Everyone dreams of gods and omens
Dr. Anna Sulan Masing on the Gawai festival, gender, and identity
Today, we’re sharing a newsletter by Dr. Anna Sulan Masing, one of our friends at SOURCED Journeys (whose work we love both in and outside the publication). Earlier this year, Anna Sulan published her first book, ‘Chinese and Any Other Asian: Exploring East and South East Asian Identity in Britain’ with Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
I just wrapped up the book a few weeks ago (I set myself back by accidentally ordering a paperback version that wasn’t going to arrive until February 2026!). It was an invigorating read, which manages to be deeply political but also personal, moving, and despite the seriousness of the subject matter — fun. As a reader, you feel that your presence is considered; in some places, you are spoken to directly, and Anna’s razor-sharp wit makes you want to get to know her in real life! We highly recommend the book for anyone looking to better understand the complexity and vitality of East Asian or South East Asian (ESEA) identity in the UK.
Anna Sulan focused her PhD on investigating storytelling practices of the Iban, a South East Asian indigenous people of which she is a part. To coincide with Gawai, the Iban harvest festival that took place throughout May and culminated in a government holiday in Sarawak, Malaysia, earlier this week, Anna has synthesized this short piece for FFJ. It draws on both writing from her book and elements of her PhD research to explore how Iban culture informs her understanding of gender and identity.
We’re so proud to feature Anna’s words and hope that you enjoy them. The piece weaves in links to our BODY issue through its discussion of gender identity, and also makes a great appetizer for our forthcoming CELEBRATE issue! Anna’s publication, SOURCED Journeys, also recently had a season focused on celebration, and we highly recommend checking that out, too. – Isabela
‘Everyone dreams of gods and omens’ by Anna Sulan Masing
This week marks the official ending of the Gawai festival, the most important time in the Iban calendar. Traditionally, there were various “gawai”, but now the most celebrated is the gawai focused on the harvest. It is the indigenous people of Sarawak’s harvest festival, akin to new year celebrations in other cultures. The Sarawak government made Gawai a public holiday on June 1, 1965, but it can be celebrated at home any time around this period. But to hold a Gawai celebration, you must first dream about hosting one. So much of Iban culture is based on dreams and omens; there is a fluidity to it.
My PhD research had a focus on Gawai: I considered it a starting point to look at Iban culture, performance, and storytelling practices. Most importantly, Gawai is a way to teach, share, and pass on collective identity. The stories and performances associated with Gawai include understanding gender identities, war-making, and crucially, knowing how to party!
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I don’t know when I first started understanding a binary gender divide, or when I rejected the idea of it and challenged the idea of a binary lens on other aspects in my life. But I do know that — although I use she/her pronouns and am cis-het — the idea of multiple gender identities seems incredibly normal to me.
Iban stories in my childhood set up a world for me outside the colonial and capitalist structures that enforce binaries. When you look closely at a world that is based on nature, that looks at the environment and landscape, it is impossible to find hard binaries and linear systems. And within Iban culture, there has always been what anthropologists have referred to as the “third gender” (see the note at the end of this piece for an elaboration on terminology), and I have known women within Iban communities who now might identify with being trans or gender non-conforming.
These “third gender” people hold a particularly sacred space within Iban folklore. Traditionally, they were the highest level of “shaman”1, referred to in Iban as manang bali. In stories, manang bali were charged with taking gifts to the gods to invite them to the Gawai feast.
The centrality of manang bali in Gawai festival folklore is just one way that Iban culture embraces a more expansive understanding of gender identities and roles. Looking into the Iban farming systems for my PhD made me rethink my relationship with gender and race. The Iban are a farming society and are structurally fairly egalitarian (at least, traditionally) with regards to class and gender. There are gender divides, particularly in tasks around war, for example: no one can go to war unless a blanket has been woven, a task performed by women, making weaving women’s “war”. Everyone farms, drinks, dances, dreams of gods and good omens, and can be a community leader. It feels like a practical society. I get to see my gender — alongside other genders — as having a place to belong and be part of a community, not as a commodity. (In my recent book, ‘Chinese and Any Other Asian: Exploring East and South East Asian Identity in Britain’, I have chapters on gender and art and culture that delve into this topic in much more depth.)
I write this knowing that I have a nostalgic lens on Iban culture. I have done my growing up mostly in the West, and it’s easy to miss the complexities of the everydayness of a culture. But I also know that part of the colonial project was to bring a Christian god to native peoples, to instill a commodities-based economy, and drum out any blurred edges, fluidity, and a multiplicity of Indigenous beliefs. I can’t begin to imagine what our world would be like if European powers hadn’t tried to eradicate those ways of living from us; it could’ve been beautiful. This isn’t to say that all or any ESEA cultures are utopias of equality and fluid gender identities and expressions — far from it. But looking into our heritages and the various nuances of our different cultures can help us find ways to exist; to be ourselves, and be comfortable in ourselves. We can be un-tick-box-able. We must be un-tick-box-able.
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These days, with so many Iban families living away from their ancestral longhouses, many “go home” to the longhouse for Gawai and create festivities together, hosted in collaboration.
My memories of Gawai are of “open homes”. A family will open up their home for the day, and friends, colleagues, and family will stop by. There is food cooked throughout the day, much drink (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic), dancing, music, and probably some karaoke at night. Open homes are not exclusive to Gawai; they happen for Hari Raya, Chinese New Year, and other celebrations. It is about experiencing each other’s cultures in a collective manner.
At the back of my dad and stepmother’s house in Kuching is an open fireplace, a barbeque spot, where we gather with family and friends. My stepmother has planted pandan, turmeric, cangkok manis (leaf greens), kantan (torched ginger), and bungkang along the side, and the space has become more and more organized over the years to the point that my dad put up a sign on the tree above his chair that said: “dad’s shed”.
It is a space I think of often. When the summer sun shines in London, I try and recreate it in my garden, with an open-fire barbeque, friends and family. Most years, I host Gawai. It is a party-like ceremony to bring people together with the excuse of eating, and that feels like what being Iban means to me. I am laying claim to the idea that my right to eat and drink — to party — is a cultural heritage. (I add tuak2 to the mix!)
Bringing Gawai into the space of London allows for a fluidity of space and identity, of bringing multiple homes into one place. This isn’t a conflation but an inclusion. By having Gawai in my chosen home, I get to be multiple; I get to be complicated as I choose to blend together an English summer with both strawberries and durian. It is a reminder of the multiplicity of identity. We — myself, family, and friends — get to celebrate this festival together, and it anchors the stories of my childhood and ancestry in my current home. It reminds me that I can choose other ways of living, outside of the capitalist, binary structure that the Western world presents to me. We can be rebellious in our celebrations; these are the stories we are telling each other about ourselves.
Author’s note: The term “third gender” is used mostly in reference to non-white cultures, particularly Indigenous communities, and I find it problematic. While attempting to capture something outside of the gender binary, it still alludes to a linear concept of identity or hard definitions, ironically reinforcing the binary as a norm — when in reality, gender encompasses a great deal of its fluidity, spectrums, and grey areas. “Third gender” often seems to be a white, Western, academic label placed on non-white bodies.
While I’ve used it here in the absence of a more clearly understood alternative, I hope we can find language that better encapsulates non-binary ideas. American cartoonist Alison Bechdel — who conceived the Bechdel Test, a quick feminist litmus test for films — was interviewed for the Guardian in 2023 and spoke about the Western perceptions of queerness and the ability for change. “If humanity even survives another 100 years, which I’m not so sure of, I think that there’s going to be a lot less attachment to sexual or even gender identity,” she said. “I think it’s going to be much more fluid and we’ll be fine with it.”
This move to be more fluid in how we think about gender will also help untangle how we look at race and identity as a whole: beyond boxes and towards multiplicity.
Dr Anna Sulan Masing is an academic, poet, and journalist. She co-founded SOURCED, a public research platform that explores our global food and drink systems; and is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Cheese magazine. Anna Sulan’s 10-part narrative podcast Taste of Place, by Whetstone Radio Collective, explores colonialism and nostalgia through the history of pepper; and her 2025 podcast To Be Delicious: a cultural context of MSG in Britain by Lecker, looks at ESEA food culture, diaspora, racism, and the future of msg and umami. Her debut book, Chinese And Any Other Asian, was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in February 2025.
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It’s believed that the last of this level of shaman died in the late 1800s, but these non-gender conforming or trans shaman continue to feature in folklore.
This is a drink made from rice, brewed more like beer but with an ABV more akin to wine. It is specifically Dayak, but the Iban versions are generally more potent!