My Book of the Year 2019
Welcome to SP Blog’s 6th Annual Books Round-up. 43 Singaporean writers, artists, and thinkers, living in Singapore and abroad, give their favorite read of the year. The book does not have to be written by a Singaporean, but if it isn’t, contributors could recommend a second title that is by a Singaporean. Loss Adjustment, Linda Collins’ moving memoir on the death of her seventeen-year-old daughter by suicide, pierced the hearts and minds of many contributors. On the fiction front, Amanda Lee Koe’s much-anticipated novel Delayed Rays of a Star won over a number of readers. As for poetry, a variety of poets receive commendations. This year we are especially struck by the eloquent and heartfelt citations made by our contributors who clearly have gone beyond blurb argot to speak passionately of what they love. Thank you, contributors. We hope you enjoy reading all the contributions as much as we’ve enjoyed compiling them. Please support independent publishers and booksellers by ordering from them directly. If you like what we do, please consider making a donation here.
Angus Whitehead, literary critic and educator. My book choice for 2019 is Ali Smith's Spring (UK: Hamish Hamilton, 2019), the third part of a four-novel series exploring the awfulness that is Brexit-era Britain through the seasons. Starting with a poignant epigraph from my beloved Pericles, it riffs off that work and the end-lives of Katherine Mansfield and Rilke, while stretching unbelievably even further the novel form. However, beyond the allusions and pyrotechnics, at the core is a head-on capturing of the current British-global moment in a blistering satire of the dim side of the UK's xenophobia, intolerance, and redundancy of heart and mind. But like spring itself the novel in its sprouting wit and irreverent laughter defies and ruptures present winter-concrete corporate greed, already looking forward to post-Trump enlightenment, fertility, and flourishing generosities. “There’s ways to survive these times... and I think one way is the shape the telling takes." Read Smith’s novels for real wittiness, the richness, the for-real-ness, the awareness and rage, things I’ve yet to experience in Singapore lit—maybe we have to wait for those heartlands writers sans writers programs to emerge but in this climate where will they come from—who or what will nurture them? My local choice of book is Karen van Ditzhuijen's Our Houses, Our Homes: Voices of migrant domestic workers in Singapore (HOME and Karien van Ditzhuijen, 2018). Domestic workers in Singapore are simultaneously intimately within our homes while doubly locked away, isolated, ill-paid, often abused. Singapore still aspires to fully uphold international labor standards vis-a-vis foreign domestic workers. In this crucial work we encounter the unvarnished truth, 28 accounts of helpers from a range of backgrounds and cultures. Rare insights into their lives engender a sensitivity at a time when almost half Singaporeans seem to think maids deserve no more than 600 dollars a month. A normalization of exploitation at the heart of the nation. The book's a bittersweet and rare singing from below; it resonates with my unsuccessful attempts to get mainstream so-called liberal and social conscience-stricken publishers in Singapore to publish unprettified domestic workers' writings in the way that male migrant workers' writing has been published recently. The collection comprises a raw historical account—long overdue—thirty years since a similar oral history of foreign domestic workers has been published. Richly reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s friend Margaret Llewelyn Davies’s collection of unmediated working women’s accounts one hundred years ago—‘life as we have known it’—these moving, often harrowing, accounts make for indispensable reading that might even wake the Nanyangerati from their stylistically-preoccupied slumbers.
Anthony Koh Waugh, bookseller and writer. “Up and down the corridors, I notice Year 12 students of Victoria’s age rushing in their blue-striped uniforms, laughing, full of energy. I allow myself for a moment, to hate them all for being alive.” Linda Collins could have left this paragraph out in her memoir Loss Adjustment (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019). But she chose to be judged. Her daughter had jumped to her death and her school lied to keep the tragedy low-key. She wanted the readers to know that a grieving mother is allowed to express other feelings than grief. Creativity guru Julia Cameron has said, “Writing is about honesty. It is almost impossible to be honest and boring at the same time.” Linda’s brutally honest voice kept me reading. Mysteries surrounding her daughter’s suicide were unraveled along with a tinge of supernatural insight. This memoir is more than just a heartbreaking story of a mother losing her child; it also sheds light on the struggle of a teenage girl trying to assimilate into the expatriate world.
Balli Kaur Jaswal, novelist. My book of the year is This is Where I Won't Be Alone by Inez Tan (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2018). This collection of short stories really speaks to the experience of in-betweenness for people who don't feel as if they fully belong in the place they're supposed to call home. I found the first story "Edison and Curie" particularly gripping because of its incisive observations of Singapore's education system and the people it leaves behind. I was also really moved by Boon's narrative in the story "The Colony," because it reflected how we have internalized this idea of self-worth being measured by our productivity and how we tie our sense of identity and belonging to the things that we do for a living. Inez Tan's perspective as somebody who straddles both insider and outsider status in Singapore gives the stories dimension, wit, and assuredness. It takes a bit of stepping back and observing from a distance, to be able to write truthfully about a place that feels familiar and foreign to many of us.
Boedi Widjaja, visual artist. Home is not here (Singapore: NUS Press, 2019). Wang Gungwu’s memoir offers an intimate narrative of the eminent historian’s formative years and early cultural exposure. Set mostly in Ipoh, Malaya, the memoir traces Wang’s youthful contemplations about his identity as the son of a Chinese literati family who regarded themselves temporary residents in Ipoh, always ready to return home to China. A memorable part of the book for me was Wang’s first encounter with an atlas — a powerful moment when lived historical experience met and found connection with the histories of the world.
Caleb Goh, theater director and educator. Favorite Book of the Year: Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (USA: Henry Holt, 2019). I was initially intrigued by the premise of the novel. As a performing arts teacher and professor for the last 14 years, I was eager to dive into a world that I was all too familiar with. What I encountered, however, was something much more. Choi managed to delve into the psyche of flawed, insecure, young thespians craving the attention and validation from a drama teacher who somehow managed to probe and cross boundary lines that should never have been crossed. In my own experience as a young, naive theatre student, I recall many incidents that certainly would not pass ethical muster today. Those themes and situations resonated fiercely in Choi's book. Then she turned all those tropes on its head, adding to the brilliance, unreliability, and caprices of the performing arts industry and college experience that I know and love so well. Honorable Mention: The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu (USA: Constable, 2017). I have always been an avid reader and fan of Agatha Christie murder mysteries. In the first of an ongoing series of novels, Yu has created a lovable and perspicacious young sleuth in Su Lin. Set in 1930s Singapore, this book managed to keep me guessing about the identity of the killer in the central murder mystery until the very end. It was clever, humorous, nostalgic, and nail-biting all at once with a firm tip of the hat to the queen of mystery, Christie herself, in its writing style, without compromising on Yu's signature flourishes and expert handling of prose.
Christine Chia, writer. Linda Collins’ Loss Adjustment by Ethos Books (2019) is my book of the year as it is a beautifully written book about the grief and guilt that engulfs families that survive suicide loss. Her book also asks many important questions about the gaps in mental health safety nets in our educational institutions, and the inhumanity that ensues when human lives and the loss thereof are reduced to results or numbers. A book to be read with fear, trembling, and the heart. A book that needs to be read by those in power.
Constance Singam, writer and civil society activist. Meira Chand's Sacred Waters (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2018). I am currently preoccupied by the search for information about the early lives of Indian women in Singapore. There is so little research done on the subject of women's lives in general and about Indian women's lives in particular. But often fiction such as Chand's Sacred Waters tells us more and enriches our understanding about what it is to be an Indian woman escaping India, from its oppressive traditional practices, as the protagonist does, to new challenges in a new world and culture, Singapore. From Chand's Sacred Waters and Su Chen Christine Lim's The River Song (Singapore: Aurora Metro Books, 2013), I learnt far more than I would have reading research papers about the struggles of women and their social and cultural history in the first half of the 20th century. These stories capture the generosity of spirit, the dignity, the humanity of women living through hardships and poverty during an uncertain and dramatic period in our history.
Cyril Wong, poet and fictionist. Impractical Uses of Cake by Jo-Ann Yeoh (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2019). This novel about a teacher and a homeless person is so “Singaporean” in a tender, sometimes painful, even bitchy and surprisingly funny way, which many sensitive Singaporean readers may appreciate, especially in the manner that personal relationships are shaped—or shaken—by our deeply entrenched cultural conditionings.
Damon Chua, playwright. I have the highest regard for Xuan Juliana Wang’s short-story collection Home Remedies (USA: Penguin Random House, 2019). Spotlighting the unique foibles of Chinese citizens (mostly young, mostly rich) living in America and back in the motherland, Wang’s colorful canvas is dotted with self-serving oddballs, barhopping fuerdai millennials, and would-be artists struggling with assimilation and acceptance. Wang’s prose is energetic and elegant, offered in timely and bite-size tales. In contrast, Boey Kim Cheng’s Between Stations (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2017) is a meditative and poignant travelogue/memoir that beautifully captures that unsettled sense of in-between-ness. As the title suggests, the author is leaving one place (Singapore) and going to another (Australia), but has yet to let go of the past or truly arrive. Always on the outside looking in, Boey delicately examines the persistence of memory and the pull of family no matter how far one journeys.
David Chew, curator & festival director. Two particular books I read this year that made a deep impression on me were: They Told Us To Move: Dakota - Cassia edited by Ng Kok Hoe and the Cassia Resettlement Team (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019) and Marjorie Doggett’s Singapore: A Photographic Record by Edward Stokes (Singapore: NUS Press, Ridge Books imprint, 2019). The first book details, on both the personal and societal level, what happens when an entire community is moved. What is one of Singapore’s pioneer housing estates originally designed for ‘emergency housing’ and subsequently rental flats for low-income households, the Dakota flats have since transformed from house to home for all its residents who have spent a good number of years of their lives there. The book is structured brilliantly—every resident interview is accompanied by a personal reflection by the volunteer of the resettlement team, as well as a corresponding essay by an academic who links issues raised in the resident interview to larger societal policies, trends, and analysis. Stokes’ publication and reflections on the original 1957 classic Characters of Light by Marjorie Doggett and its precious photographs of Singapore’s built heritage is as much a tribute to this pioneer woman photographer as a tribute to the largely disappeared scenes of Singapore’s past. The book sheds light not just on the importance of documentation of our built heritage, but on the very issues of conservation and preservation of Singapore’s historic architecture.
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, poet and fictionist. Elaine Chiew’s The Heartsick Diaspora (Singapore: Penguin Random House SEA, 2019) is a spectacular read! What a handsome showcase of a consummate storyteller. In The Heartsick Diaspora, we ask ourselves how the “ethnic writer” might lend voice to identity, culture, foreignness, among many other things. This is the drama of traversing crossroads, and we become witness to such a rich understanding of human emotion and desire. Elaine lets scene and character speak for themselves, with such self-assured perspicacity. Hers is a winning voice, working in pathos with great élan. At its funniest, the humor is just priceless. Dig in, and let yourself be charmed by these fourteen choice entrées!
E. K. Tan, literary and cultural studies scholar. Gayatri Gopinath’s Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora (USA: Duke University Press, 2018). It is not an easy task to pick a book for “My Book of the Year” because there are many to pick from. So I am sharing a book I enjoyed reading recently Instead. For many of us scholars of diaspora studies and queer studies, first-generation queer diaspora studies scholar Gayatri Gopinath’s work has been inspiring. Her first monograph Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Duke University Press, 2005) introduces us to an alternative methodology to unearth and make visible the unintelligible sexual subjectivity, desire, and relationality veiled by conventional mapping of diaspora and nation. Her latest book, Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2018) continues to inspire us as Gopinath expands on her theoretical exploration of queer diasporic expressions by reading the aesthetic practices of queer cultural workers across spatial and temporal boundaries. I find her concept “queer regional imaginaries” in this book useful in helping us think through diasporic relationalities (queer or simply marginal) that do not conform to the dominant discourse of nationhood.
Felix Cheong, poet and fiction writer. My favorite book this year is undoubtedly Loss Adjustment (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019) by The Straits Times copy editor Linda Collins, a New Zealander who’s lived in Singapore for many years. In language so sharp in its sheer clarity, Collins opens up an emotional investigation into her past. Or, more specifically, her daughter’s, and why a talented young writer on the cusp of becoming would take her own life at 17 years old. Honest and heartrending, Loss Adjustment is as much a memoir of a family coming to terms with grief as a postmortem of a troubled soul.
Haresh Sharma, playwright. I'm a year late but Ponti (UK: Picador, 2018) is a book I really sank my teeth into. I loved the way Sharlene Teo crafted the relationship between the two schoolgirls over a short but significant period of time. Their older selves were frighteningly believable versions of what their younger selves grew into. Yet the past remains as a haunting presence. I also enjoyed reading Micro Politics, a collection of four contemporary Thai plays, published by Tananop Kanjanawutisit, Jarunun Phantachat & Wichaya Artamat, in 2018. It's a significant publication because the plays were written between 2014-2017 and chronicle the social and political struggles of that time.
Senior Counsel Harpreet Singh Nehal, lawyer. Conn Iggulden’s Falcon of Sparta (UK: Penguin Random House, 2019), a piece of historical fiction par excellence¸ is at once a mesmerising and inspirational read. A reconstruction of the long, arduous journey of the Greek mercenary force which had fought alongside Cyrus in the Battle of Cunaxa (401 BC) against his brother Artexexes, one learns much from Xenophon, the untested Spartan soldier who is chosen to lead the force following the betrayal and cold-blooded slaughter of the Greek generals at the hand of the Persians. Xenophon displays a natural leadership ability, teaching us the meaning of true courage and honour in the face of great fear and near certain death, all the while refusing to bend to pressure to abandon the slow and the weak. In ordinary life as in war, there is much to be gained in confronting our greatest fears, irrespective the outcome of life’s battles. As for Singaporean literature, while Cherian George’s Singapore Incomplete and G Raman’s A Quest for Freedom are both highly recommended, it was in fact an unpublished poem, “Curiosity,” by a young Singaporean law student, Sakthi Vel, that most touched my spirit in 2019. It reflects a deep maturity born out of a difficult life journey. I hope Sakthi will continue to write in the coming years.
Ian Chung, writer and editor. My book of the year is Signs of Life by O Thiam Chin (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2019). Before he won the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2015 for his first novel Now That It's Over, Thiam Chin's short-story collections had already featured three times on the longlist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, so his mastery of the form was already evident. With Signs of Life, his first new collection in six years, he has achieved a stylistic breakthrough, pushing his work to explore new fantastical themes and settings. One of the pleasures of reading contemporary fiction is being able to see a writer grow and evolve alongside their audience, and I look forward to whatever Thiam Chin has for us next.
Jason Wee, artist and writer. It's been a year that begins with grief, and as the year ends I want to be able to say to myself that it is over, that I can repeat the well-meaning platitudes that are told to me, that I even sometimes tell others, and myself when I'm alone. But Loss Adjustment (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019) by Linda Collins came out, an account of her long mourning and struggle after the loss of her teenager daughter. It reminds me, powerfully, painfully, that there are reasons, good reasons, why those platitudes exist, and why they don't work for someone like me.
Jason Soo, filmmaker. My book of the year is Lisa Fithian's Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance (USA: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019). This book is filled with stories from Lisa's involvement in communities and movements such as those at Seattle, Occupy Wall Street, and the uprisings at Ferguson and Standing Rock. During a documentary project in 2018, I had the privilege of participating in several classes on non-violent resistance conducted by Lisa. Clear, thoughtful, compassionate, and strong, Lisa is an exemplary trainer. Her work has been hailed by Naomi Klein, who describes it as "game-changing organizing". Dave Graeber calls Lisa a legend. It is easy to see why. She and her book is an inspiration to us all.
Jeremy Fernando, reader and writer. 1. Jo-Ann Yeo, The Impractical Uses of Cake (Singapore: Epigram, 2018). This is the book that readers in Singapore didn’t realise they longed for — a tale, told by a storyteller, not pretending to signify anything but itself. And in doing so, Jo-ann Yeoh invites us into the world — of teachers, love, loss, cake — she has brought forth. And we, and our worlds, are so much richer for it. 2. Amanda Lee Koe, Delayed Rays of a Star: A Novel (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019). After reading this text, this tale, this text which is the telling of a tale, I suspect that Anna May Wong & Marlene Dietrich (but not Leni Riefenstahl, who would always have wanted to be there alone) might well conclude that Amanda Lee Koe is the light-to-come that would write herself into that photo. 3. Anne Dufourmantelle, Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Living, translated from the French by Katherine Payne & Vincent Sallé, with a foreword by Catherine Malabou (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018). Rarely is a text captured so perfectly in a title. This is a gentle book, a meditative book, a powerful book — and now, that Anne, dear dear Anne, has left us, let it be a testament to not only her thought, but the way in which she lived (she drowned whilst saving two children who were struggling in a stormy sea). As she continues to teach us, “Is being in life just being born? Probably not. To me, risking your life is not dying yet, it’s integrating that you could be dying in your own life. Being completely alive is a task, it’s not at all a given thing. It’s not just about being present to the world, it’s being present to yourself, reaching an intensity that is in itself a way of being reborn”.
Joanne Leow, literary scholar and writer. My book of the year is Mai Der Vang’s collection of poetry Afterland (USA: Graywolf Press, 2017). A devastating suite of poems about Hmong American history, life, and ritual, Vang’s surreal yet accessible images are haunting and indelible. This is a book for which each rereading yields new and unforeseen meaning. As someone who grew up knowing so little about the contemporary history of Southeast Asia, this slim tome has been very important to me this year. My Singaporean book of the year is Amanda Lee Koe’s debut novel Delayed Rays of a Star (USA: Doubleday, 2019) simply for how it redefines what we think of as “Singapore Literature.” Lee Koe’s astute sensibilities for human foibles and transcendence have been honed ever sharper since her first book of short fiction Ministry of Moral Panic (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2013) and it was a thrill to read this sprawling, queering of histories from Hollywood to Nazi Germany, Paris to Beijing.
Jon Gresham, writer and photographer. I enjoyed reading Barrie Sherwood’s The Angel Tiger and Other Stories (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2019), Elaine Chiew’s The Heartsick Diaspora and Other Stories (Singapore: Penguin SEA, 2019) and Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights (USA: Riverhead Books, 2018), but my book of the year is Linda Collin’s Loss Adjustment (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019). A beautifully written, loving tribute. Courageous, raw and desperately moving. We urgently need to have more conversations on the personal and structural issues confronted in this book. Not just the need to create more tenderness and kindness in our communities but to introduce practical changes in schools and educational institutions in Singapore. I pray that the expatriate school in this book has taken a good, long, hard look at its culture and processes and made real changes to better support its students and their parents.
Joshua Ip, poet. My mind was most engaged by two debuts: the sly layers of Hamid Roslan's parsetreeforestfire (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019) and the cheeky incandescence of Marylyn Tan's Gaze Back (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019); but i have to go with my heart, which was rent by Jason Wee's obsessive-compulsive elegy for the late Singaporean artist Lee Wen—An Epic of Durable Departures (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2018).
Junni Chen, curator and gallerist. Extrastatecraft: the power of infrastructure by Keller Easterling (USA: Verso, 2016) takes a hard look at the details too often missed in our everyday lives. How our lives are ordered, the systems that supports them—and also the powers that be that lie behind them. Easterling's book has been described as having the ability to "flip the background into the foreground,” and get us to examine the materiality and physicality of infrastructure itself, through several "case studies" or stories that are presented. Particularly interesting is the notion of connectivity that plays out throughout the book—the threads that wind together the information that gets presented onto the screen, to server farms, cables, working conditions in factories, governance issues, and global flows of capital. As Singapore unveils its Draft Master Plan 2019, alongside its plans to utilize underground space to free up "surface land for people-centric uses" and "relocate utilities, transport, storage and industrial facilities to the underground,” the idea that our lives are ordered around a particular logic of "foreground" and "background" may become even more pertinent. Extrastatecraft becomes a lens through which we can understand the development of our urban world today.
Yeow Kai Chai, poet. I’ve known Linda Collins as a colleague back in the newsroom at The Straits Times, as many of us ex-journos have, for years. She’s always struck me as the epitome of the saying: “Still waters run deep.” I respect her but keep a deferential distance. That never quite prepared one for the emotional sledgehammer that is Loss Adjustment (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019). How bracing, how unapologetic, how un-PC is her description of the aftermath of the suicide of her 17-year-old daughter, Victoria. The memoir is interspersed with naked journal entries left by the latter on her laptop – which creates a kind of unbearable tension simmering under the guise of normalcy. No, Linda won’t break down, just because it’s easier to do so. She’s hard on herself and I hope writing this book is her way to reach out.
Kirsten Han, journalist and writer. Loss Adjustment by Linda Collins (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019). This is such a powerful book, a raw, honest reflection on a terrible loss. Loss Adjustment is the sort of book that kind of hurts to read, but it’s so important that we do read it, because the story in its pages is the sort of story that will reach and help people—not just in Singapore, but anywhere—for years to come. Depression, mental health, suicide, and loss— these are things that many of us are fortunate never to have to experience with the intensity that Collins has, but her courage to write about this is something that benefits us all and keeps the memory of her daughter alive. Homeless: The Untold Story of a Mother’s Struggle in ‘Crazy Rich’ Singapore by Liyana Dhamirah (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2019). I’ve known Liyana for a decade, and I’m so glad to see her story finally in print. With Singaporeans talking more about income and wealth inequality, it’s so important to have the testimony of someone who has experienced homelessness in this city, and pay attention to what she has to say about how she ended up in that situation, and how hard it was to pull herself out of that rut. Reading Homeless, I got a view of Singapore that I would never have otherwise encountered given my privileged position, and made me realize that there are so many assumptions, so many myths that we tell ourselves, that really need to be consigned to the rubbish heap.
Gwee Li Sui, poet, artist, and literary critic. Oliver Seet’s Once (Singapore: Word Image, 2019) is a quiet landmark in Singaporean literature. It is not just because an eighty-two-year-old published his first book of verse. Seet is well-known to his generation of Malayan poets and those who scour obscure academic papers for minutiae. His work can fill in many gaps we have about Singapore’s poetic history. Once certainly changes my impression of Edwin Thumboo as our most English lyric poet of a time, of Lee Tzu Pheng as a rare religious voice, and of what travel writing before Robert Yeo was like. This generous collection brings together over two hundred poems written across six decades, most of which are unseen until now. It speaks of fervent interiority, of discovering all the world with regional sensibilities and a moral compass. I feel that I am reading a life in the truest sense here.
Lydia Kwa, novelist and poet. I’d like to recommend two books instead of one: Tania De Rozario’s Somewhere Else, Another You (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2018) and Yong Shu Hoong’s Right of the Soil (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2018). Full disclosure: I first read Yong’s latest collection of poems in early 2018, when it was still in manuscript form. Even at that early stage, I was struck by Yong’s breadth of reflections, his wry and often sardonic sense of humour, and his persistent tone of inquiry into subjects ranging from the death of trees, the ‘haze’ that afflicts Singapore, to political, esoteric or ethical dilemmas (such as the wickedly fine ‘The Subterranean Courts’). This is a collection well-worth reading several times over, to savor the subtleties of the language and philosophical nuances. De Rozario’s experimental and linked lyrical narratives in Somewhere Else, Another You is an exciting and mind-expanding work, taking us into concatenations and orbits beyond mundane reality. Listed as a ‘literary game-book’, the narratives are linked by the ‘you’ that occupies changing and possible alternate realities depending on choices made, as brilliantly embodied in the set of directions at the end of each narrative. This work was conceived and supported as part of a residency associated with NUS Centre for Quantum Technologies. There’s so much droll humor in this book—with numerous subversive jabs at existential crises faced by dissatisfied employees.
Marc Nair, poet and photographer. My book of the year is Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (USA: Graywolf Press, 2019). This is a parable that uses silence as a weapon against a landscape of resistance. Set in no discernible epoch, it is a powerful use of poetry for a time in which every bastion of free speech and space seems to have been trampled upon. Closer to home, my vote is for parsetreeforestfire by Hamid Roslan (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019). Roslan’s world is a susurration of language as leverage and lantern. Using and breaking the rhythms of Singlish, the mirror text of ‘proper poetry’ in the first two sections, ‘parse’ and ‘tree’, both illuminates and darkens. Eventually, everything comes together, cascading through the poet’s questing, restless tongue.
Marylyn Tan, poet. They Placed A Shrike Inside My Ear by Andrea V. Tubig, 2019, is poetry that shies away from neither fantasy or transgression. In it, wayward memories, imagined and real, are transformed into stark scenarios that jostle with sexual desires, urges toward violence, and queer longing. This is a tender, manic, erotically-charged commentary that slyly slips close to the subject with objects located so specifically, they feel familiar. My Singaporean selection is Oversight/Preclusion, published in 2018 by wares infoshop library and part of a project begun in 2015 by Godwin Koay that features anonymous contributors' recollections of their experiences watching To Singapore, With Love, a banned documentary film by Tan Pin Pin engaging with the narratives of Singaporean political exiles. I love that Godwin presented his project, and the Media Development Authority's subsequent press release, without comment, leaving the experiences and thoughts of the anonymous contributors to speak for themselves. The varying accounts coalesce and reverberate with each other, underlined by a sense of paradox, regret, and confessed alienation from the exiles' causes, against a backdrop of photographs of Singapore rendered in pale red. As Contributor 3 says, "I feel as if I learned something about pragmatism and romance, rolled into one."
Nazry Bahrawi, literary scholar and translator. This is the year that lays bare the racial blind-spots of Singapore’s much-celebrated multiculturalism. The advertisement fiasco featuring an ethnic Chinese actor in brownface (not the first) back in July suggests that at least one unsavory feature of colonization survives – the impulse to run roughshod over the lives of peoples categorized as belonging to the lower rungs of the nation’s racial hierarchy, an impulse cultivated by years and years of ethnic-based data surveys. As Singapore’s obsession with big data is set to continue through its pursuit of the smart city ideal, I would like to recommend three brown books. The first is Alfian Sa’at’s Collected Plays Three (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019), which features four staged plays that explore the deeply complex intersectionality of Malay lives on both sides of the Causeway without sacrificing literary finesse to the gods of social realism. Alfian has this rare uncanny ability to peel and present layers of meaning of seemingly cultural specific events to different audiences. American audiences might think of August Wilson’s Fences as a foil for comparison. On the subject of aesthetics, Hamid Roslan’s parsetreeforestfire (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019) is a powerful meditation on the instability of language and relatedly, translation, by way of its engagement with Singlish in poetic form that “gets a bit crazy lah” as the poet himself describes it. Some parts of his stylistic experiment with words unusually strewn together reminds me of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. To me, it asks an important question: Can Singlish be standardized? Would such attempts in a Chinese-majority society such as Singapore only result in a Sinicized version when it is, in fact, legion? Lastly, I would recommend Fairoz Ahmad’s Interpreter of Winds (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2019), a collection of unrelated short stories that seem to exist in the same magical world. This piece of work does not scream ‘Uniquely Singapore!’ in its language, setting or characters though they are doubtlessly the product of the author’s experiences as a Muslim minority in Singapore. This makes it a different kind of Singapore Literature, one that is plugged into the world republic of letters, one uninterested in trying to preach a sense of national identity. Fairoz has said that he was inspired by Neil Gaiman’s experiments with the fable structure as well as the desert setting in Michael Ondatjee’s The English Patient. Yet the stories remind me of the episodic tales of Naguib Mahfouz, the first and only Arab Nobel Prize Literature winner. They read like fairy tales for adults, a timely intervention of cautious utopianism in this age of uncertainties.
Nuraliah Norasid, novelist and researcher. My book of the year has got to be Homeless: The Untold Story of a Mother’s Struggle in Crazy Rich Singapore by Liyana Dhamirah (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2019). I read—no, inhaled—the book in 2 days. I find that the writing is raw and accessible, and the stories she tell in the volume reveal insights into life lived in the margins without a roof over one's head. The struggles Liyana faced when it comes to her marriage, providing for her children and seeking aid from social welfare organizations remind me of the struggles that my own mother faced as I was growing up. Liyana's is also a story of resourcefulness—that infamous resourcefulness of mothers, especially Malay mothers, when it comes to "making a meal out of nothing.” So without a doubt, this is my book of 2019.
O Thiam Chin, fictionist. I’ve been a huge fan of Karen Russell since forever and every book she writes is a cause for celebration. Her latest Orange World and Other Stories (USA: Knopf, 2019) is truly a celebration, of ideas and the different skins they can inhabit, of words and the many strange worlds it can build, and of imagination and the way it can bridge the reality of our world to other fantastical worlds that lie just beyond our wildest dream/nightmare.
Pooja Nansi, poet and writers’ festival director. My nomination for book of the year is Anittha Thanabalan’s The Lights That Find Us (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2019). This YA novel is an incredibly necessary addition to the landscape of Singaporean literature. It is beautifully written and has such a message of hope, acceptance, and homecoming. I can only imagine the number of young people whose lives are going to be saved and changed by this book.
Yong Shu Hoong, poet. Ilya Kaminsky is an American poet whose award-winning first book, Dancing in Odessa (2004), I had picked up many years ago in Borders bookstore in Singapore. Kaminsky and his family members were granted asylum in the United States after escaping from post-Soviet Ukraine in 1993 due to anti-Semitism. Kaminsky’s new book Deaf Republic (USA: Graywolf Press, 2019)—released 15 years after his debut collection—doesn’t disappoint (the poet himself lost his hearing at a young age). In a series of poignant but quietly powerful poems, he depicts a fictional town where, after a boy was shot dead by soldiers, all its citizens somehow become deaf (or they simply choose to not hear). Sign language blends with poetry as disability is used as dissent against tyranny, in this memorable book where, as one reviewer observes, “a ‘mythical method’ might serve as a means of ordering contemporary chaos.” One recent Singapore book that is significant for me is Aaron Maniam’s Second Persons (Singapore: Firstfruits Publications, 2018), which is among the newest English titles of my former publisher, Firstfruits, which released my first four poetry collections. This collection of poems signals that the imprint is back in the business of publishing and promoting Singlit, its distinguishable design aesthetics and typography intact, reassuring us that the Firstfruits spirit is lingering on and not quite ready to dissipate.
Sonny Liew, graphic novelist. This breaks most of the rules, but the book I enjoyed reading most this past year was first published back in 1982, and isn’t related to Singapore in any real way—former NYT columnist Russell Baker’s Growing Up (USA, Penguin Random House), an autobiographical account of his youth during the Great Depression up until about the end of the Second World War. I’d never heard of Baker up until seeing Growing Up mentioned in James Mustick’s 1,000 Book to Read Before You Die, and was intrigued enough to get a copy off Better World Books (where you should do all your online second hand book shopping :p). In an early passage, Baker writes that during his childhood days, “[m]any a grandfather who walked among us could remember Lincoln’s time”; a reminder of how the recent past quickly slides into the way way past, how quickly the things that seem incredibly important to us might be soon forgotten. But then there remain books like Growing Up, where all those memories can be rediscovered, giving us a chance to see better both the changes and continuities in all our lives, all told in a voice of gentle self-deprecating humor and keen insight. I’d call it: a book to read while you live, that will illuminate your own sense of place in the river of time.
Thum Ping Tjin, historian. I haven't actually read much this year so I don't have much to draw from, but a set of books I really enjoyed this year is JY Yang's Tensorate tetralogy (Tor.com). It's made up of four short books: The Red Threads of Fortune, The Black Tides of Heaven, The Descent of Monsters, and The Ascent to Godhood, which were published from 2017 to this year. I took the time to re-read all four now that the series is complete, and really enjoyed it. It's a terrific blend of science fiction and fantasy, which has been called "silkpunk". The arc of Yang’s story is really relevant to our current times: It’s a story about power in society, and how corruption grows in the presence of power, no matter how noble or altruistic one's original intentions are. I also like how Yang uses different ways of telling stories. The Red Threads of Fortune and The Black Tides of Heaven are relatively conventionally told, but Yang takes a slightly different approach with The Descent of Monsters, writing out a thriller through the use of official reports, documents, and letters (appeals to me as a historian) and The Ascent of Godhood is a one-sided conversation between Lady Han and an unnamed partner.
Sandi Tan, filmmaker. Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise (USA: Henry Holt, 2019). It’s a fever dream that’s incredibly lived-in; she understands intimately epic teen passion and the aftermath of such fires. I can’t think of a better writer of sentences in America today. (My favorite English writer of sentences is Alan Hollinghurst.)
Sophie Siddique Harvey, film scholar. Kiese Laymon, Heavy: An American Memoir (USA: Scribner, 2018). Searing. Poignant. Brave. These adjectives barely capture the experience of reading Kiese Laymon's memoir. My binge habit tends towards seasons of Game of Thrones but in this chance encounter, I could not put the book down. I read it cover to cover, sometimes needing to stop when I realized I had not taken a full, deep breath in quite some time. I lapped up Laymon's prose, often reading passages out loud just to feel a particularly brutal sentence on my tongue. Laymon bares all for his reader in this memoir: he documents in visceral detail his battles with his black body; he wrestles with the deep wounds that were inflicted upon him by structural and institutional racism; and he renders painfully palpable the fraught but loving relationship with his mother. Even now, the imprint of Heavy: An American Memoir continues to linger on my skin.
Suchen Christine Lim, novelist. My book of the year is Amanda Lee Koe’s Delayed Rays of a Star published by Bloomsbury (2019). Based on a photograph found in a secondhand bookstore, it’s a cosmopolitan tale of 3 women’s heartbreaking struggles against racism, male power, and prejudice in Nazi Germany and the US in the 1930’s. The author’s research into the lives of two German and a Chinese film stars has created a brilliant novel.
Gui Weihsin, literary scholar. Twin Cities: An Anthology of Twin Cinema from Singapore and Hong Kong, edited by Joshua Ip and Tammy Ho Lai-Ming (Singapore: Landmark Books, 2017). This is an anthology of poems written in the form of "twin cinema" (two facing columns), so each poem is essentially a three-in-one. The poems startle, delight, and disturb, and show that there's much more reciprocity than rivalry between Singapore and Hong Kong.
William Phuan, arts administrator. Lion City by Ng Yi-Sheng (Singapore: Epigram Books, 2018). Wildly inventive, constantly surprising, Lion City, a collection of short stories by Ng Yi-Sheng, puts many familiar myths through the wringer and turns them on their head. What emerges is an intoxicating blend of stories that transport the readers to literally new realms of imagination.
Yen Yen Woo, CEO, Yumcha Studios. This year, I have really enjoyed The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (USA: Viking, 2018). The fire of youth, the wisdom of age, the pain of the passing of time. The Great Believers broke my heart and told me that the only day to live is today.
Ng Yi-Sheng, poet, playwright, and fictionist. From Malaysia, we have Hanna Alkaf’s The Weight of Our Sky (USA: Salaam Reads/Simon & Schuster, 2019), a YA novel about a Malay schoolgirl with OCD experiencing the 1969 racial riots that wracked Kuala Lumpur (spilling over to many other cities, including Singapore). This is the most immersive literary exploration of the riots that I’ve read, made all the more torturous by its exploration of mental disability. Yet with all of its physical and psychological violence, it also manages to be a kid-friendly story that’s being distributed to a global audience. A pretty amazing achievement. From Indonesia/Australia, there’s George Quinn’s Bandit Saints of Java (UK: Monsoon Books. 2019). This non-fiction work combines travelogue, history and myth to reveal the complex culture of Islamic saint worship in Java (The world’s most populous island, with more inhabitants than either Japan or Russia!). It’s a deeply important work to me, not just because we’ve got a similar, little-discussed culture of saint-worship in Singapore—it also tries to destabilize the whole notion of what the conventions of Islam are, given that so many of its followers are syncretic Southeast Asian practitioners of the faith!
Singapore Unbound’s SP Blog publishes original poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction, as well as book reviews and artist interviews. If you like what we do, please consider making a donation here.