Kuala Lampur, April 16 -- The recent banning of two books published by Gerakbudaya, Memoir Shamsiah Fakeh: Dari Awas ke Rejimen ke-10 and Komrad Asi (Rejimen 10): Dalam Denyut Nihilisme Sejarah, is deeply unsettling. 

As an educator, it feels personal. It raises a question that is hard to ignore, what happens when access to knowledge and difficult parts of our past is taken away?

These are not just books. They are attempts to tell a version of Malaysia's past that is not always comfortable. 

They engage with narratives linked to the Malayan Communist Party, including the life of Shamsiah Fakeh, a figure who does not sit easily within our official narratives. 

She was many things at once, a nationalist, a woman navigatin...