There’s no Poetry in a Typhoon by Agnès Bun

Agnès Bun is a video journalist for Agence France-Presse, a literary critic for the Asian Review of Books and a published poet. Before the age of 30, she had: reported on the aftermath of the 2013 typhoon which devastated particularly the Philippines; come under fire in Eastern Ukraine; covered fatal earthquakes in Nepal and floods in Sri Lanka; filmed the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

Her memoir, There’s no Poetry in a Typhoon: vignettes from journalism's front lines, translated from the original French by Melanie Ho, enables Agnès to reflect on the moments of guilt and grace she experienced as a reporter, and on the haunted, hopeful faces she came across during her extraordinary assignments.

It also enables her to confront her own identity.  Agnès is a French citizen born of Chinese parents who escaped the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s. She here describes how writing There’s no Poetry in a Typhoon provided an opportunity for her to reconnect with her multiple roots.

Mediating Islam guest post by Janet Steele

Janet Steele is associate professor of media and public affairs, and international affairs, at George Washington University, USA. She is the author of Email dari Amerika (Email from America) and Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto's Indonesia. She has just brought out Mediating Islam: Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia.

Mediating Islam asks: what is Islamic journalism? It examines day-to-day journalism as practiced by Muslim professionals at five exemplary news organisations in Malaysia and Indonesia.  At Sabili, established as an underground publication, journalists are hired for their ability at dakwah, or Islamic propagation. At Tempo, a news magazine banned during the Soeharto regime, the journalists do not talk much about sharia law; although many are pious and see their work as a manifestation of worship, the Islam they practice is often viewed as progressive or even liberal. At Harakah reporters support an Islamic political party, while at Republika they practice a "journalism of the Prophet." Secular news organisations, too, such as Malaysiakini, employ Muslim journalists.

In her guest post for Asian Books Blog, Janet talks about the generosity of her sources in the world of Islamic journalism, in the years leading up to the recent Malaysian general election.