—there was something to be said about this coming
together. Our hope was that it will begin something more enduring than whatever significance the
occasion had for us in our personal lives and our career histories as individual writers.

When later in the year I visited South Korea at the invitation of the Korean writers association and was
handed three copies of the magazine, I was pleasantly surprised that a journal which was yet to appear
when we were speaking earlier in the year had not only come out but already had three issues of the
first volume, representing summer, autumn and winter 2006. I was envious. I couldn¡¯t help being envious:
first, because of the sheer determination and efficiency of the editors in achieving such a feat within that
timeline and second, because I hoped with some longing that a similar enterprise could also take off in
Africa. Since the heydays of the 1960s, there has been a lack of noticeable forums that seek to unite African
writers, either around a commonly subscribed to literary magazine or a continent-wide medium for
exchange of views on matters of identical interest. One of the magazines that used to play this role
in the 1960s died a premature death in the 1970s and was resurrected in the 1990s with the blessing
of one of it former editors. But it was relocated to America! And, though we may speak glibly of
globalization and its protean consequences, location, I believe, is still very important for small magazines
that seek to promote self-generated discourses rather than discourses generated and authorized
from the metropolitan centres of global culture.

For these reasons, I will like to congratulate the editors of Asia for bringing out this magazine in South
Korea and for ensuring that in its first year of publication it has appeared with clockwork regularity,
speaking from a location that is symbolically important and speaking to an audience that is also highly
significant in terms of the location and circulation of cultural capital in the new global order.  


Looking at Ourselves with Our Own Eyes

In the inaugural issue of Asia magazine, the editors explain their choice of title in this way:

The title Asia does not simply denote a specific spatial area. Nor do we have an aesthetic self-governance in mind. It is also not our intention to instigate a cultural separatist movement. We simply would like to look at ourselves with our own eyes. Only when we can see ourselves with our own eyes can we also see others
as they truly are. (Asia vol. 1, no 1 (Summer) 2006: pp. 54-55)

And later in the same editorial entitled ¡°Rainbow Asia: Hanoi–Seoul–Cape Town,¡± the editors elaborate
upon the objectives of the magazine emphasizing the importance of ¡°looking at ourselves with our own
eyes.¡± The goal, they argue, is not principally to be a replacement for Western discourses but to create a
self-generated discourse, free from the impositions of another¡¯s gaze. Perhaps, no region of the world
understands the importance of looking at oneself through one¡¯s own eyes more than Africa. Burdened by
centuries of slavery and colonialism, Africa—just as much as Asia—has been so subjected to the external
gaze that it has become almost impossible for black people all over the world to look at themselves through
their own eyes. The African American writer and activist, W.E. B Du Bois coined the famous expression
¡°double consciousness¡± to refer to this peculiar characteristic of the experience of looking at oneself though
the eyes of another.

Histories of colonialism and oppression often focus on the military and economic subjugation of a
people or territory and contemporary evocations of the cultural imperialism of the West simply detail
the ways in which the culture of a foreign country dominates the culture of other culturally marginalized
groups. What these stories do not fully record is the process of internalisation of the idioms
and ideals of the foreign culture whereby people subjected to another culture begin to see and
define themselves in terms of the alien culture. In other words, the dominated find it difficult to
see themselves through the own eyes because the images of themselves that they encounter in
their daily lives are images filtered through the lenses of another culture. The project of cultural
decolonization which has been the major project of cultural nationalism in the so called Third World is
solely grounded on this objective—to reclaim the ability to look at ourselves and the world through
our own eyes. It is therefore impossible to over emphasize the significance of this objective which on the
surface seems simple enough but encapsulates a dream that has been denied to vast numbers of people
all ver the world.

In the epigraph quoted at the beginning of this article, the editors claim that that Asia will seek to be a
home for the many voices of the poets of Asia that ¡°remember things unremembered¡± and will
actively support the fierce spirit of all of those writers who record in prose the squalor of the daily lives
of the people. In short, the ambition of the magazine is to be a home for the imagination and
memory in all of Asia. In a world dominated by the market ethos of a triumphant neo-liberalism, the
publication of Asia demonstrates that there is still space for a medium that devotes itself to the
wealth of the imagination and to the struggles of the marginalized rather than the insistent economic
logic of capital. In a manner not driven by gross ideology, the magazine provides a space in which the writers of Asia can speak to each other and to the world, airing their concerns and their anxieties
about their individual countries and their continent as a whole. Through it pages, they are also able
to share their dreams and aspirations, their joys and disappointments. Most importantly, the magazine
provides a forum in which they can speak to each other in their own voices, untainted by the hegemony of
an external gaze that distorts.


Reading Asia vol.3, no. 3.

In a short note from the publisher entitled ¡°On Publishing Asia: For Internal Communication in Asia,¡±
that appeared in Asia volume 1, number 1, Lee Dae-hwan gives us an indication of as to why the task of
communication between Asia countries and languages is imperative. He says:

In fact, the history of internal communication between Asian languages is miserably shallow¡¦.Vietnamese
literature has been blind to the Korean just like the latter has been to the former¡¦Philippine literature
has been indifferent to the Laotian and the Laotian to the Philippine. It is really prerequisite that each
literature understand the emotional and spiritual currents flowing like bloods (sic) in other literatures
to enhance the solidarity and co-existence in Asia beyond the boundary of nations. (Asia vol. 1, no 1: p.5)

And he continues by affirming that the goal of the magazine is to ¡°be the glorious ¡®center of communication¡¯
in which the diversities of Asia meet and mingle evenly [with] each other¡± (5). This is obviously a very noble goal. Editors know how notoriously difficult it is when it comes to implementing this in a magazine,
more so when you have to do this within the pages of a single edition. This was my one anxiety about
the magazine and its aspirations. But this was soon dispelled.

Reading through volume 3, number 3, the first thing I noticed was the diversity of the nationalities
of the contributors to the volume. There were contributions by writers from a breathtaking range of Asian
countries: South Korea, Japan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,
Mongolia, China, Iraq, and an interview with a writer from the Philippines. But then another anxiety
arose. How does one give unity and coherence to such a wide range of material? If a magazine is to
be appealing and present itself to its readers as a coherent whole, it needs some principle of order
that gives it a centre. What would this principle be for a magazine of this nature conceived on the
ideal of playing a role in bringing about understanding among the peoples and countries of a landmass as
large as Asia? Of course, there is the obvious fact of geography: as any decent map will tell you,
these are all countries in a continent called Asia. But a geographical unity of this sort does not give
you any degree of cohesion and coherence when you are putting together a large body of work
within the pages of a single journal. Journal editors know that geographical unity of this sort is
spurious because it does not help your material come together with any form of order. How would
the editors confront or circumvent this problem? I started reading with this question nagging at the
back of my mind.

Volume 1, Number 3 of Asia magazine is divided into several sections. It begins with the Editor¡¯s Corner
which features an essay by Kim Hyeong-soo entitled ¡°The Periphery Will Save the Center: Visions of
Korean Literature Creating Asia Collaboration.¡± In this piece, the author examines the place of the
traditions, literatures and languages of marginalized countries in the global marketplace of cultural
commodities. Korean literature and language provide him with a good platform from which to examine this
question. In this respect, he asserts that:

When writers from former colonies who are now ready to promote their own nascent national literature
prepare to enter the world literary market, they must go through a humiliating process of homogenization
—from translation to publication—as their work becomes ¡°universalized¡± for the market. In the middle of all
this, they can¡¯t help but feel that the European ¡°universalized¡± is still the ruling standard, its status virtually
absolute and unchecked. (21-22)

He then argues for a different kind of globalization in which the languages of the peripheries, the literatures
of those he calls ¡°Literature¡¯s underdogs¡± will save the center and enrich the world. Reading this essay,
I smile with understanding because these are sentiments that are also shared in my part of the world.

The second section ¡°What It Means to Live as a Writer in Asia¡± is devoted to a speech by the Japanese
Nobel prize winner, Kenzaburo Oe. This speech probes into the American-instigated move to amend Article
Nine of Japan¡¯s Constitution which renounces war as a way of settling international disputes. Oe does not
only deal with the fundamentally ethical perspective of the clause but also—in true writerly fashion—looks
at the language and style of its phrasing and links this to why it is so important in the midst of all the
pressure to retain that law. Following upon this is the section ¡°Special Field Reports from Southwest Asia¡± in which Salman Hanady from Lebanon, Abusaif Atef from Palestine, and Yael Neeman, Yitzhak Laor and Lea
Aini, all from Israel reflect on the condition of the Middle East focusing specifically on the recent wars in
Palestine and Lebanon. For those us whose only access to events from this part of the world is the news
we receive from Western news agencies and television, these dairies and reflections provide the human
side of the tragedy of the conflict and war. These accounts deserve reading if only for the fact that they
lend a human face to the numbing statistics of death and deprivation which is what we get to know of
these conflicts.

The next section ¡°Convex Lens¡± features an interview with F. S. Jose, a writer from the Philippines,
followed by the writer¡¯s short story. The story entitled ¡°Walking on Fire¡± is a magical realistic tale steeped
in a local history of oppression and exploitation which displays a strong moral and ethical tone. A section
devoted to poems follows this. For an African reader like me, who had never read any poems by writers
from Kazakhstan or Mongolia and only a few from China and South Korea, this section is an education in the
poetry and poetic practice of other parts of the world, previously unknown. And this education continues
in the next section ¡°Radical Grammar of Contemporary Asian Novelists.¡± Here there is the densely allegorical
short story by Alisher Fayz from Uzbekistan entitled ¡°The Substance.¡± In this Borgesian story, a man who
aspires to read all the great works of literature in the world plunges into the sea in which an American
tanker belonging to a publishing house called Soluble Literature which manufactures literary pills has spilled all its contents.
¡°Leonard suddenly realized that the dream of his whole life, to read all books written by human kind, was
coming true¡± (268). But the dream dissolves into a nightmare as the characters of masterpieces of world
literature appear before him in a hallucinatory parade that goes on until he loses consciousness and he
dissolves (bodily) into the liquid solution. His last vision is of stranger on the shore reading a book: slowly,
silently, paging through the book, unperturbed by the disaster of the drowning, dissolving man in the sea.
Park Min-gyu¡¯s short story ¡°Aspirin¡± rounds off this section with a story written in an experimental,
unconventional style that seems to recall the unconventional aspirations of the character in the
previous story.

The essays section that follows consists of essays on various topics, penned by authors from different parts of Asia. These essays are Hythem Kassim Zalzala¡¯s ¡°So, What¡¯s the Problem with Iraq Now,¡± Ynhui¡¯s ¡°The
East Asian Community and the Function of Literature in Our Global Village¡± and then Francezca C. Kwe¡¯s
¡°Remembering through Writing.¡± The magazine ends with a section which features an academic-style
essay entitled ¡°Literary Propaganda during the Japanese Occupation of Indonesia (1942-1945): Negotiating
Islamic Narratives¡± by T. Christomy.

This brief summary should give an indication of the variety and diversity of the material assembled in this
magazine. But this should not give the impression that the magazine is simply a patchwork of
uncoordinated fragments. For, increasingly, as I read through, I realized that apart from the loose,
superficial unity of geographical contiguity, what gives coherence to this volume of Asia is the locality of the
concerns of each of the individual writers; by being so insistently local in perspective and approach to
issues, the writers open up other worlds through the detail and rigour of their explorations. And, the fact
that I consistently found new worlds that I had previously not known anything about being opened
to me at every turn shows how useful this magazine will be in other parts of the world as a window
to Asia, different from the news and images produced in the West. Needless to say, the narratives
and images currently in circulation are determined by a long history of the dominance of the tradition of
looking at the East through the eyes of the West. This tradition which Edward Said refers to Orientalism
has been dominant for so long that we need aother perspective. Looking at Asia through Asian eyes, I realized,
is so very different from looking at it through Western eyes.


By Way of Conclusion: Through African Eyes

I cannot help remarking by way of conclusion that I find that there is a remarkable degree of resonance and similarity between the concerns of African writers and the Asian writers featured in this magazine.
Something stirs in me when I read about the ways in which writers from other parts of the world are
grappling with what in African literature we refer to as the language question. While debating the legacy of
English in Africa, we (African writers and critics) return again and again to the questions of cultural
imperialism, marginalization, and cultural power which these writers also have to deal with on a daily basis
in the practice of the art. Beyond this similarity of vexing questions, there were even more remarkable
moments of surprise and recognition, rather like seeing the identifying marks of your face in another person¡¯s face in the mirror.
In fact, there were moments when I suddenly discovered pieces of identical histories. In the interview with
Francisco Sionil Jose, the writer and publisher who established the journal Solidaridad in the Philippines,
for instance, I found a piece of identical history I had not known. F. S. Jose says in this interview that:

A foreign foundation called ¡®Congress for Control Freedom¡¯ (sic), based in Paris, supported Solidaridad
financially. This is a foundation that supported many non-governmental organizations in other countries
including South Korea. It was discovered later, though, that some of their funding came from the CIA.
(166-167).

Anyone familiar with the history of the African Literature in the 1960s will realize that the organization he is speaking about here—the correct name is Congress for Cultural Freedom—not only funded the highly
influential literary magazine Transition, it also sponsored some of the first major conferences on African
literature that brought together writers and academics from all over Africa. These conferences were held in
Kampala, Uganda, Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Dakar, Senegal. It is not that one did not realise that there are shared moments of history such as this between African and Asia. But to realise this with this degree of
specificity will have taken much intellectual labour and collaborative research and comparative studies of
Asian and African intellectual histories. This is a something that has yet to take off. But then to discover
here—on the pages of Asia—a specific instance that researchers will be thrilled beyond description to find
is enough evidence of the immense importance of a literary magazine such as this to fill the gaps in
scholarship and research.

This makes it possible for me to say without embarrassment that even though I was reading Asia:
Magazine of Asian Writers through African eyes, looking for things I could empathize and identify with, I was
seeing it just as well through Asian eyes.

Harry Garuba
Cape Town – Jan. 2007.