Sunisa Manning: Flexibility is Subversive

Sunisa Manning’s debut novel, A Good True Thai, is a richly researched and vividly rendered historical epic that takes place during the 1970s student protest movement in Thailand. Det, the protagonist, a member of the nobility, becomes radicalized and joins the protests against the authoritarian state. He falls in love with Lek, a commoner, who builds a political movement inspired by the work of Chit Phumisak, an intellectual who was assassinated in the ‘60s. The novel is refreshing—challenging the gaze of Western imperialism and embracing the sharp complexities of Thailand. “They think we are a quiet kingdom,” Det says to himself and laughs. The book arrives at a time when today’s uprisings in Bangkok echo those of the past. Though Thailand’s current political strife greatly differs from that of the book, Manning challenges us to look straight into the many faces of tyranny. Writing from California, away from her home in Bangkok, the Thai American author crafts this story with caution but without censoring her literary imagination. She urgently calls into question what it means to be “a good true Thai.”

I met Manning in 2016 at the Hedgebrook artists residency, a rare and special occasion for a Cambodian poet to cross paths with a Thai writer. During our time together, we would often pick blackberries in the woods. After our nightly group dinners, we’d carry our flashlights to walk the dirt path back to our cottages. We bonded as Southeast Asian women, struggling to write the historical narratives of our people, stories that existed outside of the foreigner’s romantic holidays in our respective countries. Our conversations revolved around the kinds of women we wanted to write about as well as the kinds of women writers we wanted to become. We kept in touch over the years until I moved to the Bay Area, where we both frequented The Ruby in San Francisco, another arts and letters-focused workspace. In