Local History Matters Most Immediately
By Eugene Quah
September 2024 LEST WE FORGET
IN THE GRAND theatre of social media—where cat videos reign supreme and discussions about anything often devolve into spirited debates—one of my simple joys as a local history writer is to come across a simple, appreciative comment like, “Thank you, this is so interesting. I’ve learnt something new.” My friend, Mike Gibby, the author of many Penang local history books, shares a similar experience, “I’ve lost count of the number of times people have said to me after a talk,...
References
- [1] Charles Loch Mowat (1965), “A Study of Bias in British and American History Textbooks”
- [2] Cheah Boon Kheng (2007), “New Perspectives and Research on Malaysian History”
- [3] Frank Diggins (2003), “The true history of the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming”, March 2003 – Biomedical Scientist.
- [4] Halimah Mohd Said, Kalaivani Nadarajah, Sivachandralingam Sundara Raja and Asma Abdullah, eds. (2018), “History for Nation Building”
- [5] Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia (2018), “Sejarah Tingkatan 3”
- [6] Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia (2020) “Sains Tingkatan 5”
- [7] M. Williams (1996), “Researching Local History the Human Journey”
- [8] William Dalrymple (2023), “Edit it and then re-edit, and edit it again: William Dalrymple opens up on writing and contestation of history”, Accessed 2nd August 2024: https://www.saket.blog/2023/03/william-dalrymple.html
- [9] William Storr (2019), “The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better”
- [10] Danny Wong Tze Ken, “History in the Malaysian Public Sphere,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume 96, Part 1, No. 324, June 2023 pg. 1-19.
Eugene Quah
is an independent researcher and writer who is working on a book tentatively called “Illustrated Guide to the North Coast of Penang”. He rediscovered the joys of writing after moving back to Penang from abroad.
