by Laboni Das Some illnesses begin with a virus. Others begin with a rumour. Felix Cheong’s A Mild Case of Mass Hysteria, illustrated by Ritwick Roy and Riddhi Trivedi, opens with an event that sounds too strange to be true. Set in Singapore in October 1967, the graphic novel revisits one of the country’s most unusual episodes of collective fear: suo yang, when hundreds of people believed their genitals were retracting into their bodies and that death would soon follow. For many readers outside Southeast Asia, this episode will be entirely unfamiliar. Yet Cheong wisely refuses to treat it as… Read More
The Puerto Rican War: A Graphic History
by Emiliano Aguilar On October 30th, 1950, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party organized a series of uprising in cities across the archipelago of Puerto Rico. Directed by the leader of the Nationalist Party, Pedro Albizu Campos, Nationalists mobilized uprisings in San Juan, Utuado, Jayuya, Ponce, and Arecibo, among others. The violence of this uprising was not isolated to Puerto Rico, as two Nationalists attacked the Blair House in Washington, D.C. —traditionally The President’s Guest House, but used as the temporary residence of Truman during extensive renovations on the White House—as a part of a plot to assassinate U.S. President Harry… Read More
To Tame a Tiger – The Singapore Story – Updated Edition
awaiting review