IS TIME STILL ON OUR SIDE?
A Book for Joshua Wong’s 30th Birthday
Open Call for Letters, Essays, Poetry and Art
In 2017, Joshua Wong spent his twenty-first birthday in prison. Sam Yan Press marked that moment with our first book, Time Is on Our Side: A Book for Joshua Wong’s 21st Birthday, Thai translations of Martin Luther King Jr., Liu Xiaobo, and Wong himself, brought together for a Thai readership just beginning to reckon with what solidarity across borders might mean.
Nine years later, Joshua turns thirty. He is still not free.
Sam Yan Press is returning to the book with which we began. We invite scholars, activists, writers, artists, students, and members of the public to contribute to a new collective volume reflecting on Joshua’s life, his imprisonment, and what he has come to represent for Hong Kong, for Asia and Southeast Asia, and for anyone still trying to think seriously about what democratic struggle costs and what it survives on.
This is not only a birthday tribute. Nine years is long enough to ask harder questions. What happens to a generation’s political imagination when its most visible figures are removed from public life one prison sentence at a time? What does solidarity mean when it can no longer be expressed as urgency, when the person you’re in solidarity with has simply been gone a long time, and may be gone a long time yet? Across Thailand, Myanmar, and beyond, we have our own versions of this question: our own activists aging inside courtrooms and cells, our own movements trying to hold shape under sustained repression rather than a single dramatic crackdown. Joshua’s decade is not only his.
We welcome contributions responding to any of the following. You need not address all of them, and pieces that depart from this list entirely are also welcome:
- What would you like to say to Joshua Wong as he turns thirty?
- What does his struggle mean for Hong Kong’s political future?
- What has his life and imprisonment come to represent for young people across Asia and Southeast Asia?
- How does his story connect to movements for democracy, freedom of conscience, and human rights elsewhere?
- What can movements in Thailand, Myanmar, Taiwan, and other societies learn from Hong Kong’s experience?
- How should international solidarity respond when activists face long-term imprisonment, exile, or political exclusion?
- What responsibilities do those of us outside prison bear toward those inside it?
- What kind of Hong Kong, Asia, and world do we hope Joshua will see when he turns forty?
We accept letters, essays, poetry, and visual art, in Thai, English, or Chinese. Contributors may write under their own name, a pseudonym, or request anonymous credit, full editorial and safety details are on the submission form.
Deadline: 25 August 2026
Publication: timed to Joshua Wong’s thirtieth birthday, on 13 October
Submit here: https://forms.gle/LQ1y9vdhkbMZ5tzR6