Archive - The Great Affair of Movable Worlds

July 2022

Wael Qarssifi: "Everyone saying what they think, out of love, is an act of activism"

Q&A: A Syrian refugee journalist in Malaysia on piecing together a life for himself in exile in Kuala Lumpur, and reconciling his feelings for his…

Jul 15, 2022 •

April 2022

Abby Seiff: "The water failing them, they take to the land"

Dispatch from Cambodia + Q&A: A journalist tells the story of the stateless Vietnamese forced to leave their floating homes on the Tonle Sap.

Apr 30, 2022 •

March 2022

Travis Criddle: "I walked with an open mind and heart, and no plans"

Q&A: An American acquaintance from my early backpacking days talks about everything that has taken him to his new home along Italy’s Via Francigena.

Mar 25, 2022 •

February 2022

Sohini Chattopadhyay: My father needed a liver. Did it have to be from me?

Dispatch from India: A journalist on how conflicted she felt when she considered donating part of her liver to her father—in a country where women face…

Feb 1, 2022 •

December 2021

Kaori Fujimoto: What we give when we give money to the dead

Guest essay: A Japanese essayist on negotiating deep-rooted traditions and her own wayward path, and how this shaped her relationship with her father.

Dec 12, 2021 •

October 2021

Ying Reinhardt: "I am part of a bustling community, so often invisible"

Guest essay: Weaving between past and present, vignettes from a life at sea about solitude and friendship by a travel writer who once taught English on…

Oct 24, 2021 •

August 2021

Elizabeth Wong: "I had begun with an image of fishermen hauling their nets out of the sea"

Guest essay + Q&A: A novelist on how a trip with her mother to a fishing village—and the complicated feelings it surfaced about privilege …

Aug 7, 2021 •

October 2020

Mike Fu: "You can be both as much as you want"

Q&A: An Asian American translator on dual identities, bridging cultures through translation, and a years-long quest to translate Sanmao into English.

Oct 13, 2020 •

July 2020

Jason Brooke: "Certainly, I would consider the Brookes Sarawakian"

Q&A: From a descendant of the White Rajahs: a Bornean tale for Hollywood, finding identity and opportunity in a family legacy, and grappling with…

Jul 2, 2020 •

July 2019

Amanda Lee Koe: "I was not wrong, I was only in the wrong time and place"

Q&A: A Singaporean author on her debut novel, growing up under the influence of cultures not rooted in her own reality, and how she built her own.

Jul 11, 2019 •

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