Unlike Thailand and Vietnam, I had zero expectations of Malaysia. I wasn’t familiar with the cuisine, I hadn’t seen it portrayed in television or movies, it never came up in history or art classes. When we arrived in Kuala Lumper, though, I was immediately impressed by this large multicultural city. I hadn’t planned to read a book for Malaysia since we would only be here for two weeks, primarily for medical tourism, but I soon wanted to know more about this place and its people, so I thought, maybe just a short one!
I did some quick research and found a Malaysian author who writes young adult fiction and several of her novels were even available from my library on Libby. I selected The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf. It focuses on a sixteen year old girl who is out at the movies when riots break out across Kuala Lumpur. She is rescued by a Chinese woman and forced to take shelter with the woman’s family, all the while worrying about her own mother and her best friend and fearing the worst.
Malaysia is unique among most of Asia in that it is home to three distinct races of people: Malay, Chinese, and Indian. They bargained their independence from the UK under the underbelly that they would make this work, but it hasn’t always been a smooth ride. National elections in May of 1969 resulted in wins for some minority Chinese candidates, and shit hit the fan. Looting, violence, murder, destruction of property, you name it. This went on for over a week before things came under control.
Hanna Alkaf chose to take on not one, but three sensitive topics: race, religion, and mental illness, and approaches them with frankness and compassion. While it is a young adult novel, as she warns in the prologue, there are a lot of violent and scary scenes described.
I didn’t learn a lot about Malay cuisine while reading this book since the characters were rationing food until they could safely go out in the streets again, so maybe you could pair The Weight of Our Sky with a glass of water and some thin rice porridge in solidarity.
