Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng - Penang Monthly (Page 11)

The More Individual Stories We Acknowledge, The More Authentic Our National History

6 min read

One thing common to most Malaysians is the balik kampung tradition. This goes even for those millions who have left the country over the last 50 years, who return whenever they can to visit relatives, friends and old haunts.

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

George Town – From City to Municipality to Culture Centre

7 min read

George Town became a city on January 1, 1957. The timing was not by accident. In fact it was an event to herald the approach of sovereignty for the 11 states of Malaya exactly eight months later that year.

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

The Unity Fetish

10 min read

Building a nation involves sustained emotional stimulation, while building a state is more of a legal and technical matter. Balancing the two is the key to social stability and dynamism.

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Marina Mahathir: Malaysia is My Colour Movie

11 min read

Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir is the keynote speaker at the fifth George Town Literary Festival (GTLF), which takes place on November 27-29 . On a daily basis, Malaysians look out in the news for her most recent comments on issues that interest and bother the country.

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

The Penan’s Lament: “The Forest is Our Skin”

5 min read

Rainforest Hero: The Life and Death of Bruno Manser, by Ruedi Suter, SIRD (Petaling Jaya, Malaysia) & Bergli (Basel, Switzerland), 2015. Translated by Ali...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Mahathir: “People Must Be Able to Hold Their Heads Up.”

11 min read

Ooi Kee Beng: Tun, your generation fascinates me. You are of the nation-building generation who dared to imagine that it would not only change the world, but co...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Creating a City of Culture Costs – But We Should Happily Pay

2 min read

Artists – be they painters or sculptors, musicians or even authors – need sponsors. They need patrons. In our commercial age, there is of course t...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Account of an Early Transit in Penang

10 min read

The following text is from a report written and submitted in 1796 by Captain Walter Caulfield Lennon. It is about his impressions of “Pulo Penang&...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Dialogue with a KL cabbie

4 min read

My cabbie was an elderly Malay man who liked quoting Shakespeare. It turned out that he was born and raised in Penang, like I was; and went to a missionary school, like I. And he studied English Literature, like I did.

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

A Convincing Case for Farquhar

7 min read

The present always becomes the past. And the past in turn is something that slowly settles, obscuring as often as it educates; and in time it becomes hardened t...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

The Art of Dismantling Cultural Pluralism

5 min read

Malaysia is a special place for its natural geography and its human history, but most importantly of all, because of its demographic complexity.The peninsula...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

The Diminishing of Humans through Identity Politics

3 min read

Who am I?A simple question to ask oneself, and yet, no simple answer suggests itself. As long as the issue is about the singular person, it appears to be but...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng