Thai political literature in translation released under the theme “Yours Truly, Ratsadon”

Historic declarations, thought-provoking stories, and clear-eyed poems form the latest issue of Sanam Ratsadon: An Archive of Common[er] Feelings, a website where individual feeling becomes shared knowledge through the process of literary translation. Under the theme “Yours Truly, Ratsadon,” the collection seeks to expand what you think about when you think about the kingdom’s political subjects. Or, as stated on the landing page, to jolt your imagination of the Thai citizen with unorthodox uses of “you” pronouns. Translated, edited, and introduced by Peera Songkünnatham and Tyrell Haberkorn, and illustrated—thanks to DDS’s funding—by Summer Panadd, the eight entries are as follows:

1. Declaration of the People as Human, Not the King’s Dust: A Letter to Rama 10
2. A King Cobra and I
3. Nausea
4. Reader, You Know Best: Four Poems
5. Magical Realism
6. Writing from Berlin: Letter to Uncle Kwa Kyi
7. An Indictment of the Judiciary: Khanakorn Phienchana’s Life and Death
8. Thai Universal Pronouns: A Failed Fascist Experiment and Its Queer Attraction

Also under the project Dissident Dreams, Peera has produced the song “The Bastille: A Molam’s Retelling” for the People’s Will Archive of the Siddhi-Issara Foundation. Released on 14 July 2023, France’s National Day, the song was originally written in a Bangkok prison in July 2015 by folk singer and poet Patiwat Saraiyaem, who served two years for a lese majeste violation from acting in a play. “The Bastille” is a breezy eight-minute track that fuses commemoration with imagination, foreignness with familiarity. You can listen to the song with English subtitles in the lyric video below.

Other entries recently published on the People’s Will Archive include letters of kin-making and care-taking across prison walls and uplifting infographics about the people’s crowdfunding efforts to bail out political dissidents:

1. Take Care, Sib: Letters from Prison to Ekkachai Hongkangwan

2. 2022 Report of the Ratsadonprasong Fund, Part 5: Donation Drives