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Rebecca Liu
Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

Articles Available Online


There are only girls on the internet

Book Review

August 2022

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2022

I remember the first time I saw it, like a freshly alert hare alarmed by movement in the distant grasslands. It was 2013. Model...

Book Review

September 2020

Pankaj Mishra’s ‘Bland Fanatics’

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

September 2020

The Anglo-American commentariat is full of lofty egos. Pankaj Mishra has developed a reputation as their great deflater. ‘Watch...

THE TRAITOR WHO IS THE WRITER   This is an essay about writing and trauma   This is an essay about violence: of men, of armies, of women, of relationships, of gossip and memory, of having to remember and having to testify   This essay is an exercise in intimacy It questions why women on the margins have to trade in our trauma for the chance to be heard   This essay in an exercise in trust I have never discussed my writing – writing as life, as living, as central to my existence and my identity – with any of the men in my personal life I feel vulnerable enough giving them my love, giving them the pleasure of my body, giving them the power to reject me from one night to the next I discuss my writing with those who know me only as a writer: my agent, my editors, and most of all, my readers That is why I bring this essay to you: to show you where some of my writing comes from   This essay is the story of how I grew up vicariously involved in the armed struggle for Tamil self-determination This essay is the testimony of what I learned as I listened to other women share their stories of trauma   This is an essay about three women: a Tamil Tigress, a Tamil Tiger’s wife, and me       MY STORY   When did my identification with Tamil nationalism begin?   Perhaps it began when I was a newborn baby, barely a few weeks old, and my father was asked to resign from his job as a Tamil teacher at a school in Choolaimedu, Chennai He remembers the day vividly: 31 October, 1984, the day India’s Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her bodyguards Why was his resignation demanded? My father taught Tamil at the Lalchand Milapchand Dadha Senior Secondary School, a private school run by a Hindi-speaking Jain management He had crossed the point of no return by politicising his teenage students and taking them along to protest demonstrations I heard this story repeatedly over my childhood, and remain convinced that when people are punished for their beliefs, it

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

Jia Tolentino’s ‘Trick Mirror’

Book Review

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2019

Talk about the fates of young professional women today and you will often alight on two themes: the anxieties that come with living in...

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feature

June 2014

Turning the Game Around

Daniel Galera

TR. Rahul Bery

feature

June 2014

Once upon a time there was – no, better: you are a thief who wanders through the cities and...

Prize Entry

April 2016

Oögenesis

Karina Lickorish Quinn

Prize Entry

April 2016

After her daughter had – for the third time, no less – laid her eggs in the fruit bowl,...

fiction

August 2013

How to Be an American

Will Heinrich

fiction

August 2013

Begin with a man on the beach. The sea is strangely iridescent, lighter in its lights and blacker in...

 

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