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Malaysian Born Marcus Yam Winner of The Latest Pulitzer Prize Is Our Best World-Renowned Hero! #Heartwarming
By Mihar Dias
(C) Copyright May 2022
We are proud of Marcus Yam because his pictures of the fall of Kabul, to Taliban fighters in 2021 won a Pulitzer in the Breaking News Category. We are more proud because according to the World of Buzz, he was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Malaysia is starved for heroes. I mean really great world renowned heroes to make up for all the bad press we have been getting over corruption cases lately. We want to be proud of something more positive, like Marcus winning a Pulitzer award.
We are so embarrassed about the crimes committed by our former leaders in corruption which shocked the world that a story like Marcus Yam winning a Pulitzer is a welcome relief from all that “National Embarrassment”.
Marcus Yam’s story is indeed heartwarming because not many from Malaysia could ever dream of attaining that level of recognition.
Marcus is the latest toast in town all over the country. You see, a Malaysian can if given a chance, is the refrain after each toast for Marcus of Los Angeles Times.
Malaysia Boleh! The slogan makes it seem success is within the grasp of every Malaysian. That means, any Malaysian will be able to attain success provided we give them the opportunity to excel.
But Malaysia as a nation puts too many hurdles against its own sons and daughters to thrive at the local level.
Those that succeeded did so on foreign soil where the environment is more conducive to excel, free of prejudices and political interference.
Another celebrated case is Tash Aw a Malaysian based in London, who won the 2005 Whitbread Book Awards First Novel Award as well as the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel (Asia Pacific region). Then there is Pua Khein-Seng from Sikinchan Selangor, who is the inventor of the USB flash drive but lives in Taiwan. There are other Malaysians who have done well outside the country where there are more opportunities to excel.
The Pulitzer award selection panel is colour blind. It transcends origins, ethnic and religious backgrounds. It focuses instead on the quality of work presented and displayed for the world to see.
Marcus Yam’s award was the 49th Pulitzer Prize for his newspapers, The Los Angeles Times since 1942, including six gold medals for public service.
LA Times, recognised photographs by Marcus as an “unspeakable tragedy and abiding emotion despite being roughed up by the Taliban, being in close proximity with the fighters and the technical hurdles of sending images out of a war zone.”
The Times said he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize because of his “raw and urgent images of the US departure from Afghanistan that captured the human costs of the historic change in the country”. That is epic. Not many war correspondents have ever been described in those words in recent history.
The LA Times executive editor Kevin Merida said, “We are proud of Marcus Yam for the raw power and humanity of his photojournalism in Afghanistan.”
His editors also said Marcus was successful because he had employed an “almost radical open-mindedness” to capture scenes of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan”. Isn’t that amazing for a kid born in a society not known for its radical open mindedness? Michael must have learned that somewhere else perhaps!
But radical open mindedness is a quality that would get you far in life. He left a career in aerospace engineering to join The L.A. Times in 2014 to be a photojournalist. That is one aspect of Marcus Yam’s radical open mindedness that grabbed your heart about him. Why on earth would you give up a career in aerospace engineering to be a photojournalist?
According to the citation about Marcus, in the summer of 2021, the Taliban’s lightning-fast advance instinctively told him that the capital, Kabul, would soon fall. So, he packed his gear in 20 minutes and flew out of his temporary base in Lebanon, “with just five minutes to spare.”
That is a scene you would likely see in a Superman movie where a man dressed in a blue body suit with the underwear on the outside speeding off at the speed of light, his red cape flapping in the wind, arriving in the nick of time, to keep his appointment with destiny.
It was reported that upon arrival in Afghanistan, our hero was confronted by “a tall fighter, who repeatedly hit him in the head.” He was told to delete the photos he had been taking.
But Marcus identified himself and pleaded for his and the right of all journalists to record the conflict. Eventually “the aggressors apologised, offered Marcus energy drinks”, and requested selfies. Any other ordinary journalist would have crumbled when confronted by such aggression but Marcus persisted and won.
“The bravery and the courage really belong to everyday Afghans, whose lives were changed overnight,” Marcus was quoted as saying at the award. “We have the privilege of coming and going. And they are the ones that have to remain and face the unknown. So, this (the award) is for them.”
His open mindedness came through loud and clear at that award. He was humble to the point where an award meant for him he shared willingly with the Afghan people.
Marcus, your humbleness and open mindedness touched all our hearts in Malaysia. Syabas bro!
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Mihar Dias is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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