Chwee Kueh without the Toppings
Review of Right of the Soil by Yong Shu Hoong (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2018)
By Michael Chang
The title of Yong Shu Hoong’s collection Right of the Soil refers to the legal concept jus soli—more commonly known as birthright citizenship—suggesting the poet’s intention to tackle a serious legal debate over what constitutes citizenship in his native island-state. Singapore does not have birthright citizenship. If you are an immigrant, it is not easy to naturalize there. Even its famed Gurkha Contingent, a highly-skilled police force reliant on immigrants from Nepal, has seen uneven and uncertain treatment of their immigration status. The Gurkhas protect sensitive facilities, such as the U.S. Embassy, but are not allowed to bring their spouses or children with them to Singapore. The nation’s treatment of foreigners long received scant attention until a large-scale COVID-19 outbreak in migrant dormitories—an outbreak that sent Singapore’s infection rates skyrocketing. Given this context, the title of Yong’s book raises this reader’s expectations.
These expectations are not met in Right of the Soil. There is little to no discussion of jus soli citizenship (in the legal sense), though Yong makes allusions to elements of belonging (in a broader sense). Since the title frames the collection as an exploration of nationality, the poems should ideally respond to that animating question. Instead, what we have are poems about local food, places, and flora and fauna—pretty, serviceable poems in search of a unifying theme. Even the most conscientious reader would struggle to piece together a definition of citizenship as Yong sees it.
The book is not devoid of political comment. At times, Yong does present a seductive critique of political leaders and structures. He can be clever without being cynical. In “Shrine,” Yong casts a questioning glance on the John F. Kennedy Library, located in Boston, asking, “What do you expect to find […] the whole truth and nothing// But the truth?” In a caustic tone, Yong answers himself later in the poem, “This is a temple, dedicated// To the memory of a great leader.” The use of “great leader” here, about a democratically-elected President of the United States, recalls America’s longstanding support for strongmen (and they are generally men) of a dictatorial stripe. Yong’s judgments about America’s love for eternal wars and regime changes also lurk in the background. So I was amused to read “Practical Concerns,” the poem immediately following “Shrine,” which is about the passing of Singapore’s Founding Father Lee Kuan Yew. LKY, as he is known, was arguably one such “great leader” cut from the authoritarian cloth.
Yong also grapples in places with the push-and-pull of populism and capitalism. That is a needle that Singapore’s government has tried to thread since the nation’s independence from the British in 1965. In the poem “Meat Joy, 2014,” Yong bemoans the cost of an “$18 burger” from Dean & DeLuca (ironically now an almost-defunct chain in the United States), and indicts the Government for crass commercialization and gentrification, lamenting the building of “a mall in Hillview where a few/ HDB blocks used to stand,/ before the entire estate was roundly erased.” At points, Yong wears his populism on his sleeve. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” There are points in the book where Yong convincingly lets the light in, pushing out the darkness of political suppression and disenfranchisement.
Yong’s best poems harness a clear love for his country, elevating and amplifying local feature and language. The Singaporean vernacular (or Singlish), influenced by Malay, Tamil, and Chinese dialects, makes frequent appearances, perhaps to the chagrin of the government’s Speak Good English Movement. In the titular poem, “Right of the Soil,” Yong references “Jalan Macalister.” Local readers will know, without the benefit of a gloss, that “jalan” can mean “walk” or “road,” among other things, in Malay. The ekphrastic sequence “Harbour” is peppered unapologetically with Singlish expressions. In “Harbour (II),” for instance, Yong writes, “I have to hand in a reflection to my lecturer,” the term ‘hand in’ referring to his turning in of an assignment. He also mixes his tenses in the poem, recalling, “I didn’t know what gouache is [sic] until I look [sic] up the word online.” The effect is almost hip-hop. In “Harbour (III),” among my favorites, Yong variously writes: “I used to drive taxi”; “No need to turn steering wheel anymore”; “Sometimes I have to act fierce”; “I tell people not to anyhow touch”; and so on. In this set of poems, he seems to pull the curtain back ever so slightly, and we see glimpses of a more personal, more candid Yong.
In a number of poems, Yong shows an obvious affection for his students. “Facing an Empty Classroom” imbues clever historical flashbacks with this fondness (“class boycotts in the 1950s organised by Chinese/ students critical of our colonial government”), which transport the reader back in time. I also applaud Yong’s candor in “Egging Us On,” another poem about his students. He ends the poem with a thought-provoking line about “bad eggs,” asking what to do with them since “[w]hen it’s time to break for lunch,/ we all know what we’ll not eat.” Pertinent and evocative, more of such poems would be welcome.
The best poems in this collection are about what we do want to eat. As I wrote recently in one of my own poems: “Stop trying to make food sexy/ food is inherently sexy.” Here, “Meat Joy, 2014” is one of my favorites, as is “Cannibento: Lunch with Chef Yama Songdi.” Yong is at the height of his powers when he writes with incredible, almost excruciating specificity. In these poems, Yong is charming, even flippant, yet entirely capable of oscillating over to total seriousness. In “Cannibento,” a poem referencing Polynesian cannibals and the Third Court of Hell in Chinese mythology, the speaker, who is a chef, writes, “I cannot reveal the exact recipe, the secrets/ of my trade. But I can tell you I’ve ever tasted/ human flesh cloned from a volunteer’s DNA.” Provocative and defiant, the speaker continues by detailing an outlandish menu before ending: “Cherry tarte shaped like a human heart concocted/ without egg or milk, garnished with a sprig of/ mint. Eat, my fine young cannibal, bon appétit.” I read this as a very queer poem in the vein of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It suggests a young ward manipulated by an older patron, an interaction almost erotic in its intensity.
The style deployed in this collection is not, however, flawless, even in these delightful poems about Singlish, students, and street food. At several moments, Yong’s language turns overly formal. In “Obsidian,” for instance, he writes of a “rotund owner” when “fat” would do. In “Beyond Economical Repair,” a poem about his time in compulsory military service (National Service or “NS”), Yong turns loquacious, using close to 40 lines when 20 would do. The value of some of the shorter poems is suspect. I am thinking of the likes of “Negation” here. Longer poems, such as “Nothing Sacred,” “To The Lighthouse,” and “Fisheye View,” have dubious section-breaks.
Additionally, Yong is overly reliant on references that don’t successfully “do the work” of carrying his water. Here I am thinking of non-germane references to a Murakami book (in “Tracing”), Wong Kar-wai’s film 2046 (in “Homage”), the soundtrack of Days of Being Wild (in “Northbound”), and more. The collection would be stronger if Yong had more boldly articulated his speakers’ points of view without relying on external sources of support. Yong’s remarkable deftness with phrasing is undeniable in, for example, the seventh poem of his “The Subterranean Courts” sequence, “Suite Dreams.” Here, he writes, “You mumble secrets in/ your sleep—what// wealth? Now repeat, more/ clearly, your PIN.” In the eighth poem “Sha’ban,” he longingly writes, “My darling […] just called to ask if I’d like to meet at Purgatory or Diyu—one has better food, while the other a more stylish decor.” Moments like these sparkle but are not sustained throughout the collection.
Right to the Soil is an uneven collection, full of atmosphere, but curiously absent of passion. Like a hand on an open flame, Yong has a tendency to pivot away before tension or complexity is in the mix. Put another way, Yong is at his least compelling when he pulls his punches. Reading these poems is akin to wolfing down chwee kueh without the toppings. The collection seems at times starved of purpose—sedate and predictable. It reads as if Yong is too preoccupied with telling you what a thing isn’t rather than what it is.
A Lambda Literary fellow, Michael Chang (they/them) was awarded the Kundiman Scholarship at the Miami Writers Institute, in addition to fellowships from Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Brooklyn Poets, & the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Their writing has been published or is forthcoming in the Cincinnati Review, Summerset Review, Vassar Review, Minnesota Review, Santa Clara Review, Ninth Letter, Hobart, Harpur Palate, Poet Lore, The Nervous Breakdown, & many others. Their collection <golden fleece> was a finalist for the Iowa Review Award in Poetry.