In an email interview with Global Voices, PEN International board member Ege Dündar highlighted the continuing relevance of the Tomorrow Club. “We don’t listen to young voices enough who have urgent and unifying messages in concern for their future to tell us,” Dündar said, and added the following.
We know little about the experiences and stories of peers in other parts of the world, let alone those nearby with different views. We hope these efforts will open windows of personal experiences for discovery and learning about ‘distant’ countries and issues, in fact or fiction, at a human level.
This was echoed by Aung, regional editor from Myanmar and steering representative for Asia at PEN International’s Young Writers Committee. “In many parts of Asia, censorship shapes what we can say and what we can read. It is frighteningly easy to silence a voice, to shut someone’s mouth.” Aung presented the Asia focus of the Tomorrow Club, whose latest edition featured 30 young voices under 35 years old from 20 countries.
Aung shared the themes explored in their selection. I am always eager to listen — to hear directly from real people. I am hungry for their stories. Through this focus on regional voices, I’ve had the chance to listen to my neighbours, to discover their different perspectives and the realities of their societies.
Despite our differences, we never bow. We never surrender. Across Asia, people share a profound love for independence and equality. Whenever we sense injustice or imbalance, we rise and fight back.
In an email interview with this author, Aung reiterated their appeal to fellow young writers in the region. “The youth should never believe that history is written only by the victors, or that it can be permanently manipulated through narrative wars.” Some of the writers featured from Asia included Amanda Socorro Lacaba Echanis, a political prisoner from the Philippines.
An excerpt from her prison letter. These past days, I admit that there is a heaviness in my heart. Memory has a way of bringing back the pain that we thought had already gone or we’d already forgotten. But beyond the pain, emerge the courage and voice we thought we didn’t have.
Detained Filipino writer Amanda Echanis is featured in Tomorrow Club's Asia focus. Photo from PEN International. Used with permission Theodore Pham wrote about the challenges faced by an activist working to protect Vietnam’s civil society space. …the level of secrecy can still be high and draining even if only from a convenience perspective.
Many of my friends outside the NGO world have not dealt with jobs that require hiding one's face and real name from colleagues. Mayyu Ali poignantly tackled the uprootedness of the Rohingya people, who remain stateless as Myanmar continues to deny them as an ethnic minority. Millions were forced to flee Myanmar and have sought asylum in neighboring countries. When a new-born comes into the world, the midwife carefully places the umbilical cord and placenta in the Hanri, a graceful terracotta pot this is the Rohingya tradition.
A family member, often the father or grandfather reverently lays the pot to rest in the Earth Writer and filmmaker Sai Nyan Linn Sett narrated the difficulties encountered by young Myanmar citizens who fled to Thailand after the 2021 coup. For young Myanmar artists who have escaped abroad, they face challenges in the form of getting legal status for residence, the scarcity of employment opportunities for most immigrants, exploitation due to the lack of legal protections such as a work visa, and so on.
When the Thai border guard force catches them, they transfer the detainees back to the Myanmar army and these draft dodger youths are forced to become the new recruits of the military. And then they are sent to the frontline after just a few months of training and the youths who barely have any military training become cannon fodder at the frontline.
Merry’s account of her family’s escape from Myanmar to Thailand was turned into a brief video animation. Reflecting on the Tomorrow Club’s work, Dündar advocated for additional initiatives to support young writers and artists. Beyond our project, collectively as young voices speaking up for their future across borders, we need more support from media, foundations and institutions to commit funds and opportunities for young people to create platforms and connect over telling their stories, sharing experiences across borders.
They need support however small to enhance their constructive projects so they can keep reflecting on their communities and connect the increasingly fractured society around them while simultaneously encouraging and educating the international community about contexts they experience. Contexts often left out from the West-oriented lenses on our news and popular culture in Europe for example.
Dündar noted the power of solidarity and expressed support for persecuted writers. Things like writing support letters builds community with a sense of sustained solidarity and care around shared values. It personalizes a political context and in a way, makes a direct connection and thereby the overall struggle more tangible. You may not be able to do much to get rid of an dictator or authoritarian regime, but you may be able to connect with and support one young life struggling for their basic universal rights against that regime, and you may be able to affect change for the better too.
Finally, Dündar enumerated some of the plans of the Tomorrow Club, including the promotion of their advocacy in schools. Other plans currently in development include a mentorships scheme, an anthology in print, a documentary and more school programs bringing these texts to students.
We’ve experienced how quickly young students are moved and inspired by stories written by people around their age in different parts of the world. It sparks a natural curiosity for the country and context the writer is from and forms bonds between young people across borders. Screenshot from the YouTube video Scars Of Refugee, a narration of refugees fleeing Myanmar. Written by Mong Palatino
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