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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Bae Myung-hoon (author), Stella Kim (translator), Launch Something!, Honford Star, 2023. 368 pgs. Telling us he was inspired by the “ridiculous heatwave in the summer of 2018”, Bae Myung-hoon…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Ocean Vuong, Time Is a Mother, Penguin Random House, 2022. 112 pgs. Building a foundation on the aftershocks of his mother’s death, this collection of Ocean Vuong further explores,…
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I blame my inability to speak Cantonese on waitresses in Chinese restaurants. My wife would say it’s all on me. To be fair, I should have kept it up. I should have practised more. You are getting better every day,…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Liang Wern Fook (author), Christina Ng (translator), The Joy of a Left Hand, Balestier Press, 2023. 144 pgs. When my youngest child was about two years old, I noticed…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Ricky Lee (author), Noelle Q. De Jesus (translator), For B (or How Love Devastates Four out of Every Five of Us), Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2023. 230 pgs.…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Jun Ichikawa (director), Tony Takitani, 2004. 75 min. Tony Takitani is a film about loneliness and its unwavering cloudiness—the way it makes you want to lie down in a…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Tania De Rozario, Dinner on Monster Island: Essays, HarperCollins, 2024. 192 pgs. Tania De Rozario’s Dinner on Monster Island is a lyrical and multi-faceted speech act. The fourteen essays…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Kim Jee-woon (director), Cobweb, 2023. 135 min. Song Kang-ho (best known for Parasite and A Taxi Driver) in Cobweb Kim Ki-yeol (Song Kang-ho, best known for Parasite and A Taxi…
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILM Eddie Tay, Hong Kong as Creative Practice, Palgrave, 2022. 110 pgs. The Palgrave Macmillan series that Eddie Tay’s Hong Kong as Creative Practice is part of is a platform…


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