Bicara Buku: Roots, Living Heritage
This session was conducted on 11 March 2023 at the Tun Hussein Onn Memorial Kuala Lumpur
In this book narrating the perspective of notable Malaysian individuals ("suara rakyat"), family members and close friends penned their thoughts about a notable family member who lived in the past. One entry was about the history of Batu Pahat town, how it developed to what it is now.
It is a snapshot of the author's Lineage/ Geneaology.
It speaks of/ expresses social history; a family's narrative.
One engaging part of the discussion is "What is history?"
What of it: history is the culmination of facts & aspects of truth (from different perspectives).
For example:
It was a fact that a particular police station caught fire (as a timeline in history)
However this fact may be interpreted from 2 perspectives
- say, the British may consider it an act of terrorism
- however the nationalists may see it as an anti-colonial act/ stance
Who writes history writes their perspective of it.
Connected to this book, some of the content were based on oral history.
This potentially give rise to whether it is reliable and/ or accepted as "truth".
A historian got up during Q&A and he mentioned that this book is not "History" (with a capital "H").
It is a collection of someone's family history (with a small "h"), may be acknowledged as such, but will likely not be considered as a significant contribution to Malaysia's history.
Personally, any discourse is good. I always walk away with new knowledge.
The editors (in fact I spoke to one of them) never claimed that they were writing "History".
It was merely an attempt to document life in Malaysia long gone, told from the eyes of real people who were luminaries but not necessarily Malaysian or world leaders. An exercise of documenting and writing. Indeed, I think this is a rare skill that many more Malaysians should have and practice.
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