Welcome to Curious Rabbit 🐇

When I read Virginia Woolf’s defining feminist essay A Room of One’s Own in 2019, 90 years since it was first published, I was on the London Underground on my way home from work. Home was a room I could call my own insofar as I paid my own rent for it. I was already financially independent with a solid six years of experience as a journalist and writer, and had just obtained a masters degree. I was happily living my days reading, watching films and plays, and most important of all, writing. As far as Woolf’s essay was concerned, I had met the conditions that allowed a woman to create, as men have for far longer. And true enough I was writing and doing alright.

More than a year later I still think about the essay. I think about it just as I consider where I might go next. I have long avoided keeping my own blog or anything similar because it felt pointless and a waste of energy. I was also afraid I might not be able to keep it up since I write for a living. As a journalist, I have always written within specific and necessary structures. But now I feel compelled to explore outside of my comfort zone once again.

This newsletter has been sitting here for over a year now, having gone through various iterations. Since the pandemic started I have coped with this slow disaster by turning even more inward than usual, immersing myself in more stories every day than ever before. But as I live through my third UK lockdown, the constant internal spiral is becoming too much to endure. As a bookstagrammer I follow put it, “I have too many things I want to say, with so few people to say them to”.

I am in need of an unencumbered creative space that affords me absolute freedom to write as far in or out of bounds as I would like, free of the external or self-imposed structures or rules, about the stories that do much more than distract and give me the will to keep living. And so this is my fresh interpretation (and application) of Woolf’s essay: a newsletter of one’s own.

What is Curious Rabbit?

I process the business of existence through my encounters with books, films and dramas (as well as theatre and many other art forms), and I often wonder about how they intersect with bigger ideas and with questions we would prefer not to face.

I have long referred to these cultural excursions as falling or sliding down rabbit holes. Typically, for me, that means sitting with whatever it is I read or watched that has deeply moved me and often deep-diving into a research and consumption spree, the proverbial rabbit hole from which I do not emerge until I am satisfied. And once I do, I always come out learned, moulded and impacted in one way or another by the journey through the piece of literature or visual art.

So I’ve dubbed myself a Curious Rabbit, driven by my curiosity to explore all kinds of cultural rabbit holes. This is where you will find essays with my thoughts and observations from my explorations.

I typically read or watch as globally as possible, seeking out books or films and dramas from different countries. But for this newsletter, I’d like to focus specifically on Asian literature, films and dramas. Being British, Filipino and Chinese, I’ve enjoyed introducing Asian culture to friends in the UK, offering a different perspective on how lives are lived and how things work in other parts of the world besides the West. My intention is always to widen one’s circle of empathy, understanding and compassion, the way I always try to do for myself.

My hope is through these essays, anybody seeking to immerse themselves in Asian literature, film and dramas can find something that speaks to them.

As a disclaimer, by no means will I serve an exhaustive sampling of Asian books, films, dramas or anime. I will follow my own instincts and evolving interests as I go along, and share what has moved me. That alone will determine what I end up writing about here.

Finally, I would like to conduct an experiment: for every essay, I will include a piece about the climate crisis I also encountered that we all might want to know about. As I vanish into all sorts of rabbit holes, I am painfully aware that the world continues to burn around me because of the climate crisis. I terribly wish I was a climate scientist who can actually do something tangible about it but focusing on journalism and studying the communication of it (I did my masters dissertation on climate journalism) as well as amplifying the issue where possible are my contributions. This is another way I can think of doing my part.

In other words, this semi-regular newsletter will contain my thoughts – in traditional or experimental essay form – about some of the Asian books, films, dramas, and anime I encounter; my dispatches to you from whatever rabbit hole I happened to get sucked into, plus a piece of climate crisis-related literature to wrap up each newsletter.

There will be no deliberate persuasive angles or elaborate content plans or gatekeeping myself here. In some ways, this whole newsletter might be a simulacrum of Woolf’s stream of consciousness style of writing, but in a broader sense of I go where my mind wills me and I write what I feel like writing at any given time. If you’re looking for timely traditional reviews or commentary on as many things as possible, you won’t find that here. I go at my own pace – one that is more deliberate and considered than the brutally rapid social media cycles that rob us of context, nuance, and our plurality. In doing so I aim for (and hope to offer) depth rather than breadth.

I chose the newsletter as a format because I like its somewhat traditional quality, slower and not as instantaneous. I especially like the intentionality of having to subscribe to it, which encourages a much-needed pause from the endless mindless scrolling. One must read and pause to consider before making a decision.

So, welcome to a section of my mind palace.

If any of this seems remotely interesting to you, then…