The Hakkas of Sarawak: Sacrificial Gifts in Cold War Era Malaysia

Highly recommended. All levels.

A. Pashia, Choice Magazine, vol 51:06:2014

“This book makes a significant and important contribution to the anthropology of history and collective memory. In moving prose, Kee Howe Yong provides a deeply insightful portrayal of the everyday lives of these Chinese workers and the imbrications of their memories of their communist past within their quotidian experiences of an oppressive present. No other work so sympathetically engages with the whole theme of how the memorialization of a past marked by violence and group persecution occurs in the case of contemporary Chinese in Malaysia.” Donald M. Nonini, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“The Hakkas of Sarawak makes an original contribution to studies of the Cold War and memory in Southeast Asia by examining how local communities experienced the Malayan Emergency and how the repression continues to resonate in their daily lives.  Drawing on rich ethnographic material Kee Howe Yong reveals how this past continues to permeate the present of the ethnic chinese Hakka community of Sarawak, Malaysia” Katharine McGregor, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne