Life is BeautifuL

“My poetry is ‘communally-centered in as much as I write about myself, a Malay and the community I know best, my own” (2003, p.15). It is Muhammad Haji Salleh who uttered this sentence when he was criticized for being too “communally-centered”. His latest anthology Rowing Down Two Rivers (2000) has included a poem titled “among vegetable” which reveals local setting in the form of local fruits and vegetation. This poem tells us about a market that has been a place where varieties of local vegetables are found. The author does not only highlighting the vegetable sold, but he also represents the cultural values of Malaysian. In this twelve stanzas poem, the persona is walking all over the market and describes what he saw in his own thought. The vegetables he is talking about can be categorized as Malaysian flavor. Some of them originate from swamp area, jungle, and orchard from the village. He even linked the vegetables with delicious traditional cuisines which he akin to keep in mind. R

“Kehinde did not let Albert down. She treated her guests to the whole array of Nigerian traditional styles and fabrics, from guinea boubou to aso-oke iro and buba, to the Igbo lace blouse and George lappa, ending with the Igbo ceremonial costume of white otu-ogwu. This consisted of a cloth wound around her body beneath the armpits, leaving her shoulders bare. Precious coral beads adorned her neck, hair and ears. The outfit was to emphasize her position as first wife of the first son, and the mother of a son herself. Kehinde reveled in the impression she created.” Above paragraph was taken out from a novel by Buchi Emecheta entitled Kehinde. In this paragraph, we can see that the author had uses some words that belong to her community, to be exact; they were used in Igbo society in Nigeria. Boubou, aso-oke iro and buba, lappa and otu-ogwu are examples of traditional Yoruba women’s clothes and these show us how the author wanted to encode her values, culture and belief in her writing.

Introduction Let’s begin with the synopsis of this short story. Hughie Erskine is a gorgeous and well-known man. He has every accomplishment except earning money. He tries everything; from being an investor, a tea- merchant, to selling dry sherry. Nothing works and what makes thing worse that he is in love. The girl is Laura Merton, the daughter of a retired Colonel. Both are madly in love and adoring each other. The problem is, Hughie had no idea how he could manage to get ten thousand pounds to get her hand in marriage, as her father has demand. One day, Hughie’s benevolent nature leads him to a wonderful consequence. Given ten thousand by a ‘beggar’ as a wedding present, Hughie could marry Laura instantly with no doubt. The writer of this story, Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and author of short stories. He is known for being humorous and some of his plays still being performed broadly, especially The Importance of Being Earnest. After I have read this story a