By Yin F Lim

Review of The Second Link: An Anthology of Malaysian & Singaporean Writing edited by Daryl Lim Wei Jie, Hamid Roslan, Melizarani T. Selva, William Tham ([Singapore]: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2023)

In The Second Link: An Anthology of Malaysian & Singaporean Writing, William Tham, one of its co-editors, refers to ‘the artifice of the nation-state, with its notions of common origin or destiny’. Indeed, such notions underpin many of the pieces in this anthology, published to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Federation of Malaysia. This collection of essays, short stories, poems and hybrid works by writers of Malaysian and Singaporean origin is a creative and critical response to the common destiny both countries shared in a brief moment in history, when Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak merged on 16 September 1963 to form the Federation of Malaysia.

The union could be deemed an effort to bring together people of a common origin, but what began with much hope and optimism—the ‘thrill of a new age dawning’, as Zhang Ruihe notes in her story “Driving North”—was short-lived. Political differences led to Singapore’s separation from the Federation barely two years later to become an independent nation on 9 August 1965. Some sixty years later, Malaysia and Singapore are divided not just by differences in politics and policies but also by disparities in progress and prosperity. Yet, despite what co-editor Daryl Lim Wei Jie describes as an ‘increasing separateness’ of two nations that were once one, there remains much entanglement as well as ambivalence, as this anthology shows.

Malaysia and Singapore are linked by the Johor-Singapore Causeway and the Tuas Second Link bridge. Wikipedia describes the former as one of the world's busiest border crossings with an average of 350,000 travellers daily. Hardly surprising then, that bridges and border crossings feature heavily in the anthology; they’re representations of all that connect and separate two countries of people ‘from the same roots,’ as Malachi Edwin Vethamani writes in his poem “The Claiming Game.” For instance, the octogenarian protagonist in Zhang Ruihe’s “Driving North” reminisces about journeys across the Causeway into the Malayan peninsula and a friendship severed by ideological disputes that became ‘no longer a question of politics but about what our values were.’ In his contemplative memoir essay “Causes and Ways,” Daryl Li refers to ‘a literature of bridges, roads and paths’ as he remembers the regular Causeway crossings made as a child on trips of ‘obligation and duty’ to visit extended family in Malaysia. Yet it is in the fragmented memories of these journeys, along with recollections of family members and their photos, that Li seeks his own story. Later, while travelling to Malaysia without his family, he strives to connect to a past ‘out of reach’ as he attempts to bridge a distance, both physical and metaphorical, between himself and a place he describes as being directly connected to him. Yet ultimately, he concedes that ‘I will always return to it [Malaysia], but I also know I will always be apart from it’.

Ila expresses a similar sentiment in her lyric essay “the reverse of a bridge lies between two borders” (lowercased title in original) which captures a life of two homes on both sides of the Johor Strait. A particular border crossing sees the author returning too late for a final farewell with a beloved family member, leaving her in deep grief and regret along with a sense of alienation that ‘stops you from coming home to the person you used to be.’ In “Kway Teow Coattails,” death also brings Ho Kin Yunn across the border to his late mother’s hometown of Ipoh where he finds comfort in food and family: the best kai si hor fun and a spinster aunt who, unlike her siblings, never left their hometown for ‘better opportunities.’ Also haunted by grief is Noor Iskandar’s “Fatamorgana,” a visual psychogeography from his sojourn along the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia that expresses his mourning and dispossession from the loss of childhood memories and connections.

If many journeys north of the Causeway are tinged with yearning and nostalgia, those made southwards focus on the future, what co-editor Melizarani T. Selva calls ‘The Malaysian Dream’ of moving to Singapore for better opportunities. Benedict Lim’s short story, “agency,” highlights the socioeconomic disparity between the two nations by contrasting the crumbling library in his Malaysian migrant narrator’s hometown with the cold glass office of the immigration consultancy she visits for her Singapore PR application. Ila’s and Heng Jia Min’s memoir pieces reveal childhood memories of differing comfort levels between their urban Singaporean homes and the rural Malaysian homes of their extended families. Malaysians’ and Singaporeans’ tendency to compare—one I remember too well from constantly being told, while growing up in Malaysia, that things were almost always better in Singapore—is humorously captured in Sumitra Selvaraj’s mother-daughter argument about wedding sarees and “The Real Little India” (found in Singapore, of course).

Such comparisons inevitably lead to the one-upsmanship depicted in Mohamed Shaker’s short story “Foot Massage.” The story’s narrator, a middle-aged woman crossing the Causeway to the Malaysian border town of Johor Bahru to deliver her husband’s medication, provides a biting commentary of those around her: Singaporeans visiting relatives with bags of gifts that cost three times of what they would have paid in Johor, to ‘make a point about how much better they're doing’; Malaysian customs officers busy chatting among themselves, indifferent to the growing queue of travellers and their inefficiency next to their Singaporean counterparts. This nation-sibling rivalry is, however, tempered by a touch of self-loathing, with the Singaporean Malay narrator admitting that Malaysians ‘aren’t jealous of us’ in the way that Singaporeans ‘need them to, desperately.’ Instead, ’they laugh at us,’ she notes, perhaps also referring to her own situation of being cast off by her husband for his Malaysian second wife.

“Foot Massage” also delves into the race element underpinning the tension between the two nations by shedding nuanced light on the Malay experience in Chinese-majority Singapore. This is further explored in “A tale of two enfants terribles” (lowercased title in original), Jonathan Chan’s discussion of two literary outsiders, both of whom are from minority communities in their respective countries. Disenfranchised by his birth-nation’s relegation of Sinophone writing to a ‘sectional’ (vs national) status, Taiwan-based Ng Kim Chew has become a strong critic of Malaysian Chinese literature. Alfian Sa’at’s prolific writing, both in English and Malay, has often rebelled against the Singapore government’s marginalisation of its Malay community. In considering Ng’s and Alfian’s experiences next to each other, Chan’s essay provides the perfect launchpad for “The Claiming Game,” Malachi Edwin Vethamani’s poem about Singapore’s eagerness in claiming ‘unloved Malaysian poets’ sidelined by Malaysia’s race-based affirmative action policies. These were introduced after race riots in 1969 to improve the living standards of the country’s Malay and indigenous population, collectively known as the Bumiputera.

Such privileged treatment of one ethnic group—another driver of many Malaysians’ southbound migration—is also addressed by Heng Jia Min’s “A tale of two homes in a tale of two houses” (lowercased title in original), in which she remembers her mother’s experience of ‘unfairness and hardship’ as an ethnic Chinese in a Bumiputera-favouring Malaysia. Meanwhile, Ng Yi-Sheng’s interrogation of the mythical hero of Hang Tuah in his essay “Hang Tuah and the Crocodile” considers the notion of a ‘pendatang’ (immigrant) insecurity among the Chinese ‘hungry to belong’ in a country that considers them outsiders despite their having lived there for many generations.

Race relations within—and between—the two nations tend to highlight Malay and Chinese experiences, so this anthology’s platforming of the multitude of voices that make up our multicultural societies is much welcomed. Hindu temples are the focal point of “Circumambulations on Water,” Sreedhevi Iyer’s vignettes around the religious and the sacrilegious that give space for anger and sorrow. Kevin Martens Wong’s Kristang play, “Amateurs,” spotlights a heritage language that UNESCO considers critically endangered, while “Belonging” details Anitha Devi Pillai’s family history, providing an insider’s view of the Malayalee communities in both countries. East Malaysian perspectives—sorely needed, as co-editor Hamid Roslan notes, to broaden the conversation—are provided in “Referendum Rains,” Rachel Fung’s speculative short story about an imagined East Malaysian referendum, as well as Sharmini Aphrodite’s poignant “South of Memory.” The latter is a hybrid piece that brings together fiction and historical fact in a creative inhabitation of Fuad Stephens, Sabah’s first Chief Minister who played a key role in the Federation’s formation. Through her deft braiding of imagined scenes in the room where the merger discussions were held with the story of a Sabahan mother and daughter transplanted to Johor and Singapore, Aphrodite evokes an anchoring sense of pride and longing for one’s homeland and heritage amidst the displacement resulting from political expediency and economic migration.

What stands out with this anthology is its broad range. In reading The Second Link, I responded to the editors’ invitation to dip in and out, resulting in an experience of surprises and serendipities not unlike eating a plate of rojak blindfolded. But taking a step back to consider the book in its entirety provided a better appreciation of how the editors’ curation and ordering showcased its diversity in perspectives as well as tones and styles. Elaine Chiew’s witty story, “A Serious Case of Egg Shortage”—about Singapore’s egg shortage and one woman’s journey north to freeze her eggs—opens the anthology with a light touch before the reader is plunged into the politics of Sheena Gurbakhash’s “RAHMAN,” a thoughtful epistle about myth, magic and legacy centred around a prophetic mnemonic in Malaysia’s leadership (it was popular belief that future Prime Ministers could be predicted in chronological order by matching their first name initials with the letters in RAHMAN, the name of Malaysia’s first Prime Minister). Paul Augustin and Jocelyn Marcia Ng’s “From the Archives: Music and the Formation of Malaysia,” a fact-heavy essay on the role of music in mapping the region and its intertwined histories, is followed by the cutting humour of “From Eat Drink Man Woman,” Tse Hao Guang’s social commentary featuring his virtual friend Max Ho. Two pieces of fiction bookend Clarissa Oon’s “A Language of Our Own,” a journalistic homage to Malaysian theatre giant Krishen Jit and his intercultural and interdisciplinary legacy in Singapore theatre. Similarly, Brendan K Liew’s “Effigies,” a myth-leaning rumination on family, heritage and memory is sandwiched by two memoir pieces about ancestors, roots and belonging. Arjun Sai Krishnan’s “Selatan,” a New-Journalism-style essay on development along the Johor and Singapore coastlines, sets up the reader for Joshua Ip’s tongue-in-cheek “Annals,” a list poem of imagined wars between both nations.

The Second Link could also serve as a time capsule recording the issues and preoccupations of its time. There are references to the Covid pandemic, notably in Clara Chow’s “Leper,” which draw parallels between lockdown isolation and the ostracisation of leper colonies along with a writer’s loneliness as an observer. Climate change concerns drive the speculative fiction in this anthology: Anna Onni’s “The Unexpected Effects of Eternal Summertime” features a genderfluid Agong who rules over a Malaysia—and a world—decimated by global warming, while Sofia Mariah Ma’s “The Crawl” depicts an underwater world of sea dwellers (inspired by the Orang Laut) in a landless future. Decolonisation is another crucial message conveyed by many of this anthology’s works, including Yu Kai Tan’s “Green Man’s Burden,” a critique of environmental colonialism and both nations’ divergent biodiversity conservation policies.

In capturing the thoughts of today’s writers and scholars from Singapore and Malaysia, The Second Link anthology will help inform and shape those of future generations as we continue to move onward from our once conjoined histories. But even as the anthology interrogates the often gnarly entwinements between the two nations—‘always looking to the other for a sense of what was and what might have been,’ as Jonathan Chan notes in his essay—there is a crucial seam that runs through this collection of writing: a very human yearning to connect and belong, to feel a sense of togetherness in our separateness without the need to identify with any particular nation-state.

Yin F Lim is a Malaysian-born writer and editor who now lives in Norwich, UK. A former journalist, Yin holds a Biography and Creative Non-Fiction MA from the University of East Anglia. Her creative non-fiction is published in anthologies and literary journals including Moxy, The Other Side of Hope, and Hinterland magazine for creative non-fiction, where she is a co-editor. She is currently working on a family memoir about her maternal grandmother’s emigration from Southern China to Malaya.