#pitchaya sudbanthad

[ravenpuffheadcanons]

Something wonderful that nobody tells you about being an adult is that occasionally you get to go to bed at 7pm on a Friday with a large mug of tea and four books.

[noxaeternaetc]

"At the beach, I played with the abundant sand, digging it up to build what my megalomaniacal seven-year-old mind thought to be a city—like New York, which I’d visited for the first time that year. The pits I dug widened as my sand cities rose. If I dug far and long enough, I might reach the oil deposits underneath.

Long ago, minuscule sea animals had died and settled into the sunless, airless depths of a long-departed sea. The concentration of their biological sludge and high temperatures turned them into crude oil sealed by years of sediment deposits. In 1938, the Standard Oil Company of California found those deposits, and since then, millions of barrels a day had been pumped out of the ground. Some of that oil was hanging from a key chain that I carried with me in Saudi Arabia. Through a dark glass vial, I could see an inky liquid roll as I tilted it.

The empire of capital would not let the dead, ancient animals alone. Through systemized extraction, they were being unearthed to light up and power our cars, motorcycles, and sky-shattering jets, and they were vengeful at us for disturbing their rest. In their incineration, the dead would turn into dangerous dust, seeing to it that our lungs became poisoned and diseased, that the entire world grew hotter, that seas flowed over our cities of stone, and that lush forests dried into desiccated dunes. The dead want to quicken our union with them, perhaps so that we may sooner know what it is like to be exhumed for some living being’s expedient use. In the end, we become all that we consume."

Pitchaya Sudbanthad, A brief history of trying to breathe in cities, in Lithub, June 15, 2022.

[kindledspiritsbooks]

My Month in Books: April 2023

A Promised Land by Barack Obama When I was a little girl Barack Obama came to Dublin and my mum took me and my little brother to hear him speak. Even then, it was impossible not to realise that you were listening to a master of storytelling, though he had only used his skills to win elections at that point. In A Promised Land he instead uses his talents to tell one of the biggest stories that…

[carterscowplants]

rules: tag 9 people you would like to get to know/catch up with

ty for the tag @whiimms

last song: At Last by Etta James last show: Merlin!! currently watching: Badhaii Do (highly recommend)  currently reading: Floating by Pitchaya Sudbanthad. It's Climate Fiction and SOO good if you're looking to have an existential crisis for yourself any anyone that's born after you. current obsession: I recently got a Nail Powder Kit and have been experimenting. One nail a day. Trying to promote growth and style while saving money.

tagging: @crusty-trait , @duusheen , @simelune , @simnnah , @aberzsims , @morgynemberisagenderfluiddaddy , @foxisimmer , @pikaburr , @bunmou, @cowplant-pizza (I cheated and did 10🤫 )

No pressure! Have a great day + Thank you guys for being part of the community🤍 (If you've already done it, or don't do these, feel free to ignore!)

[anthony-thailitblog]

10 Thai fiction novels

1. A wish in the dark by Christina Soontornvat:

All light in Chattana is created by one man — the Governor, who appeared after the Great Fire to bring peace and order to the city. For Pong, who was born in Namwon Prison, the magical lights represent freedom, and he dreams of the day he will be able to walk among them. But when Pong escapes from prison, he realizes that the world outside is no fairer than the one behind bars. The wealthy dine and dance under bright orb light, while the poor toil away in darkness. Worst of all, Pong’s prison tattoo marks him as a fugitive who can never be truly free. Nok, the prison warden’s perfect daughter, is bent on tracking Pong down and restoring her family’s good name. But as Nok hunts Pong through the alleys and canals of Chattana, she uncovers secrets that make her question the truths she has always held dear. Set in a Thai-inspired fantasy world, and inspired by Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. (Summary from https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/38465017)

2.Bangkok Wakes to rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad:

Pitchaya Sudbanthad’s debut novel “Bangkok Wakes to Rain,” named a notable book of the year by The New York Times and The Washington Post, deals with ghosts: the ghosts of violence, the ghosts of memory, the ghosts of disaster, despair and distance. In a style that draws to mind David Mitchell’s time-bending “Cloud Atlas,” the Thailand-born, Brooklyn-based author beautifully weaves together vignettes told across different centuries, treating time like a fluid construct (Summary from https://bk.asia-city.com/things-to-do-bangkok/news/5-books-thai-authors-to-power-read-now)

3. The Judgement by Chart Korbjitti:

Another SEA Write Award-winner, author Chart Korbjitti rose to fame in 1981 with the release of this novel. Set in a rural Thai village, the story follows a former monk and school janitor named Fak, who takes in his mentally unstable mother-in-law after his father’s death. Despite noble intentions and repeatedly turning down his mother-in-law’s sexual advances, Fak can’t escape the increasingly harsh judgment of the villagers and turns to alcohol to find solace. Oddly enough, this story is still totally relatable in 2020, except judgment is passed down in seconds thanks to social media, and the village can be seen as the extremely online world (Summary from https://bk.asia-city.com/things-to-do-bangkok/news/5-books-thai-authors-to-power-read-now)

4. The sad part was by Prabda Yoon:

Told with his trademark deadpan humor and often featuring a sort of postmodern experimentation with form, auteur Prabda Yoon’s collection of 12 short stories offers a poignant look at life in Thailand today. Unusual deaths, flamboyant talk show hosts and female vampires serve as devices to examine how the world we live in is at odds with ancient traditions. The English-language version, translated by Mui Poopoksakul, is fantastic, but Yoon’s wordplay comes through sharpest in the original Thai edition.

5. Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap:

Published in 2004, Bangkok-born Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s debut collection of short stories deals with family, love and change in a setting that shifts from Thailand’s inner-city underbelly to its wild but pearly white beaches. The book opens with the prize-winning “Farangs,” which follows a young Thai man—with a pet pig named Clint Eastwood—from a working-class family who falls in love with an American tourist in a beach town. Another standout, “At the Café Lovely” deals with poverty, drugs and filial piety in a Bangkok slum. Some stories are funny, others moving, and all are worth your time and attention. (Summary from https://bk.asia-city.com/things-to-do-bangkok/news/5-books-thai-authors-to-power-read-now)

6. Letters from Thailand by Botan and Susan Fulop Kepner: Letters from Thailand is the story of Tan Suang U, a young man who leaves China to make his fortune in Thailand at the close of World War II, and ends up marrying, raising a family, and operating a successful business. The novel unfolds through his letters to his beloved mother in China. In Tan Suang U's lively account of his daily life in Bangkok's bustling Chinatown, larger and deeper themes emerge: his determination to succeed at business in this strange new culture; his hopes for his family; his resentment at how easily his children embrace urban Thai culture at the expense of the Chinese heritage which he holds dear; his inability to understand or adopt Thai ways; and his growing alienation from a society that is changing too fast for him. (Summary from https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/letters-from-thailand-botan/1122993770;jsessionid=175E21FDACF190D8C7858C296D529CB9.prodny_store02-atgap17?ean=9789747551679#)

7. Arid Dreams by Duanwad Pimwana. Translated by Mui Poopoksakul: In thirteen stories that investigate ordinary and working-class Thailand, characters aspire for more but remain suspended in routine. They bide their time, waiting for an extraordinary event to end their stasis. A politician’s wife imagines her life had her husband’s accident been fatal, a man on death row requests that a friend clear up a misunderstanding with a sex worker, and an elevator attendant feels himself wasting away while trapped, immobile, at his station all day (Summary from https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/arid-dreams-duanwad-pimwana/1129229563;jsessionid=175E21FDACF190D8C7858C296D529CB9.prodny_store02-atgap17?ean=9781936932566)

8. Bright by Duanwad Pimwana. Translated by Mui Poopoksakul: When five-year-old Kampol is told by his father to wait for him in front of some run-down apartment buildings, the confused boy does as told—he waits, and waits, and waits, until he realizes his father isn’t coming back anytime soon. Adopted by the community, Kampol is soon being raised by figures like Chong the shopkeeper, who rents out calls on his telephone and goes into debt while extending his customers endless credit. Kampol also plays with local kids like Noi, whose shirt is so worn that it rips right in half, and the sweet, deceptively cute toddler Penporn. Dueling flea markets, a search for a ten-baht coin lost in the sands of a beach, pet crickets that get eaten for dinner, bouncy ball fads in school, and loneliness so merciless that it kills a boy’s appetite all combine into Bright, the first-ever novel by a Thai woman to appear in English translation. Duanwad Pimwana’s urban, and at times gritty, vignettes are balanced with a folk-tale-like feel and a charmingly wry sense of humor. Together, these intensely concentrated, minimalist gems combine into an off-beat, highly satisfying coming-of-age story of a very memorable young boy and the age-old legends, practices, and personalities that raise him. (Summary from https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bright-duanwad-pimwana/1129325376;jsessionid=175E21FDACF190D8C7858C296D529CB9.prodny_store02-atgap17?ean=9781931883801#)

9. Four Reigns by Kukrit Pramoj:

This English version of the Thai novel Si Phaendin tells the rich and entertaining story of one woman’s life both inside and outside the royal palace in Bangkok. Spanning a period of four reigns, from King Chulalongkorn to the reign of his grandson King Ananda, this popular modern classic gives insight into the social and political issues facing Thailand from the 1890s through the turbulent years of World War II.(Summary from https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/four-reigns-khukrit-pramoj/1101002507;jsessionid=175E21FDACF190D8C7858C296D529CB9.prodny_store02-atgap17?ean=9789747100662)

10. Many Lives by Kukrit Pramoj. Translated by Meredith Borthwick:

“That night, the rain poured and wind howled, raindrops crashing like solid objects onto the ground and water. A passenger boat from Ban Phaen to Bangkok, packed with people, pressed on through the current amidst the rising clamor of the rain and storm. . . .” The boat capsizes in the torrent, and washed up on the shore the next morning are the sodden bodies of the many passengers who lost their lives. Thus begins M. R. Kukrit Pramoj’s classic novel set in the Thailand of the early 1950s and first published in 1954. The life of each passenger who perished is retraced from birth, revealing a complex web of experiences and emotions. (Summary from https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/many-lives-m-r-kukrit-pramoj/1100473469;jsessionid=175E21FDACF190D8C7858C296D529CB9.prodny_store02-atgap17?ean=9789747100679)

[usedcarheaven]

ng ago, minuscule sea animals had died and settled into the sunless, airless depths of a long-departed sea. The concentration of their biological sludge and high temperatures turned them into crude oil sealed by years of sediment deposits. In 1938, the Standard Oil Company of California found those deposits, and since then, millions of barrels a day had been pumped out of the ground. Some of that oil was hanging from a key chain that I carried with me in Saudi Arabia. Through a dark glass vial, I could see an inky liquid roll as I tilted it.

The empire of capital would not let the dead, ancient animals alone. Through systemized extraction, they were being unearthed to light up and power our cars, motorcycles, and sky-shattering jets, and they were vengeful at us for disturbing their rest. In their incineration, the dead would turn into dangerous dust, seeing to it that our lungs became poisoned and diseased, that the entire world grew hotter, that seas flowed over our cities of stone, and that lush forests dried into desiccated dunes. The dead want to quicken our union with them, perhaps so that we may sooner know what it is like to be exhumed for some living being’s expedient use. In the end, we become all that we consume.”

Pitchaya Sudbanthad, A Brief History of Trying to Breathe in Cities, Lithub, June 2022

Mark Tobey      Wild Field

MOMA

[illustration-alcove]

Grace Han’s cover for Pitchaya Sudbanthad’s Bangkok Wakes To Rain.

[litarchiveds]

Pitchaya Sudbanthad, Bangkok Wakes To Rain

[the-dust-jacket]

Climate catastrophe has long featured in science-fiction, but now it’s the subject of far future, near-future, and contemporary novels, to say nothing of the daily news.

These books range from futuristic to immediately and gut-wrenchingly plausible to alternate-history or a melding of past and future, from meticulously-researched sociological speculation to myth-infused fantasy, from high-tech dystopia to post-apocalyptic anarchy and everything in between. But they all deal, directly or indirectly, with climate change. They imagine humans into the graphs and statistics of forecast. 

Some of them are hopeful. Some of them are cathartic. Some of them are bleak. They all raise questions worth talking about. And I increasingly find it hopeful and useful and even radical to read any books that imagine a future at all. 

[riverheadbooks]

Today's the day! BANGKOK WAKES TO RAIN, the debut novel by Pitchaya Sudbanthad has arrived! Hear about "the simultaneous coexistence of both the ancient and magical and the new and technological" as he speaks with NPR’s Scott Simonson, here.

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Bangkok Wakes to Rain

By Pitchaya Sudbanthad. 

Design by Grace Han.

[bigtickhk]

Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad

US: https://amzn.to/2Idb8ZH

UK: https://amzn.to/2TsHbKB

The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth by Veeraporn Nitiprapha https://amzn.to/2FRgc1s

[pitchayasudbanthad]

Signed copies at @communitybookstore

[goldpeninsula]

I’ll tell you, few today appreciate how hard it is to be a phi krasue.

Before, you might have to only watch for the occasional rosebush or thorny vine, but these days, many more things can snag the innards you’re dragging underneath your disembodied head. With all the cell phones around, you’d think there’d be fewer wires and cables to watch out for, but instead they seem to have multiplied, criss-crossing intersections, jumbling and twisting in slack braids between poles, and sprouting extensions that can catch you by surprise. They’re pretty much impossible to spot in the dark, and you don’t know what’s electrified before an arcing spark jolts a stray intestine. We lost a few good ones that way—Nahng Joom, Nahng Paew, and Mae Wink. You can’t fault us for also feeling lucky that each were vaporized beyond recognition. We have no desire to become the curious topic of some cryptozoological bulletin board.