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ฝันแห้งและเรื่องอื่นๆ
ถ้าแกชอบสามชาวบ้านตามตลาดนัดแบบที่เขาไม่มีหัวคิดอะไรมากนัก ก็คงไม่ต้องกังวลว่าแม่สาวพวกนั้นจะรักพ่อค้าแบกะดินได้หรือเปล่า ปัญหาอยู่ที่ใครหรือ ปัญหาอยู่ที่แกนี่ไง เพราะแกจะไม่ชอบแม่สาวชาวบ้านอยู่ดี คนที่แกมองนั้นยังกับออกมาจากนิยายคลาสสิกก็ไม่ปาน -- 'ลารา'
มันเริ่มต้นเหมือนทุ่งดอกไม้ที่ได้เวลาเบ่งบาน ทั้งสวยสดและหอมหวาน โลกสวยงามเกินบรรยาย ผมได้แต่เฝ้าดู ไม่มีสิทธ์แตะต้องความรู้สึกเช่นที่เพื่อนเป็นอยู่ พวกเขามีความรัก ผมก็มีความรัก ความรักกำลังพาพวกเขาเดินหน้าสู่อนาคต ส่วนผมถูกความรักผูกตรึงไว้ในที่แห่งหนึ่ง เป็นสวนเงียบแห่งอดีตกาล หยุดนิ่งอยู่ตรงนั้น ได้แต่มองดูเพื่อนๆ เคลื่อนไกลออกไปทุกที -- 'เขาเบ่งบาน... ชั่วกาลนานแล้ง'
เธออาจแต่งกายตามอย่างแม่หรือยาย จึงสวมเสื้อคอกระเช้าโดยไม่สวมเสื้อใน นุ่งผ้าถุงเหน็บรั้งอย่างง่ายๆ แต่ใครกันสอนให้เธอทับชายเสื้อไว้ในขอบผ้าถุง การได้เห็นส่วนเว้าของเอวเป็นเรื่องสำคัญ กันและสะโพกของผู้หญิงจะดูว่างดงามเพียงใด จำเป็นจะต้องเห็นเอวไปพร้อมกันด้วย เสื้อคอกระเช้าซึ่งควรจะพองหลวมเมื่อถูกรวบทับชายไว้ ก็กลับขึงตึงแนบเนื้อ ขนาดของทรวงอกจึงถูกเปิดเผยในทันที โอ... แม่คุณเอ๋ย --'ฝันแห้ง'
ราวถูกโยนเข้าเตาหลอม สิบปีให้หลังพวกเธอกลับกลายคล้ายเป็นคนคนเดียวกัน โปรยทองมองตัวเองแล้วรู้สึกว่าหล่อนกำลังเป็นเช่นที่เพื่อนเคยตั้งข้อสังเกต ไว้ โปรยทองคนเดิมหายไปแล้ว กลายเป็นใครคนหนึ่งเหมือนกับหญิงเพื่อนบ้านวัยเดียวกัน เหมือนกับเมียของคนขายแก๊ส เมียของช่างซ่อมรถ เมียตำรวจ และเมียของใครต่อใคร "อิสตรี"
มันเริ่มต้นเหมือนทุ่งดอกไม้ที่ได้เวลาเบ่งบาน ทั้งสวยสดและหอมหวาน โลกสวยงามเกินบรรยาย ผมได้แต่เฝ้าดู ไม่มีสิทธ์แตะต้องความรู้สึกเช่นที่เพื่อนเป็นอยู่ พวกเขามีความรัก ผมก็มีความรัก ความรักกำลังพาพวกเขาเดินหน้าสู่อนาคต ส่วนผมถูกความรักผูกตรึงไว้ในที่แห่งหนึ่ง เป็นสวนเงียบแห่งอดีตกาล หยุดนิ่งอยู่ตรงนั้น ได้แต่มองดูเพื่อนๆ เคลื่อนไกลออกไปทุกที -- 'เขาเบ่งบาน... ชั่วกาลนานแล้ง'
เธออาจแต่งกายตามอย่างแม่หรือยาย จึงสวมเสื้อคอกระเช้าโดยไม่สวมเสื้อใน นุ่งผ้าถุงเหน็บรั้งอย่างง่ายๆ แต่ใครกันสอนให้เธอทับชายเสื้อไว้ในขอบผ้าถุง การได้เห็นส่วนเว้าของเอวเป็นเรื่องสำคัญ กันและสะโพกของผู้หญิงจะดูว่างดงามเพียงใด จำเป็นจะต้องเห็นเอวไปพร้อมกันด้วย เสื้อคอกระเช้าซึ่งควรจะพองหลวมเมื่อถูกรวบทับชายไว้ ก็กลับขึงตึงแนบเนื้อ ขนาดของทรวงอกจึงถูกเปิดเผยในทันที โอ... แม่คุณเอ๋ย --'ฝันแห้ง'
ราวถูกโยนเข้าเตาหลอม สิบปีให้หลังพวกเธอกลับกลายคล้ายเป็นคนคนเดียวกัน โปรยทองมองตัวเองแล้วรู้สึกว่าหล่อนกำลังเป็นเช่นที่เพื่อนเคยตั้งข้อสังเกต ไว้ โปรยทองคนเดิมหายไปแล้ว กลายเป็นใครคนหนึ่งเหมือนกับหญิงเพื่อนบ้านวัยเดียวกัน เหมือนกับเมียของคนขายแก๊ส เมียของช่างซ่อมรถ เมียตำรวจ และเมียของใครต่อใคร "อิสตรี"
256 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2014
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2143 people want to read
About the author
Duanwad Pimwana
3 books30 followersAuthor's profile in original language is เดือนวาด พิมวนา
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews
May 2, 2019
How often do we get to read a collection of short stories from a woman author from Thailand? The book is published by a feminist press and almost all involve women’s issues although it is interesting that of the 13 stories only two are told by a woman.
There are many refreshing and often unique plots to the stories. A few examples of stories that I liked:
In Arid Dreams, a single man on a beach vacation finds that he is greatly attracted, not to the beach masseuses, but to the wife in the vacation cottage he is living in. But luckily, she’s a masseuse too!
In Wood Children, a husband worries about his wife, childless after eight years of marriage. She suddenly takes up wood carving, creating statues of children. He arranges for a friend’s small son to visit daily so she can have a child for company. But that may not be a good idea with all those knives hanging about.
In Within these Walls, a beautiful wealthy woman is married to a powerful political assistant who is a master of the universe. He’s dying in the hospital due to an accident and she comes to realize that she hopes he does die because he has dictated all her actions right down to the color of paint on the walls and how she must dress. (Shades of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Yellow Wallpaper?) Ever her husband’s boss criticizes her dress style. Of course it turns out he will recover.
In Kanda’s Eyebrows, a man fears what he sees as the loss of his wife’s beauty (she’s 38). He obsesses on her eyebrows.
In Men’s Rights, a man finds out his wife and mother of his two small children is having an affair. He plans and attempts to kill her but stops short after critically injuring her. He then finds out her lover is his best friend. At the end of the story the two men are heading to a bar to “work things out.”
An elevator attendant feels disconnected from life doing such a useless job. He takes offense at only hearing, ends, beginnings and middles of conversations and feels people do this to him deliberately because they hate him.
Good original stories. A lot of local color and culture of Thailand. Amazingly everyone works two and three jobs every day of the week, dusk to dawn and they collapse in bed at night. I like the way the author often focuses on a single item (wall paint, eyebrows) to hold many of the stories together. A strong belief in the importance of luck. “I suddenly realized something else: my good fortune [found money] resulted from anther’s misfortune. Someone suffered bad luck in order to give someone else good luck. Must everything in the world be a zero-sum game?”
The author is a well-known writer in Southeast Asia who has written several novels, poetry and books of short stories.
Top photo from hootholidays.com.au/media/catalog/cat...
Photo of Bangkok from oneyoungworld.com/sites/oneyoungworld...
Photo of the author from baybookfest.org/wp-content/uploads/20...
There are many refreshing and often unique plots to the stories. A few examples of stories that I liked:
In Arid Dreams, a single man on a beach vacation finds that he is greatly attracted, not to the beach masseuses, but to the wife in the vacation cottage he is living in. But luckily, she’s a masseuse too!
In Wood Children, a husband worries about his wife, childless after eight years of marriage. She suddenly takes up wood carving, creating statues of children. He arranges for a friend’s small son to visit daily so she can have a child for company. But that may not be a good idea with all those knives hanging about.
In Within these Walls, a beautiful wealthy woman is married to a powerful political assistant who is a master of the universe. He’s dying in the hospital due to an accident and she comes to realize that she hopes he does die because he has dictated all her actions right down to the color of paint on the walls and how she must dress. (Shades of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Yellow Wallpaper?) Ever her husband’s boss criticizes her dress style. Of course it turns out he will recover.
In Kanda’s Eyebrows, a man fears what he sees as the loss of his wife’s beauty (she’s 38). He obsesses on her eyebrows.
In Men’s Rights, a man finds out his wife and mother of his two small children is having an affair. He plans and attempts to kill her but stops short after critically injuring her. He then finds out her lover is his best friend. At the end of the story the two men are heading to a bar to “work things out.”
An elevator attendant feels disconnected from life doing such a useless job. He takes offense at only hearing, ends, beginnings and middles of conversations and feels people do this to him deliberately because they hate him.
Good original stories. A lot of local color and culture of Thailand. Amazingly everyone works two and three jobs every day of the week, dusk to dawn and they collapse in bed at night. I like the way the author often focuses on a single item (wall paint, eyebrows) to hold many of the stories together. A strong belief in the importance of luck. “I suddenly realized something else: my good fortune [found money] resulted from anther’s misfortune. Someone suffered bad luck in order to give someone else good luck. Must everything in the world be a zero-sum game?”
The author is a well-known writer in Southeast Asia who has written several novels, poetry and books of short stories.
Top photo from hootholidays.com.au/media/catalog/cat...
Photo of Bangkok from oneyoungworld.com/sites/oneyoungworld...
Photo of the author from baybookfest.org/wp-content/uploads/20...
June 19, 2019
On the heels of reading Bright (Two Lines Press) by this same author/translator duo, I found this book of short stories that came out the same day from Feminist Press - I have to admit I was taken aback at first by how many stories featured a male character who was often obsessing over a woman, treating her like an object, or punishing her for not looking/acting like he thought she should. But there some subversion going on here where these characters are exposed for their thinking. "Kanda's Eyebrows" is probably the standout story for me in this collection, about a man who is angry that his wife has stopped wearing makeup.
While I understand the author's approach, I've probably read enough women filtered through men for a lifetime (even if in this case it is women through men through a woman) and I'd prefer to hear from the women in their own lives without the men as the filter or focus. The author seems to be trying to point out the difficulty when men believe they have a right to that control, and how quickly situations devolve. True, and yet.
I want to thank Two Lines Press for pointing me to this article by the translator of both Arid Dreams and Bright, addressing what Thai feminism looks like, and understanding how the author is seen and sees herself in relation to it. It really helped me understand the stories from a more Thai perspective.
Oh hey this counts for the Reading Envy Summer Challenge for "something translated." I found it in Hoopla.
While I understand the author's approach, I've probably read enough women filtered through men for a lifetime (even if in this case it is women through men through a woman) and I'd prefer to hear from the women in their own lives without the men as the filter or focus. The author seems to be trying to point out the difficulty when men believe they have a right to that control, and how quickly situations devolve. True, and yet.
I want to thank Two Lines Press for pointing me to this article by the translator of both Arid Dreams and Bright, addressing what Thai feminism looks like, and understanding how the author is seen and sees herself in relation to it. It really helped me understand the stories from a more Thai perspective.
Oh hey this counts for the Reading Envy Summer Challenge for "something translated." I found it in Hoopla.
February 22, 2021
Bleak tales on the relation between man and woman in modern day Thailand
I’ll tell her just how much her husband loves her and how possessive he is of her.
The male narrative perspective is surprisingly dominant in Arid Dreams: most of the 13 short stories in the book are told from a man his perspective and the whole world the book plays out in definitely seems to be a man's world. The marriages are unhappy, there is a lot of double standards between the genders, transactional sex cements power differences, there is corruption, poverty is rampant and tourists might see the country as a paradise but that is only due to their privileges and toe-dipping into the society Duanwad Pimwana writes about.
Arid Dreams - A story about tourism, exploitation, the male gaze and the privileges farang (westerners) enjoy while the local Thai struggle to get by - 3 stars
Wood Children - A quite scary story on a women involuntarily childless who turns to woodcutting, only to be unsettled by a real child - 2.5 stars
The Attendant - A story about a lift attendant (and how mind, soul and bodycrushing this kind of job is) who remember his rural youth. A highlight is the fragility and tenderness of him taking care of a chicken with epilepsy. But rather too short to be impactful- 2.5 stars
The final secret of inmate black tiger - A very short letter, rather whimsical- 1.5 stars
Men’s Right - A rather harrowing story about male privilege, violence and men still having more solidarity between each other than for their wives. - 3 stars
Within these walls - A story of a woman having more freedom as a widow than as a voiceless spouse to her corrupt husband - 2.5 stars
How a lad found his uncle and learned a lesson - violence, double standards in terms of fidelity for man and woman, fear of strangers, mixed with a narrator that initially feels like Candide in borderless optimism- 2 stars
The Awaiter - the power of money and having a job, routine and a sense of purpose - 2.5 stars
Sandals - A dark tale of puberty anger with parents, induced by a lack of opportunity and the prospect of years of hard menial work, ending up disastrous - 3.5 stars
Kanda’s Eyebrows - Again a story of an unhappy and unequal marriage, with a man pondering over the loss of beauty of his wife but never about his own looks - 3 stars
The Doctor - The struggle in a small village between a well intentioned but not formally educated doctor and a modern selfish one. I didn’t feel much for any of the sides involved - 2 stars
The way of the moon - A sweet family portret of father and son just contemplating on the universe, one of the highlights in this otherwise quite unrelenting bundle - 3.5 stars
The second book - A tale on lost hopes and dreams of a corrupt official fallen from grace. The woman he seeks up fortunately retains some of the hope and curiosity he has lost - 3 stars.
I’ll tell her just how much her husband loves her and how possessive he is of her.
The male narrative perspective is surprisingly dominant in Arid Dreams: most of the 13 short stories in the book are told from a man his perspective and the whole world the book plays out in definitely seems to be a man's world. The marriages are unhappy, there is a lot of double standards between the genders, transactional sex cements power differences, there is corruption, poverty is rampant and tourists might see the country as a paradise but that is only due to their privileges and toe-dipping into the society Duanwad Pimwana writes about.
Arid Dreams - A story about tourism, exploitation, the male gaze and the privileges farang (westerners) enjoy while the local Thai struggle to get by - 3 stars
Wood Children - A quite scary story on a women involuntarily childless who turns to woodcutting, only to be unsettled by a real child - 2.5 stars
The Attendant - A story about a lift attendant (and how mind, soul and bodycrushing this kind of job is) who remember his rural youth. A highlight is the fragility and tenderness of him taking care of a chicken with epilepsy. But rather too short to be impactful- 2.5 stars
The final secret of inmate black tiger - A very short letter, rather whimsical- 1.5 stars
Men’s Right - A rather harrowing story about male privilege, violence and men still having more solidarity between each other than for their wives. - 3 stars
Within these walls - A story of a woman having more freedom as a widow than as a voiceless spouse to her corrupt husband - 2.5 stars
How a lad found his uncle and learned a lesson - violence, double standards in terms of fidelity for man and woman, fear of strangers, mixed with a narrator that initially feels like Candide in borderless optimism- 2 stars
The Awaiter - the power of money and having a job, routine and a sense of purpose - 2.5 stars
Sandals - A dark tale of puberty anger with parents, induced by a lack of opportunity and the prospect of years of hard menial work, ending up disastrous - 3.5 stars
Kanda’s Eyebrows - Again a story of an unhappy and unequal marriage, with a man pondering over the loss of beauty of his wife but never about his own looks - 3 stars
The Doctor - The struggle in a small village between a well intentioned but not formally educated doctor and a modern selfish one. I didn’t feel much for any of the sides involved - 2 stars
The way of the moon - A sweet family portret of father and son just contemplating on the universe, one of the highlights in this otherwise quite unrelenting bundle - 3.5 stars
The second book - A tale on lost hopes and dreams of a corrupt official fallen from grace. The woman he seeks up fortunately retains some of the hope and curiosity he has lost - 3 stars.
February 10, 2023
4.75 stars
“The sun blistered intensely in the morning hours, and in the afternoons, a lazy breeze would come, followed by rain clouds rolling in from the east, drawing a canopy high up in the sky.”
From the wonderful Tilted Axis Press, a set of thirteen short stories from one of Thailand’s preeminent female writers. The stories are generally set in predominantly working class areas and we are not concerned with the lives of the richer elite, but with everyday people. The translation is, I think, excellent.
It’s not a perfect collection and has been criticised as well for being anti-male. I don’t agree with that but Pimwana’s men do run the gamut from predatory to patriarchal and many of the women in the stories feel unsafe. The double standards of entitled men is a dominant theme as well as their total lack of understanding of the women in their lives:
“I find it unnerving how fast women’s looks change. This is something I’ve been preoccupied with since I was young. I have noted, as I observed more women, that there are some exceptions to the rule. These female outliers were what I’d always dreamed of finding. For most women, family life seems to weigh them down with obligations that men often can’t imagine.”
Other themes include poverty, prostitution, unfulfilled dreams and obsession. There is also a sense of dislocation between town and country:
“My legs are strong; my body is strong, a farmer’s body built for physical labor. The world has farmers, and I’m a good farmer. But right now I’m an elevator attendant even though such a job shouldn’t exist in this world. Is it so troublesome to lift your hand up and press a button that they have to pass this task off to someone else, someone who could do so many other things? If I had been born with one hand and an index finger this job would be suitable for me.”
Pimwana is good small moments on which much turns and she can do this in comic an tragic moments. These are well worth reading and work on many levels.
“The sun blistered intensely in the morning hours, and in the afternoons, a lazy breeze would come, followed by rain clouds rolling in from the east, drawing a canopy high up in the sky.”
From the wonderful Tilted Axis Press, a set of thirteen short stories from one of Thailand’s preeminent female writers. The stories are generally set in predominantly working class areas and we are not concerned with the lives of the richer elite, but with everyday people. The translation is, I think, excellent.
It’s not a perfect collection and has been criticised as well for being anti-male. I don’t agree with that but Pimwana’s men do run the gamut from predatory to patriarchal and many of the women in the stories feel unsafe. The double standards of entitled men is a dominant theme as well as their total lack of understanding of the women in their lives:
“I find it unnerving how fast women’s looks change. This is something I’ve been preoccupied with since I was young. I have noted, as I observed more women, that there are some exceptions to the rule. These female outliers were what I’d always dreamed of finding. For most women, family life seems to weigh them down with obligations that men often can’t imagine.”
Other themes include poverty, prostitution, unfulfilled dreams and obsession. There is also a sense of dislocation between town and country:
“My legs are strong; my body is strong, a farmer’s body built for physical labor. The world has farmers, and I’m a good farmer. But right now I’m an elevator attendant even though such a job shouldn’t exist in this world. Is it so troublesome to lift your hand up and press a button that they have to pass this task off to someone else, someone who could do so many other things? If I had been born with one hand and an index finger this job would be suitable for me.”
Pimwana is good small moments on which much turns and she can do this in comic an tragic moments. These are well worth reading and work on many levels.
October 28, 2021
October 28, 2021 Update Now nominated on the long list for the 2021 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
Added link for Borderless Book Club podcast under Trivia and Links
Thai Social Realism Shorts
Review of the Tilted Axis Press paperback edition (2020) translated from selections of the Thai language originals ฝันแห้งและเรื่องอื่นๆ (Arid Dreams and Other Stories) (2014) and other works.
TW = animal/bird cruelty in The Attendant; domestic abuse in Men’s Rights.
Although Arid Dreams is listed on Goodreads as an edition of the 2014 Thai language original Arid Dreams and Other Stories, only the title work is from that collection. The English language edition copyright page states that most of the original stories were published in earlier works in 1995, 2000 and 2006.
My favourites here were the opener Arid Dreams and the closer The Second Book. In the former, a Thai male tourist is on a short island vacation when he is attracted to a masseuse/therapist whom he discovers doubles as a sex worker. He is disappointed to discover that her services are only available to foreigners so as to not have to be selective about locals and, in her own way, to retain their respect. He leaves the encounter with a new understanding. In the closing The Second Book, a failed politician returns to a bookstore from his youth to track down the 2nd volume of a collection for which he could only afford the 1st volume when he was a poor younger boy. It is a symbolic quest towards an achievement that is still within his new limited reality. The bookstore owner and her sister have the power to fulfill this or not. This one especially had an ambiguous ending which left its interpretation up to the reader.
I read Arid Dreams as part of the Borderless Book Club which has been organized by Peirene Press and 7 other UK independent publishers for a 16 week period (May 14 to August 20, 2020) during this current world pandemic situation. It is the successor to the earlier Translated Fiction Online Book Club which was organized for 6 weeks.
Trivia and Links
* I found the article What Does It Mean to be a Thai Feminist, from which the above quote was selected, thanks to Jenny (Reading Envy)’s review.
The Borderless Book Club discussion of Arid Dreams can be heard on the club's podcast (Link opens at Apple iTunes Canada adjust for your own region, See podcast of Arid Dreams at Series 2 Episode 2)
Added link for Borderless Book Club podcast under Trivia and Links
Thai Social Realism Shorts
Review of the Tilted Axis Press paperback edition (2020) translated from selections of the Thai language originals ฝันแห้งและเรื่องอื่นๆ (Arid Dreams and Other Stories) (2014) and other works.
TW = animal/bird cruelty in The Attendant; domestic abuse in Men’s Rights.
Although Arid Dreams is listed on Goodreads as an edition of the 2014 Thai language original Arid Dreams and Other Stories, only the title work is from that collection. The English language edition copyright page states that most of the original stories were published in earlier works in 1995, 2000 and 2006.
In Thailand, Pimwana is not thought of as a feminist writer. Rather, she is called a “genderless” writer because, to many, her work reads as if it could have been written by a man, a far cry from the romances Thai readers traditionally expect from female authors. - translator Mui Poopoksakul*In the Arid Dreams English language translation collection it appears that the translator Poopoksakul has accentuated this statement by selecting a majority of short stories that are written from a male point of view. These stories however are still examining male – female relationships or dynamics in which the female role is often dominant, be it as the object of desire or power or of a quest.
My favourites here were the opener Arid Dreams and the closer The Second Book. In the former, a Thai male tourist is on a short island vacation when he is attracted to a masseuse/therapist whom he discovers doubles as a sex worker. He is disappointed to discover that her services are only available to foreigners so as to not have to be selective about locals and, in her own way, to retain their respect. He leaves the encounter with a new understanding. In the closing The Second Book, a failed politician returns to a bookstore from his youth to track down the 2nd volume of a collection for which he could only afford the 1st volume when he was a poor younger boy. It is a symbolic quest towards an achievement that is still within his new limited reality. The bookstore owner and her sister have the power to fulfill this or not. This one especially had an ambiguous ending which left its interpretation up to the reader.
I read Arid Dreams as part of the Borderless Book Club which has been organized by Peirene Press and 7 other UK independent publishers for a 16 week period (May 14 to August 20, 2020) during this current world pandemic situation. It is the successor to the earlier Translated Fiction Online Book Club which was organized for 6 weeks.
Trivia and Links
* I found the article What Does It Mean to be a Thai Feminist, from which the above quote was selected, thanks to Jenny (Reading Envy)’s review.
The Borderless Book Club discussion of Arid Dreams can be heard on the club's podcast (Link opens at Apple iTunes Canada adjust for your own region, See podcast of Arid Dreams at Series 2 Episode 2)
April 16, 2019
I get what Pimwana is doing, but the prose style is too unimaginative for me, and I felt like the morals were being shoved down my throat in uncreative ways.
May 26, 2025
Arid Dreams trata-se de uma colectânea de treze contos escrita por Duanwad Pimwana, que é considerada uma das vozes mais importantes da literatura tailandesa. Não gostei de todos os contos, alguns deixaram-me bastante desconfortável, mas no geral foi uma leitura positiva.
Arid Dreams ★★★
Wood Children ★★★★
The Attendant ★★
The Final Secret of Inmate Black Tiger ★★
Men’s Right ★★
Within These Walls ★★★
How a Lad Found His Uncle and Learned a Lesson ★★★
The Awaiter ★★★
Sandals ★★★★
Kanda’s Eyebrows ★★★
The Doctor ★★
The Way of the Moon ★★★★
The Second Book ★★★
90/198 – Tailândia
Arid Dreams ★★★
Wood Children ★★★★
The Attendant ★★
The Final Secret of Inmate Black Tiger ★★
Men’s Right ★★
Within These Walls ★★★
How a Lad Found His Uncle and Learned a Lesson ★★★
The Awaiter ★★★
Sandals ★★★★
Kanda’s Eyebrows ★★★
The Doctor ★★
The Way of the Moon ★★★★
The Second Book ★★★
90/198 – Tailândia
March 14, 2021
me, a thai person overjoyed to see more translated thai literature in my library, only to hate almost every story in this collection: i was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you, how dare you
while i won't shut up about the western world needing more southeast asian and thai voices in literature until the day i die, the fact i physically recoiled at the sentence 'kanda wasn't like other girls' really tells you all you need to know about arid dreams. this was essentially a collection about trashy men realising their trashy ways and vowing to treat the women in their life with the bare minimum of respect. i understand pimwana's intentions, but i don't think she executed them very well. in a lot of these tales, the aim is for men to simply realise the error of their ways towards women by the end of the story. but as readers we already know they're terrible from page one. it's not particularly fun to read about men being trashbags for several pages just so they can eventually work out that they've got behavioural issues.
the only thing i really enjoyed about this was, unsurprisingly, the setting. pimwana takes these scenes of working class thai life and brings you into it. i related so much to it that i felt almost homesick in a way. mui poopoksakul's translation was also really well done: it was easy to read and i personally didn't find it wooden - it was just the stories themselves that lacked instead.
while i won't shut up about the western world needing more southeast asian and thai voices in literature until the day i die, the fact i physically recoiled at the sentence 'kanda wasn't like other girls' really tells you all you need to know about arid dreams. this was essentially a collection about trashy men realising their trashy ways and vowing to treat the women in their life with the bare minimum of respect. i understand pimwana's intentions, but i don't think she executed them very well. in a lot of these tales, the aim is for men to simply realise the error of their ways towards women by the end of the story. but as readers we already know they're terrible from page one. it's not particularly fun to read about men being trashbags for several pages just so they can eventually work out that they've got behavioural issues.
the only thing i really enjoyed about this was, unsurprisingly, the setting. pimwana takes these scenes of working class thai life and brings you into it. i related so much to it that i felt almost homesick in a way. mui poopoksakul's translation was also really well done: it was easy to read and i personally didn't find it wooden - it was just the stories themselves that lacked instead.
May 28, 2020
I don't think the author likes men because there was not a single redeeming male character in any of these stories. The women were strong. The men were idiots and/or assholes.
May 29, 2020
'Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships' was a book by John Gray that became a bestseller.
Most of the men in Arid Dream are pretty grim.
Read this as part of the Borderless Book Club reads.
Most of the men in Arid Dream are pretty grim.
Read this as part of the Borderless Book Club reads.
April 17, 2023
3.5 stars.. mix of stories... some were good, some did not make sense for me...
February 25, 2020
A collection of stories that really dig at the heart of people. The characters here are all wanting - wanting for necessities like food and shelter, wanting for affection or acceptance, wanting for more than they have. Dreaming of more, whether more is something as simple as a home - and whether home means simple shelter from the rain or loving arms to be wrapped in - this book is full of want and crushing dreams. There's always something sad about these, but also something beautiful about the characters.
Probably my favourite was Kanda's Eyebrows
Probably my favourite was Kanda's Eyebrows
July 31, 2019
I was surprised for a title published by Feminist Press, that all stories but two have a male protagonist/point of view (and the exception is a ten-year-old girl) and the subject is the male gaze. "Kanda's Eyebrows", "Arid Dreams" and "The Second Book" were the strongest; I also liked "The Doctor" for the feel and the more complicated characterization, but its very length made it less satisfying because it opened up some interesting avenues that it didn't have time to pursue. I like her voice -- I'll take a look at "Bright"-- and I liked the window into Thai culture that the farang don't see
Ultimately, I would have liked to see some of the interesting women here given a voice as opposed to them being objectified as the center of morality fables for men. It is true that the misguided nature of the male gaze towards their object also redounds back, as these men all lack self-awareness -- mostly with men objectifying women, but also not able to see themselves with objectivity and concerned about public status. As it's their interaction with women that give them an opportunity to change, the women end up being another mechanism for men's will and being.
I would've given this book three stars if it compelled me to keep reading but the prose is passive, and it took me a month or so to read it.
Ultimately, I would have liked to see some of the interesting women here given a voice as opposed to them being objectified as the center of morality fables for men. It is true that the misguided nature of the male gaze towards their object also redounds back, as these men all lack self-awareness -- mostly with men objectifying women, but also not able to see themselves with objectivity and concerned about public status. As it's their interaction with women that give them an opportunity to change, the women end up being another mechanism for men's will and being.
I would've given this book three stars if it compelled me to keep reading but the prose is passive, and it took me a month or so to read it.
June 2, 2020
An interesting collection of stories. Shockingly, most of the stories were told from a male perspective. Clearly Duanwad made a deliberate choice in doing so but I couldn't figure out why. Though many of the stories worked toward epiphanic moments, not a lot of them conveyed very profound stakes. What is painted is a world of awful, violent men unconcerned with the inner lives of the women they relate to.
I would very much like to read more Thai women authors. It might give this collection a much needed context for me to appreciate Pimwana's project.
I would very much like to read more Thai women authors. It might give this collection a much needed context for me to appreciate Pimwana's project.
January 18, 2022
Boring but good
July 21, 2024
The (Thai)land of “arid dreams” collects many decades of Duanwad Pimwana’s incisive observations of the unrequited, perverse, misunderstood, and repressed desires of living. Each of the thirteen stories is free of complicated expansive relationships, but in seemingly brief strokes, they portray with great accuracy a wide array of everyday conflicts, wisdom, sarcasm, and betrayal that any ordinary person may experience simply by remaining alive. While the stories stand apart from each other, the portraits put together a vivid exhibition of lives stuck between dream and despair. The wide array of “feeling stuck”—“trapped” isn’t quite the right word because it focuses on one circumstance, rather than the in-betweenness—by men and women young and old, rich and poor, and in different vocations, makes it hard not to feel tenderly connected to the characters the stories sketched. They are our neighbors, colleagues, customers, friends, family, perhaps most unsurprisingly, ourselves.
Pimwana attends to social issues through “little occurrence[s] with a psychological magnifying glass” to enliven literary social realism (from her interview with The Brooklyn Rail). An elevator attendant, once a busy farm boy getting body sore from heavy labor, finds himself involuntarily plugged into the automatic system of a busy mall that minimizes his physical and mental labor to his listless brain and his right index finger. Poverty and parents desperate a pair of young rural siblings, forcing the latter to abandon school and their hometown festival to work in faraway places. The story ends when the girl jumps off the running truck that is peeling the children off from home, as if the jump was suspended right there, freezing sorrow and freedom in one frame where we will never know how she lands on the ground, whether she gets injured, whether the parents will know and punish her, and what and where her next chapter will be.
The key role gender plays in Pimwana’s writing leads readers and critics to mark her work as “feminist,” a label that is not incorrect but risks being a little too prescriptive. Sophistications of living in multiple social webs at once that feminist discourse may subjugate to its political pursuit nourish the female characters in Pimwana’s stories. A woman married to a rich (possibly corrupt) politician is struck by her own wish of her husband’s death after a car accident and by her prowess of independence as he lies powerlessly in the ICU. As fate turns and favors the injured man, her hope to live an unspectacular life pops. To its place returns the morality of a dutiful and ornamental wife to the male-dominated political network. A man on vacation fantasizes romance with a woman servant at his hostel whom he has seen giving erotic massages to western clients. Stuck between learning more of her body and of her person, he helplessly watches his vacation draining in envy and curiosity as the woman’s working identity shifts, in front of his eyes, from a mistaken hostess to massage provider, prostitute, and a plain worker. His dream of her turns arid when her sexuality turns into strategic navigation between foreign and domestic tourist market (her avoidance of sexual interaction with Thai men explained) and financial support for a hospitalized mother.
Six years into marriage, the childless woman becomes increasingly devoted to woodcarving. Neither sad nor paranoid, she finds joy in creating wood children. “This one had an expressionless face, neither smiling nor crying. She thought that children who appeared impassive were more intriguing. These were the children whose minds searched far and wide to ponder.” Feeling banished from his wife’s attention, the husband sets out to restore their relationship but at the same time directs his dismay to his wife’s woodcarving tools and products. As they experiment with new ways to reestablish a loving marital life, they have to find a way out of the impasse between her passion for woodcarving and borrowed parenting that triggers anger, suspicion, impulse, guilt, and remediation in real-life interaction.
Pimwana intentionally leaves many stories with “unsettled” endings. This rendition moves beyond the trope of trauma that usually dominates stories of perverse desires and emotional and physical abuse. At the same time Pimwana exposes various kinds of violence in intimate relationships between men and women, adults and children, and upper and lower classes, she doesn’t shun from a sympathetic take on the equally varied circumstances of being stuck in life. She lends her characters a universal empathy that is at once contextualized in the Thai-speaking world (thanks to the translator’s tactical work that those contexts get explained without burdening the reading experience) and avoids an exotic, Orientalist voyeurism into Thailand.
Pimwana attends to social issues through “little occurrence[s] with a psychological magnifying glass” to enliven literary social realism (from her interview with The Brooklyn Rail). An elevator attendant, once a busy farm boy getting body sore from heavy labor, finds himself involuntarily plugged into the automatic system of a busy mall that minimizes his physical and mental labor to his listless brain and his right index finger. Poverty and parents desperate a pair of young rural siblings, forcing the latter to abandon school and their hometown festival to work in faraway places. The story ends when the girl jumps off the running truck that is peeling the children off from home, as if the jump was suspended right there, freezing sorrow and freedom in one frame where we will never know how she lands on the ground, whether she gets injured, whether the parents will know and punish her, and what and where her next chapter will be.
The key role gender plays in Pimwana’s writing leads readers and critics to mark her work as “feminist,” a label that is not incorrect but risks being a little too prescriptive. Sophistications of living in multiple social webs at once that feminist discourse may subjugate to its political pursuit nourish the female characters in Pimwana’s stories. A woman married to a rich (possibly corrupt) politician is struck by her own wish of her husband’s death after a car accident and by her prowess of independence as he lies powerlessly in the ICU. As fate turns and favors the injured man, her hope to live an unspectacular life pops. To its place returns the morality of a dutiful and ornamental wife to the male-dominated political network. A man on vacation fantasizes romance with a woman servant at his hostel whom he has seen giving erotic massages to western clients. Stuck between learning more of her body and of her person, he helplessly watches his vacation draining in envy and curiosity as the woman’s working identity shifts, in front of his eyes, from a mistaken hostess to massage provider, prostitute, and a plain worker. His dream of her turns arid when her sexuality turns into strategic navigation between foreign and domestic tourist market (her avoidance of sexual interaction with Thai men explained) and financial support for a hospitalized mother.
Six years into marriage, the childless woman becomes increasingly devoted to woodcarving. Neither sad nor paranoid, she finds joy in creating wood children. “This one had an expressionless face, neither smiling nor crying. She thought that children who appeared impassive were more intriguing. These were the children whose minds searched far and wide to ponder.” Feeling banished from his wife’s attention, the husband sets out to restore their relationship but at the same time directs his dismay to his wife’s woodcarving tools and products. As they experiment with new ways to reestablish a loving marital life, they have to find a way out of the impasse between her passion for woodcarving and borrowed parenting that triggers anger, suspicion, impulse, guilt, and remediation in real-life interaction.
Pimwana intentionally leaves many stories with “unsettled” endings. This rendition moves beyond the trope of trauma that usually dominates stories of perverse desires and emotional and physical abuse. At the same time Pimwana exposes various kinds of violence in intimate relationships between men and women, adults and children, and upper and lower classes, she doesn’t shun from a sympathetic take on the equally varied circumstances of being stuck in life. She lends her characters a universal empathy that is at once contextualized in the Thai-speaking world (thanks to the translator’s tactical work that those contexts get explained without burdening the reading experience) and avoids an exotic, Orientalist voyeurism into Thailand.
July 4, 2023
“Only those completely ruined by exhaustion would want to sit still and not even move a finger. I would find no joy in such immobility unless my muscles burned with pain and my legs couldn’t take another step. I’ve sat immobile for so long; I’ve sat in misery for too long, and I don’t want to sit any longer. My heart is still beating, and I want to completely wear myself out—completely, not moderately or momentarily. It wouldn’t be right to spend one’s entire life idle and then mobilize only for a momentary burst of energy. It would make me happy to exert myself to the limit for as long as possible, and it would make me happier still to then rest for a short time.”
- The Attendant : Arid Dreams by Duanwad Pimwana
.
.
So men has been writing shit about women in their supposed story and book that almost all of us got numb and simply moved on ; unconcerned about their expectation and somewhat tired of coddling their imaginary and fantasy. But the moment, women decided to do the same - the book were deemed “anti-men, not all of us are like this, your narrative is dangerous” which is pretty laughable if you think about it as it gave the same energy of ‘Not all men’ whenever women issues or cause concerning us were brought into the conversation. So how can it be Anti-Men when we women read these stories and we can recognized that some of these men existed, or to the certain extent some of women we knew or closed to us can vouch that they have encountered such men. The author did not always write the story from POV of a women instead taking a huge challenge on writing a POV of men and how does one treated women around them ; the male gaze, the superiority and entitlement complex , the ego and power trip and the patriarchal values that they hold strongly leaving the women around them felt suffocated, enslaved and denied of self-identity. I also loved that the author brought us to the working class Thai - the common people that are struggled, the one that barely survived or the one that just trying to live a decent life. Having been To Bangkok, Krabi and Hatyai , I can just imagine the whole scene unfolded right in my mind with some of the memories i have from the trip. I have to admit not all 13 stories captured my attention - some of the stories have an open ended ending which does bothered me a bit and some of the stories would have been a chef kiss quality if the details were to be more specified. However, as a collection - i would say it is solid enough. Overall, i would have recommend it if you love literary and translated literature (And you love depressing and dark humor stuff). I am a sucker for a Southeast Asian Literature and when i saw that the author is a Thai Women Author that has been awarded many accolades, i decided to just pick it up and read it in one sitting.
.
Here is my Individual rating (and some attempt from me to highlight the issue) for each story:
- 5 stars, undoubtedly brilliant (and i cannot move on over how good it was).
1. Kanda’s Eyebrows - The price of a beauty, The modern takes of beauty and the beast - except this time, the beast is an INCEL.
2. Arid Dreams - The objectification of women, Women merely treated as a plaything and Male Gaze
3. Wood Children - The cost of motherhood
4. Within These Walls - Before you are someone’s wife, do you truly know who you are?
.
- 4 Stars (if only it was not abrupt or the writing could have fleshed out more).
1. Men’s right - The invisible labor and the husband entitlement - womens voice were muted the whole time despite they are the main conversation.
2. The Attendant - The Paradox of being a Farmer and Elevator Attendant.
3. The Awaiter - The value of honesty in a metropolitan city. How capitalism shaped the way human are living like a robot.
.
- 3 Stars (It was okay, i just dont gravitate towards it).
1. The Doctor (Basically man couldnt stand each other despite both are equally capable and the area afford to have 2 doctors at the same time)
2. The Second Book (The futile attempt to take over his fate, one man tried to reset his starting point).
4. How a lad found his uncle and learned his lesson (Again woman were muted despite being a victim of harassment - someone was snooping around while she was taking a bath)
5. The Final Secret of Inmate Black Tiger (So man just dont want to die before knowing that some random woman he met years ago was made known that he’s not really mutilated down there - his junk actually works (he just dont want to sleep with that random woman at that time)
.
- 2 Stars (Ehm what was the point?)
1. Sandals (The ending threw me off, TBH)
2. The Way of the moon (I still dont get it after second reading)
- The Attendant : Arid Dreams by Duanwad Pimwana
.
.
So men has been writing shit about women in their supposed story and book that almost all of us got numb and simply moved on ; unconcerned about their expectation and somewhat tired of coddling their imaginary and fantasy. But the moment, women decided to do the same - the book were deemed “anti-men, not all of us are like this, your narrative is dangerous” which is pretty laughable if you think about it as it gave the same energy of ‘Not all men’ whenever women issues or cause concerning us were brought into the conversation. So how can it be Anti-Men when we women read these stories and we can recognized that some of these men existed, or to the certain extent some of women we knew or closed to us can vouch that they have encountered such men. The author did not always write the story from POV of a women instead taking a huge challenge on writing a POV of men and how does one treated women around them ; the male gaze, the superiority and entitlement complex , the ego and power trip and the patriarchal values that they hold strongly leaving the women around them felt suffocated, enslaved and denied of self-identity. I also loved that the author brought us to the working class Thai - the common people that are struggled, the one that barely survived or the one that just trying to live a decent life. Having been To Bangkok, Krabi and Hatyai , I can just imagine the whole scene unfolded right in my mind with some of the memories i have from the trip. I have to admit not all 13 stories captured my attention - some of the stories have an open ended ending which does bothered me a bit and some of the stories would have been a chef kiss quality if the details were to be more specified. However, as a collection - i would say it is solid enough. Overall, i would have recommend it if you love literary and translated literature (And you love depressing and dark humor stuff). I am a sucker for a Southeast Asian Literature and when i saw that the author is a Thai Women Author that has been awarded many accolades, i decided to just pick it up and read it in one sitting.
.
Here is my Individual rating (and some attempt from me to highlight the issue) for each story:
- 5 stars, undoubtedly brilliant (and i cannot move on over how good it was).
1. Kanda’s Eyebrows - The price of a beauty, The modern takes of beauty and the beast - except this time, the beast is an INCEL.
2. Arid Dreams - The objectification of women, Women merely treated as a plaything and Male Gaze
3. Wood Children - The cost of motherhood
4. Within These Walls - Before you are someone’s wife, do you truly know who you are?
.
- 4 Stars (if only it was not abrupt or the writing could have fleshed out more).
1. Men’s right - The invisible labor and the husband entitlement - womens voice were muted the whole time despite they are the main conversation.
2. The Attendant - The Paradox of being a Farmer and Elevator Attendant.
3. The Awaiter - The value of honesty in a metropolitan city. How capitalism shaped the way human are living like a robot.
.
- 3 Stars (It was okay, i just dont gravitate towards it).
1. The Doctor (Basically man couldnt stand each other despite both are equally capable and the area afford to have 2 doctors at the same time)
2. The Second Book (The futile attempt to take over his fate, one man tried to reset his starting point).
4. How a lad found his uncle and learned his lesson (Again woman were muted despite being a victim of harassment - someone was snooping around while she was taking a bath)
5. The Final Secret of Inmate Black Tiger (So man just dont want to die before knowing that some random woman he met years ago was made known that he’s not really mutilated down there - his junk actually works (he just dont want to sleep with that random woman at that time)
.
- 2 Stars (Ehm what was the point?)
1. Sandals (The ending threw me off, TBH)
2. The Way of the moon (I still dont get it after second reading)
March 19, 2023
Really really loved it. The narrative always pointed out that this is a man’s world with dark humour and sarcasm. The male characters were exaggerated and dumb, completely clueless of their abuse and double standards. The women were so realistic it scared me!
I could have written an essay on a few of these short stories. I would have LOVED to study them in lit class.
My favs were Wood Children, Men’s rights and Kanda’s Eyebrows.
9.5/10
I could have written an essay on a few of these short stories. I would have LOVED to study them in lit class.
My favs were Wood Children, Men’s rights and Kanda’s Eyebrows.
9.5/10
October 10, 2025
Arid Dreams is a collection of 13 short stories by Thai social realist writer Duanwad Pimwana, translated by Mui Poopopsakul and published by Feminist Press. When you pick up a book from a publisher called Feminist Press, you expect a certain handling of gender, and unfortunately this book doesn’t meet them. Despite being very aware of how this book made me feel, I spent a long time thinking about this review. I sat with my thoughts, read stuff the translator and the author said about the book, let things outside of my feelings shape how I felt about the text. I made the extra effort to stay open out of goodwill toward the art and Southeast Asian voices — but the more I engaged with the book, the more it affirmed my initial impression.
I.
Arid Dreams’s literary style kept me around. The struggle of this book is that the treatment (which I’ll get to later) is fatiguing. I was constantly squirming from its problematic undercurrents. Yet I kept on, thanks largely to the grip of Pimwana’s straightforward voice, which makes the transition between stories feel natural, the baggage of the previous read disappearing once you face the enticing opening of a new one. Specifically, Pimwana’s prose has a striking clarity and a deep certainty in conveying the narrator’s thoughts: their motivations are tangible, their action feels immediate, their thought progression is unambiguous. The text-reader connection in Arid Dreams is forged from understanding, one that’s water tight.
The literary potential of Pimwana’s style is most fully realized in my favorite story from the collection, The Attendant. It paints the interior life of an unnamed elevator operator during a slow workday, a very contained story that manages to describe how the current dominant economic system is dysfunctional in more ways than one. The mere existence of his role at the mall points to the everyday nonsense that capitalism asks us to accept. His seemingly improved stature comes at a cost exceeding the value of wages, pointing to the exploitation that comes with every role in the bottom 99%.
Cycling between his present-day monotony—confined to a small space, performing rote actions as a service worker—and vivid memories of agricultural labor marked by movement and physical vitality, Pimwana’s creates a compelling contrast, evoking a profound sense of lost humanity. This renders the abstract concept of alienation from labor into something tangible and intimately felt.
The strength of this story ultimately comes down to Pimwana’s strong grasp of the phenomenon she is problematizing, one that strikes at the mundane, deeply felt toll of worker exploitation. It reveals why she is known as a social realist writer.
Beyond its thematic depth, what stood out to me throughout the collection was Pimwana’s skill in crafting vivid, grounded settings. I found myself drawn in by the descriptive set-ups: cassava trucks being loaded, the politics of small neighborhood life, the front- and back-of-house dynamics at a tourist destination. While the book’s voice sounds the same throughout, each story feels distinct, thanks to the specificity and variety of its backdrops. I also felt thrilled at the small glimpse into the everyday lives of a neighboring Southeast Asian country.
On the artistic front, I find the simple and accessible prose being able to contain multilayered meaning to be a compelling feat of Arid Dreams. I think there’s something to be said about the virtues of economical writing for literary fiction, and this book really speaks to it.
Really, what disappointed me about the book, so much so that I rated it 2-stars, was its handling of gender. It’s an incredibly gender-focused book, both of its context as something published by Feminist Press, and its actual text, which is preoccupied with gender dynamics and gender roles, and so I see that readers who were mainly concerned with the book’s gender politics in their reviews were engaging with what’s there, and are justified in their criteria. And I find myself proceeding in the same way.
II.
The book’s translator, Mui Poopopsakul, also seems keenly aware of this project's mixed results. She grapples with her partnered author’s relationship to feminism in the article What Does It Mean to Be a Thai Feminist?, where she gives more context about their working relationship, the state of Thai feminism, and her own motivations behind the work.
With this article, Poopopsakul defends the gender politics in Arid Dreams by suggesting that it could still be feminism, one that’s more concerned with class. The same lens with a different color. It acknowledges the awkwardness of the book, but attributes it to its use of a different syntax in order to assert that it is still feminist thought. Yes, the male voice dominates the collection, but since it often critiques certain harmful male behaviors, it becomes feminist by effect.
I find this unsatisfying. Between Poopopsakul’s self-admitted hopes for Pimwana to be feminist, the author herself abstaining from identifying as a feminist, and the cherry-picking of story elements, the rationalizing comes across as selective.
So I did my own contending with the book’s feminism. When I looked past the book’s surface and sat with its framework, I found a truer coherence between the story’s designs, the author’s assessment of her literary identity, and the feelings of the book’s readers.
Considering what Arid Dreams is interested in, just on its own, we can see the dominance of male stories. Not just stories about men-women relationships told through the eyes of men, but plain male-centric struggles.
In The Doctor, two male doctors struggle over who gets to be in the coveted social position of community doctor, which plays out as a story of feeling insecure over sharing power. In The Second Book, a crony fallen from grace visits his hometown to try and fulfill a childhood dream, which makes it a story about dejection, failure and how success earned with underhanded means is short-lived. These are not inherently male-specific topics, but in the context of Thai society, they definitely are, especially given that the author chose to cast males in these roles.
The one female character with a conflict unrelated to gender is a child, who is forced out of school to do farmwork, a class pressure embodied only by their mother in the story conflict, in spite of having both parents in the picture.
The book talks through men simply because it's interested in men and their struggles. This itself is not inherently a bad thing, even if this was released as a Feminist Press title.
Rather, I think there’s a different problem. This problem is the specific way the book sympathizes with men, which we can clearly see when compared to its handling of women.
There’s a willingness to shift between characters’ perspectives mid-stream, but notably never does so to get the female perspective, save for one story. Vivid interiorities are for male characterization, while Mother-Maiden-Whore boxes are for women. The dignity of having more complex troubles outside gender relations, whether it be matters of being lower or upper class, are reserved for men. Its tendency to inflict physical violence for the plot is for women and unmanly men, and this violence against others develops the character of manly men.
The stories' variety may be broad, but their devices are used the same way. It serves to be patronizing towards men at the expense of women.
The book depicts patriarchal ideas and attitudes unquestioningly, and in doing so, subscribes to them. Once you notice how the story’s reality bends to the shape of what misogynistic men think the world is, you can’t unsee it.
The unspecified discomfort readers get from Arid Dreams is not really from seeing the world through the oppressor’s eyes. It’s that the story contorts the actions of its other characters to fit the patriarchy’s boxes, being so averse to confronting those attitudes and expose how they are fundamentally illogical, at the cost of its own realism. More than anything else I’ve ever read, this book takes great lengths to validate misogynistic men’s beliefs, surpassing any of its own efforts to critique them.
That’s why it hopes to change men for the better by putting them in scenarios wherein those attitudes are altered by experience and understanding. It pins its hopes on the assumption that men who are abusive, physically violent and objectify women are that way because of misunderstanding, and not them acting out the social script most economically and socially beneficial to them. Rather than mapping out patriarchy as incentivized behaviors that arose from the interlocking systems of direct history, inherited family traditions, and government tolerance, it seems to represent gender-based violence as only the limitations of human failings, present in different ways among men and women.
The everyday conflicts between men and women may be outcomes of misunderstandings between people. Key word: May. Because when the conflict starts to be about unchecked domestic violence, it's not between people anymore but between an oppressor and an oppressed. And I think that the book’s nail in the coffin as a misogynistic text is its nonchalance towards violence towards women.
III.
Here, I must go right out and insist that feminism is not a Western thing, especially in regards to the achievements in Thailand that were minimized by defeatists. The concerns of landlessness and feudal oppression are urgent, yes, because threats on livelihood have life-threatening impacts. And in that same vein, we have to recognize that fighting domestic violence and abuse makes it equally important.
The most stomach-churning story of the book is Men’s Rights, which exhibits all the things I said in the most rancid form. It contains its most drawn-out scene of domestic violence, covering a whole page. In it, the husband, who doesn’t have proof that his wife is cheating, pulls her out of bed by the hair, slaps her, kicks her on the ground repeatedly and smashes her face with a mop. In this story, the wife survives long enough for the story to prove the husband’s suspicions right, and to do so for his character arc. He finds out the embarrassing truth that the affair was a 5D-chess-move against him for breaking the bro code years ago, that not only was there really an affair, it was also done specifically to hurt him. It is not interested in the personhood of the wife.
In real life, women don’t have the privilege of plot armor, cannot withstand the violence of men long enough for them to learn their lesson. When they get beat up by men, there’s no character-transforming result, no secret buried that’s unearthed by pain. Most of the time, the reason you get beat up by your own husband is just because he wants to, just because he can, just because no one’s there to stop him. Sometimes, you get beat by your own husband, and you die from it.
Final Thoughts
Arid Dreams was an accessible read with interesting scenes on everyday Thai life. Its highs were the descriptive moments of lively settings, enthralling images about our Southeast Asian neighbors written by one of their own. However, the book’s core unsettled me, when the story supposedly rooted realism is actually significantly couched on delusional, patriarchal world-building. This viewpoint renders the thematic dimension predictable, flat, and quite frankly, corrosive.
I.
Arid Dreams’s literary style kept me around. The struggle of this book is that the treatment (which I’ll get to later) is fatiguing. I was constantly squirming from its problematic undercurrents. Yet I kept on, thanks largely to the grip of Pimwana’s straightforward voice, which makes the transition between stories feel natural, the baggage of the previous read disappearing once you face the enticing opening of a new one. Specifically, Pimwana’s prose has a striking clarity and a deep certainty in conveying the narrator’s thoughts: their motivations are tangible, their action feels immediate, their thought progression is unambiguous. The text-reader connection in Arid Dreams is forged from understanding, one that’s water tight.
The literary potential of Pimwana’s style is most fully realized in my favorite story from the collection, The Attendant. It paints the interior life of an unnamed elevator operator during a slow workday, a very contained story that manages to describe how the current dominant economic system is dysfunctional in more ways than one. The mere existence of his role at the mall points to the everyday nonsense that capitalism asks us to accept. His seemingly improved stature comes at a cost exceeding the value of wages, pointing to the exploitation that comes with every role in the bottom 99%.
The world has farmers, and I'm a good farmer. But right now I'm an elevator attendant, even though such a job shouldn't exist in this world. Is it so troublesome to lift your hand up and press a button that they have to pass this task off to someone else, someone who could do so many other things?
—pg 58, The Attendant
Cycling between his present-day monotony—confined to a small space, performing rote actions as a service worker—and vivid memories of agricultural labor marked by movement and physical vitality, Pimwana’s creates a compelling contrast, evoking a profound sense of lost humanity. This renders the abstract concept of alienation from labor into something tangible and intimately felt.
The strength of this story ultimately comes down to Pimwana’s strong grasp of the phenomenon she is problematizing, one that strikes at the mundane, deeply felt toll of worker exploitation. It reveals why she is known as a social realist writer.
Beyond its thematic depth, what stood out to me throughout the collection was Pimwana’s skill in crafting vivid, grounded settings. I found myself drawn in by the descriptive set-ups: cassava trucks being loaded, the politics of small neighborhood life, the front- and back-of-house dynamics at a tourist destination. While the book’s voice sounds the same throughout, each story feels distinct, thanks to the specificity and variety of its backdrops. I also felt thrilled at the small glimpse into the everyday lives of a neighboring Southeast Asian country.
On the artistic front, I find the simple and accessible prose being able to contain multilayered meaning to be a compelling feat of Arid Dreams. I think there’s something to be said about the virtues of economical writing for literary fiction, and this book really speaks to it.
Really, what disappointed me about the book, so much so that I rated it 2-stars, was its handling of gender. It’s an incredibly gender-focused book, both of its context as something published by Feminist Press, and its actual text, which is preoccupied with gender dynamics and gender roles, and so I see that readers who were mainly concerned with the book’s gender politics in their reviews were engaging with what’s there, and are justified in their criteria. And I find myself proceeding in the same way.
II.
The book’s translator, Mui Poopopsakul, also seems keenly aware of this project's mixed results. She grapples with her partnered author’s relationship to feminism in the article What Does It Mean to Be a Thai Feminist?, where she gives more context about their working relationship, the state of Thai feminism, and her own motivations behind the work.
Chitbundit also pointed out that the political activism of poor women (who, in her ballpark estimate, make up eighty percent of the Thai female population) tends to go unacknowledged as a feminist struggle, even though at the grassroot level, women, more so than men, are the driving force behind efforts against policies that directly threaten the livelihood of their communities, such as those controlling land use and natural-resource allocation that leave farmers landless. As she put it, “Women in the lower class will say, ‘It doesn’t matter whose last name I use, as long as I have enough money to take care of the mouth and stomach, as long as I have land to make a living off of.’”
—Mui Poopopsakul
With this article, Poopopsakul defends the gender politics in Arid Dreams by suggesting that it could still be feminism, one that’s more concerned with class. The same lens with a different color. It acknowledges the awkwardness of the book, but attributes it to its use of a different syntax in order to assert that it is still feminist thought. Yes, the male voice dominates the collection, but since it often critiques certain harmful male behaviors, it becomes feminist by effect.
I find this unsatisfying. Between Poopopsakul’s self-admitted hopes for Pimwana to be feminist, the author herself abstaining from identifying as a feminist, and the cherry-picking of story elements, the rationalizing comes across as selective.
So I did my own contending with the book’s feminism. When I looked past the book’s surface and sat with its framework, I found a truer coherence between the story’s designs, the author’s assessment of her literary identity, and the feelings of the book’s readers.
Considering what Arid Dreams is interested in, just on its own, we can see the dominance of male stories. Not just stories about men-women relationships told through the eyes of men, but plain male-centric struggles.
In The Doctor, two male doctors struggle over who gets to be in the coveted social position of community doctor, which plays out as a story of feeling insecure over sharing power. In The Second Book, a crony fallen from grace visits his hometown to try and fulfill a childhood dream, which makes it a story about dejection, failure and how success earned with underhanded means is short-lived. These are not inherently male-specific topics, but in the context of Thai society, they definitely are, especially given that the author chose to cast males in these roles.
The one female character with a conflict unrelated to gender is a child, who is forced out of school to do farmwork, a class pressure embodied only by their mother in the story conflict, in spite of having both parents in the picture.
The book talks through men simply because it's interested in men and their struggles. This itself is not inherently a bad thing, even if this was released as a Feminist Press title.
Rather, I think there’s a different problem. This problem is the specific way the book sympathizes with men, which we can clearly see when compared to its handling of women.
There’s a willingness to shift between characters’ perspectives mid-stream, but notably never does so to get the female perspective, save for one story. Vivid interiorities are for male characterization, while Mother-Maiden-Whore boxes are for women. The dignity of having more complex troubles outside gender relations, whether it be matters of being lower or upper class, are reserved for men. Its tendency to inflict physical violence for the plot is for women and unmanly men, and this violence against others develops the character of manly men.
The stories' variety may be broad, but their devices are used the same way. It serves to be patronizing towards men at the expense of women.
The book depicts patriarchal ideas and attitudes unquestioningly, and in doing so, subscribes to them. Once you notice how the story’s reality bends to the shape of what misogynistic men think the world is, you can’t unsee it.
The unspecified discomfort readers get from Arid Dreams is not really from seeing the world through the oppressor’s eyes. It’s that the story contorts the actions of its other characters to fit the patriarchy’s boxes, being so averse to confronting those attitudes and expose how they are fundamentally illogical, at the cost of its own realism. More than anything else I’ve ever read, this book takes great lengths to validate misogynistic men’s beliefs, surpassing any of its own efforts to critique them.
That’s why it hopes to change men for the better by putting them in scenarios wherein those attitudes are altered by experience and understanding. It pins its hopes on the assumption that men who are abusive, physically violent and objectify women are that way because of misunderstanding, and not them acting out the social script most economically and socially beneficial to them. Rather than mapping out patriarchy as incentivized behaviors that arose from the interlocking systems of direct history, inherited family traditions, and government tolerance, it seems to represent gender-based violence as only the limitations of human failings, present in different ways among men and women.
The everyday conflicts between men and women may be outcomes of misunderstandings between people. Key word: May. Because when the conflict starts to be about unchecked domestic violence, it's not between people anymore but between an oppressor and an oppressed. And I think that the book’s nail in the coffin as a misogynistic text is its nonchalance towards violence towards women.
III.
Here, I must go right out and insist that feminism is not a Western thing, especially in regards to the achievements in Thailand that were minimized by defeatists. The concerns of landlessness and feudal oppression are urgent, yes, because threats on livelihood have life-threatening impacts. And in that same vein, we have to recognize that fighting domestic violence and abuse makes it equally important.
The most stomach-churning story of the book is Men’s Rights, which exhibits all the things I said in the most rancid form. It contains its most drawn-out scene of domestic violence, covering a whole page. In it, the husband, who doesn’t have proof that his wife is cheating, pulls her out of bed by the hair, slaps her, kicks her on the ground repeatedly and smashes her face with a mop. In this story, the wife survives long enough for the story to prove the husband’s suspicions right, and to do so for his character arc. He finds out the embarrassing truth that the affair was a 5D-chess-move against him for breaking the bro code years ago, that not only was there really an affair, it was also done specifically to hurt him. It is not interested in the personhood of the wife.
In real life, women don’t have the privilege of plot armor, cannot withstand the violence of men long enough for them to learn their lesson. When they get beat up by men, there’s no character-transforming result, no secret buried that’s unearthed by pain. Most of the time, the reason you get beat up by your own husband is just because he wants to, just because he can, just because no one’s there to stop him. Sometimes, you get beat by your own husband, and you die from it.
Final Thoughts
Arid Dreams was an accessible read with interesting scenes on everyday Thai life. Its highs were the descriptive moments of lively settings, enthralling images about our Southeast Asian neighbors written by one of their own. However, the book’s core unsettled me, when the story supposedly rooted realism is actually significantly couched on delusional, patriarchal world-building. This viewpoint renders the thematic dimension predictable, flat, and quite frankly, corrosive.
August 15, 2022
With Arid Dreams, Duanwad Pimwana turned mundane activity into something worth to be seen and thought over. Consisting of 13 short stories, Arid Dreams captured the life of working-class people in Thailand. During our day-to-day life, it's easy to gloss over an issue that's already rooted within the society. Yet, this collection of short story is a solid proof that it's better to address the elephant of the room rather than tiptoeing around it. Most of these stories accentuated the relationship between men and women, and the power dominance that comes between them.
What's unique for me is the stories were mostly about showing the narrated from a man's point of view. With this approach, if not careful, it can turns easily into a male gaze-y story. Not only she highlighted the inequality between men and women privilege, Duanwad Pimwana executed it well enough.
What's unique for me is the stories were mostly about showing the narrated from a man's point of view. With this approach, if not careful, it can turns easily into a male gaze-y story. Not only she highlighted the inequality between men and women privilege, Duanwad Pimwana executed it well enough.
October 7, 2021
I had just gotten myself my first e-reader, and was pretty psyched at first that this was selling for 2.99. Turns out there wasn't much to rave about this particular collection. Most of the stories are written from the perspective of men and intended to expose the ugly truth of their patriarchal worldviews. As compelling as this premise would have been for me the execution is just bland and consistently unexciting.
August 12, 2020
Read for a book club. Didn't finish but I gave it my best. Kept waiting for the cringey, simplistic male gaze and raging misogyny to lead to something interesting or creative or insightful and it just didn't. Story of my life really.
November 30, 2021
Just no,
Time of my life I’ll never get back
Time of my life I’ll never get back
June 24, 2021
Saya harus akui tipe-tipe cerpen dalam buku ini adalah kesukaan saya. Entah mengapa saya lebih suka yang tampak sederhana dari segi tema, tetapi mengulik psikologis manusia dengan baik. Bahkan beberapa cerpen tampak begitu saja ditulis dengan tanpa pretensi biar kelihatan canggih.
Sebenarnya, meski tampak dekat dan iklim yang tak begitu berbeda, Thailand harus saya akui jarang saya baca. Mungkin Duanwad dan Pranda Yoon akan menjadi dua pembuka (yang baik) untuk eksplor wilayah ASEAN--terutama.
Oke, saya tidak akan membahas banyak cerpen. Saya mencoba menangkap suasana dan mencari jawaban mengapa di dua edisi covernya adalah daun pisang dan ayam. Dan sebab cover dan cerpen pertama yang adalah Arid Dreams justru menjawab suasana yang ingin dibangun lewat cerpen dan cover. Di cerpen ini digambarkan seorang lelaki yang berlibur di sebuah pantai dan menginap di guest house. Terobsesi dengan seorang perempuan yang disangka adalah istri pemilik penginapan. Diam-diam dia menyimpan harapan untuk berhubungan seksual dengan perempuan itu, yang kemudian dia tahu impiannya itu sekadar menjadi impian sebab dia nggak berani. Namun, justru ini adalah kunci bagaimana seorang laki-laki memandang tubuh perempuan dan bagaimana imajinasi liar mereka kadang tidak bisa mereka kendalikan.
Yang kemudian dia sadar bahwa ada yang bisa lebih didapat daripada sekadar seks justru saat kita tidak jadi melampiaskan seksual, "I realized that, with women you’ll never stand a chance of sleeping with, it’s better to learn as much as you can about them, until lust gives way to other feelings." (p.32)
Di cerpen ini saya justru seperti dibawa ke pinggir Pantai Pattaya saat dalam kepala saya masih ada labelisasi, semua yang di tepian pantai sana bisa diajak sex. Suasana ini beberapa saya tangkap sebab diskripsi yang sabar dari penulis.
Suasana juga sepertinya menjadi perangkat kuat yang membuat saya yakin kalau Duanwad ini pencerita ulung. Di cerpen Sandals misalnya, bagaimana kisah pelarian keluarga yang terlilit utang menjadi sangat dramatis dan ditelak oleh sebuah iklan sandal di papan reklame yang bikin dua anaknya lari dari pelarian. Atau perseturuan dua dokter di sebuah desa, dalam cerpen The Doctor, keduanya sama-sama tidak sempurna. Yang satu adalah suster yang sudah kadung dianggap dokter oleh masyarakat sekitar dan diam-diam takut kalau ketahuan dia bukan dokter. Sebaliknya yang satu adalah dokter beneran tapi terlibat banyak masalah. Komplet dah. Atau bagaimana seorang yang merasa orang paling siang di dunia bahkan merasa sial untuk sekadar menemukan jilid kedua sebuah dwilogi, yang adalah impian semasa kecilnya.
Ada cerpen yang lucu seperti, Wood Children. Bukan lucu yang terbahak, tapi dialog-dialog anak-anaknya itu menggemaskan. Cerita pasangan yang sudah lama nggak punya anak. Dan istrinya mulai bikin boneka kayu dan dianggap sebagai anak. Dan si suami mencoba "menyadarkan" dengan mengajak anak kawan kantornya ke rumah. Dan di sanalah percakapan lucu dengan si anak terjadi.
Apakah hiu bisa hidup di air gula? Si anak tanya sebab selalu dikasih tahu bahwa hiu adalah makhluk hidup yang hidup di air asin. Dan si anak kecil pengen tahu kenapa harus air asin, kalau air gula lebih enak.
Kalau matahari melorot di sisi barat, apa akan terjadi hal buruk bila seseorang menginjaknya?
Dijawab, matahari sangat jauh. Tidak ada yang bisa berjalan sejauh itu.
Kalau ada yang bisa berjalan sejauh itu dan menginjak bagaimana?
Matahari besar. Tidak ada yang menginjak.
Bagaimana kalau gajah? Gajah kan besar. Bagaimana kalau gajah yang menginjak.
Tidak bisa. Matahari besar dan sangat panas. KAlau gajah mendekat pasti kepanasan.
Bagaimana kalau gajah tidak kepanasan. Gajah besar. Kalau gajah menginjak apakah matahari akan pecah?
Tidak akan pecah.
Kenapa tidak bisa pecah? Apakah dia kenyal seperti bantal.
Ah, sebab dialog-dialog dan tragedi pisau ukir boneka kayu, mereka sadar bahwa menjadi orangtua dan yang kelak akan berdialog dengan anak haruslah punya seni sendiri.
Intinya saya suka dengan cerpen-cerpen yang tampak sederhana tapi sejatinya mengulik persoalan batin manusia. Ada soal istri yang sadar telah menjadi budak perkawinan hanya sebab cat rumah. Atau perselingkuhan sesama teman. Atau kisah penemu dompet yang menanti pemilik dompet dengan setia.
Bacalah! Awalan yang baik untuk memperluas kawasan baca saya pribadi.
Sebenarnya, meski tampak dekat dan iklim yang tak begitu berbeda, Thailand harus saya akui jarang saya baca. Mungkin Duanwad dan Pranda Yoon akan menjadi dua pembuka (yang baik) untuk eksplor wilayah ASEAN--terutama.
Oke, saya tidak akan membahas banyak cerpen. Saya mencoba menangkap suasana dan mencari jawaban mengapa di dua edisi covernya adalah daun pisang dan ayam. Dan sebab cover dan cerpen pertama yang adalah Arid Dreams justru menjawab suasana yang ingin dibangun lewat cerpen dan cover. Di cerpen ini digambarkan seorang lelaki yang berlibur di sebuah pantai dan menginap di guest house. Terobsesi dengan seorang perempuan yang disangka adalah istri pemilik penginapan. Diam-diam dia menyimpan harapan untuk berhubungan seksual dengan perempuan itu, yang kemudian dia tahu impiannya itu sekadar menjadi impian sebab dia nggak berani. Namun, justru ini adalah kunci bagaimana seorang laki-laki memandang tubuh perempuan dan bagaimana imajinasi liar mereka kadang tidak bisa mereka kendalikan.
Yang kemudian dia sadar bahwa ada yang bisa lebih didapat daripada sekadar seks justru saat kita tidak jadi melampiaskan seksual, "I realized that, with women you’ll never stand a chance of sleeping with, it’s better to learn as much as you can about them, until lust gives way to other feelings." (p.32)
Di cerpen ini saya justru seperti dibawa ke pinggir Pantai Pattaya saat dalam kepala saya masih ada labelisasi, semua yang di tepian pantai sana bisa diajak sex. Suasana ini beberapa saya tangkap sebab diskripsi yang sabar dari penulis.
Suasana juga sepertinya menjadi perangkat kuat yang membuat saya yakin kalau Duanwad ini pencerita ulung. Di cerpen Sandals misalnya, bagaimana kisah pelarian keluarga yang terlilit utang menjadi sangat dramatis dan ditelak oleh sebuah iklan sandal di papan reklame yang bikin dua anaknya lari dari pelarian. Atau perseturuan dua dokter di sebuah desa, dalam cerpen The Doctor, keduanya sama-sama tidak sempurna. Yang satu adalah suster yang sudah kadung dianggap dokter oleh masyarakat sekitar dan diam-diam takut kalau ketahuan dia bukan dokter. Sebaliknya yang satu adalah dokter beneran tapi terlibat banyak masalah. Komplet dah. Atau bagaimana seorang yang merasa orang paling siang di dunia bahkan merasa sial untuk sekadar menemukan jilid kedua sebuah dwilogi, yang adalah impian semasa kecilnya.
Ada cerpen yang lucu seperti, Wood Children. Bukan lucu yang terbahak, tapi dialog-dialog anak-anaknya itu menggemaskan. Cerita pasangan yang sudah lama nggak punya anak. Dan istrinya mulai bikin boneka kayu dan dianggap sebagai anak. Dan si suami mencoba "menyadarkan" dengan mengajak anak kawan kantornya ke rumah. Dan di sanalah percakapan lucu dengan si anak terjadi.
Apakah hiu bisa hidup di air gula? Si anak tanya sebab selalu dikasih tahu bahwa hiu adalah makhluk hidup yang hidup di air asin. Dan si anak kecil pengen tahu kenapa harus air asin, kalau air gula lebih enak.
Kalau matahari melorot di sisi barat, apa akan terjadi hal buruk bila seseorang menginjaknya?
Dijawab, matahari sangat jauh. Tidak ada yang bisa berjalan sejauh itu.
Kalau ada yang bisa berjalan sejauh itu dan menginjak bagaimana?
Matahari besar. Tidak ada yang menginjak.
Bagaimana kalau gajah? Gajah kan besar. Bagaimana kalau gajah yang menginjak.
Tidak bisa. Matahari besar dan sangat panas. KAlau gajah mendekat pasti kepanasan.
Bagaimana kalau gajah tidak kepanasan. Gajah besar. Kalau gajah menginjak apakah matahari akan pecah?
Tidak akan pecah.
Kenapa tidak bisa pecah? Apakah dia kenyal seperti bantal.
Ah, sebab dialog-dialog dan tragedi pisau ukir boneka kayu, mereka sadar bahwa menjadi orangtua dan yang kelak akan berdialog dengan anak haruslah punya seni sendiri.
Intinya saya suka dengan cerpen-cerpen yang tampak sederhana tapi sejatinya mengulik persoalan batin manusia. Ada soal istri yang sadar telah menjadi budak perkawinan hanya sebab cat rumah. Atau perselingkuhan sesama teman. Atau kisah penemu dompet yang menanti pemilik dompet dengan setia.
Bacalah! Awalan yang baik untuk memperluas kawasan baca saya pribadi.
September 10, 2021
The reader is presented with thirteen stories, all tied together with the overarching theme of working class people facing disenchantment with their lives, but not living without imagination and yearning for the ideal. Arid Dreams presents a look at Thai people through introspection & studying their motivations.
Through a mixture of first and third person short stories, daily life is interrogated through the lives that lead them. Duanwad Pimwana’s examination of the mundane asks us to take time to look at the disenchanting aspects of the everyday. While the mundane can be enchanting and a number of books touch on this, Arid Dreams highlights how overarching structures such as socioeconomic class, culture, and gender and how these change and interact with one another contribute to how the working class experiences everyday life.
Of interest is how most of the stories focused on women are told in the male gaze. As a reader, I felt a knowing exasperated sigh while reading because the experiences of the women in the book and how they were viewed were all too resonant with how society is today. Check out the stories Within These Walls & Kanda’s Eyebrows for this.
Other stories that struck me in the collection were The Awaiter, which focuses on the musings of a man who finds a wallet with money; Sandals, which talks about two children who are forced to quit school in order to help her family’s farm; and The Attendant, which is in the perspective of an elevator attendant who feels dissatisfied with his chosen job.
Overall, I enjoyed this collection and would recommend it to anyone looking to read Thai literature. I learned so much about Thai life from this book, and will definitely be reading more from Duanwad Pimwana and other Thai authors. I also am very excited to check out more collections from Tilted Axis Press as there are so many interesting ones.
Through a mixture of first and third person short stories, daily life is interrogated through the lives that lead them. Duanwad Pimwana’s examination of the mundane asks us to take time to look at the disenchanting aspects of the everyday. While the mundane can be enchanting and a number of books touch on this, Arid Dreams highlights how overarching structures such as socioeconomic class, culture, and gender and how these change and interact with one another contribute to how the working class experiences everyday life.
Of interest is how most of the stories focused on women are told in the male gaze. As a reader, I felt a knowing exasperated sigh while reading because the experiences of the women in the book and how they were viewed were all too resonant with how society is today. Check out the stories Within These Walls & Kanda’s Eyebrows for this.
Other stories that struck me in the collection were The Awaiter, which focuses on the musings of a man who finds a wallet with money; Sandals, which talks about two children who are forced to quit school in order to help her family’s farm; and The Attendant, which is in the perspective of an elevator attendant who feels dissatisfied with his chosen job.
Overall, I enjoyed this collection and would recommend it to anyone looking to read Thai literature. I learned so much about Thai life from this book, and will definitely be reading more from Duanwad Pimwana and other Thai authors. I also am very excited to check out more collections from Tilted Axis Press as there are so many interesting ones.
August 16, 2023
The main topic of each story is women, either from a woman's or (more commonly) a man's perspective. The stories address issues such as prostitution and societal expectations for women. They reveal the worst aspects of human nature regarding the treatment of women, including whether women are seen as men's property, valued only for their beauty, or treated as symbols of men's success.
I appreciate how the stories address these important topics, but I found the plot to be slow despite the short length of each story. The writer focuses more on describing the atmosphere and surroundings rather than the characters, which sometimes made it difficult for me to follow the storyline. Nevertheless, I wish to read about these interesting topics in more diverse books because of their importance and relevance to current discussions.
I appreciate how the stories address these important topics, but I found the plot to be slow despite the short length of each story. The writer focuses more on describing the atmosphere and surroundings rather than the characters, which sometimes made it difficult for me to follow the storyline. Nevertheless, I wish to read about these interesting topics in more diverse books because of their importance and relevance to current discussions.
May 12, 2023
How interesting! I chose this book for my flight to Chiang Mai, for which it was a perfect length. It was rather bleak. It was beautifully written/translated, but managed to be a bit depressing at the same time. The darker side of human life and relationships, stripped of finesse and dignity. But fascinating and thought provoking nonetheless.
July 16, 2024
Unlike what most people are saying in the reviews, I enjoyed reading most of the short stories. Most male characters are portrayed as trash, but I felt like the treatment of women by those men were quite realistic (very unfortunately). I also thought the author was great in portraying rather simple, mundane moments into vivid imageries and letting the character feel the moments. All of the stories are unique in terms of setting, characters' profession, and points of view, and I enjoyed the new stimulus in each story.
April 8, 2024
What I found most interesting in this collection was how the author wrote from the male perspective in most of the stories, and highlighted the dangerous and funny contradictions of masculinity. As in most collections, not all the stories were equally great, but "Within these Walls" and "Kanda's Eyebrows" were standouts among several very good stories.
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