COMMENT | In literature, trauma is usually understood as the return of the repressed. Painful events and memories that are suppressed have a tendency to arise again, even after generations. Characters may experience trauma as intimately personal or even inherit trauma as national and cultural legacies.

For Malaysian storytellers, perhaps no other trauma is imprinted as deeply or darkly on the national psyche as May 13, 1969.

It seems inescapable, for even contemporary stories like Karina Robles Bahrin’s ‘The Accidental Malay’ (2022) and the film ‘Spilt Gravy on Rice’ (2015) raise this dark spectre. This national trauma returns to haunt characters with familial and even political repercussions.

Nevertheless...