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**uC4F0NVL** · 09-21-2012, 03:11 PM

Migrants in Thai literature
By WANNAPA PHETDEE
THE NATION ON SUNDAY

Rural migrants struggle to succeed in Bangkok, where millions head to work for a better life.

A specialist in migration studies has researched their lives and feelings through contemporary Thai short stories, novels and poetry.

Ellen Elizabeth Boccuzzi cites the short story "The Exemplary Worker", one of a number of pieces she has studied.

Its female protagonist and her husband work hard and are honoured as exemplary workers for seven years with the aim of returning to their village to open a small shop.

Their dream is shattered when they are fired because her illness prevents the factory delivering Olympic athletes' shirts and they break a factory rule by using the lift when her husband rushes her to the doctor after she collapses at her sewing machine as she labours to finish the order in time.

"Banana Tree Horse", which won a coveted SEA Write Award in 1995, dwells on the importance to a migrant of memory and nostalgia as obstacles in evaluating success in a shifting social framework and on the bittersweet moment of return, when the migrant must face his family and define who he has become.

"The Thai way of life is about to be lost," she says.

Other points she explores in her doctoral dissertation are the use of animal imagery to evoke the underside of the urban experience and the ways in which the city dehumanises migrants, who are seen now as competitors in the capitalist rat race, now as jungle beasts engaged in a base struggle for survival of the fittest, and the migrant's privileged perspective, through his personal experience of becoming urban, on the broader urbanisation of the country.

She also finds an intimate connection between transportation and class in Bangkok, as for the poor the interminable wait at bus stops evokes a broader social immobility, while middle-class mobility and access are figured in the ability to escape in a taxi.

Her dissertation, "Becoming Urban: Thai Literature about Rural-Urban Migration and a Society in Transition", reflects what has happened to these people and their changed way of life and perspectives.

"I focused on short stories, and I read approximately 200 short stories about rural-urban migration. From these I selected stories to write about more extensively. I selected stories that reflected common themes, themes authors treated repeatedly throughout the genre, and I tended to write at length about texts that I believed had high literary merit," Boccuzzi says.

She wrote the dissertation between 2001 and 2007 and received her PhD in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, with specialisation in contemporary Thai literature, migration studies and urbanisation in the developing world.

She has presented a copy to the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre (SAC).

SAC consultant Asst Prof Suwanna Kriengkraipetch says it reflects real aspects of current society as short stories are a good medium for expressing personal perspectives directly.

One can also, Suwanna points out, see a parallel of the migrant's Bangkok dilemma in a developing Thailand's push to succeed on the world stage.

09-21-2012, 03:11 PM	#2
uC4F0NVL Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 454 Senior Member	Migrants in Thai literature Migrants in Thai literature By WANNAPA PHETDEE THE NATION ON SUNDAY Rural migrants struggle to succeed in Bangkok, where millions head to work for a better life. A specialist in migration studies has researched their lives and feelings through contemporary Thai short stories, novels and poetry. Ellen Elizabeth Boccuzzi cites the short story "The Exemplary Worker", one of a number of pieces she has studied. Its female protagonist and her husband work hard and are honoured as exemplary workers for seven years with the aim of returning to their village to open a small shop. Their dream is shattered when they are fired because her illness prevents the factory delivering Olympic athletes' shirts and they break a factory rule by using the lift when her husband rushes her to the doctor after she collapses at her sewing machine as she labours to finish the order in time. "Banana Tree Horse", which won a coveted SEA Write Award in 1995, dwells on the importance to a migrant of memory and nostalgia as obstacles in evaluating success in a shifting social framework and on the bittersweet moment of return, when the migrant must face his family and define who he has become. "The Thai way of life is about to be lost," she says. Other points she explores in her doctoral dissertation are the use of animal imagery to evoke the underside of the urban experience and the ways in which the city dehumanises migrants, who are seen now as competitors in the capitalist rat race, now as jungle beasts engaged in a base struggle for survival of the fittest, and the migrant's privileged perspective, through his personal experience of becoming urban, on the broader urbanisation of the country. She also finds an intimate connection between transportation and class in Bangkok, as for the poor the interminable wait at bus stops evokes a broader social immobility, while middle-class mobility and access are figured in the ability to escape in a taxi. Her dissertation, "Becoming Urban: Thai Literature about Rural-Urban Migration and a Society in Transition", reflects what has happened to these people and their changed way of life and perspectives. "I focused on short stories, and I read approximately 200 short stories about rural-urban migration. From these I selected stories to write about more extensively. I selected stories that reflected common themes, themes authors treated repeatedly throughout the genre, and I tended to write at length about texts that I believed had high literary merit," Boccuzzi says. She wrote the dissertation between 2001 and 2007 and received her PhD in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, with specialisation in contemporary Thai literature, migration studies and urbanisation in the developing world. She has presented a copy to the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre (SAC). SAC consultant Asst Prof Suwanna Kriengkraipetch says it reflects real aspects of current society as short stories are a good medium for expressing personal perspectives directly. One can also, Suwanna points out, see a parallel of the migrant's Bangkok dilemma in a developing Thailand's push to succeed on the world stage.
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