<ADV> (Migrant Voices) Call for Volunteers: Oral History Archive.

(via the Arts Community Yahoo! Group)

Dear friends,

Migrant Voices is building Singapore’s first oral history archive for foreign workers.

Oral history is a special type of in-depth interview. Interviewees are simply asked to tell us their ‘life story’ with minimum intervention and questioning. They need to take stock of their lives in the course of telling their stories. In this way, the individual’s perspective can be revealed holistically, and in indirect and revealing ways.

We believe that a public archive of interviews with migrant workers can benefit both workers and Singaporeans. Telling one’s own life stories to interested listeners can be a tremendously healing and empowering experience. The archive will be used to:

  • educate the public,
  • help policy researchers and activists, and
  • instigate change in the working and living conditions of the workers.

Without this “body of evidence” on the modern phenomenon of migrant labor, the voices of the very people at the heart of the process will simply vanish from public record and public memory.Would you be interested in taking part as an interpreter in these interviews, or as a translator behind the scenes? Drop me an email and I’ll send you more information.

Best wishes,

Shengpei
Project Co-ordinator
Migrant Voices Oral History Archive

Why Shakespeare? (Part II)

I think my reply to Aaron’s comment on Part I of the “Why Shakespeare?” post deserves to be a post by itself.

However, you do need to refer to the questions he has posed or the statements he makes in order to understand my replies to him in context, so I’d appreciate it greatly if you could please read the comments in their entirety.

Shared Items for Mon, 1 Jun 2009

  • Abortion doc shot dead
  • It’s so ironic that the people who oppose abortion because it’s considered ‘murder’ can go on to murder someone else themselves. Surely there’s a less violent way to have your voice heard?

  • Troll Slayer
  • Beware the wrath of Stephanie Meyer! Actually this resonates with me because I do put people I don’t like/people who irritate me in my plays as well.

  • "Don’t Do That." (Poetry: The New Yorker)
  • A poem about social events and inner demons.

  • "Crush." (Poetry: The New Yorker)
  • I think this is something we might all be able to identify with.

  • eating potatoes
  • “The Government invests a good amount of money each year, marketing Chinese as a language all Singaporean Chinese should use. It’s cool, they said. How so? The television commercial is memorable, no doubt, but does it really make me want to use the language? Let’s not even talk about the posters. What? Chinese is cool because some Singaporean singer says so? My apologies for being harsh, but that’s not about to make someone as detached as I am convinced.”

  • nothing to call my own
  • “My race is Chinese, but I do not feel Chinese like the Chinese from China do. In fact many of my peers and I differentiate ourselves from the mainland Chinese back home. I have been indoctrinated in school to feel like a Singaporean, but a Singaporean identity is still fluid and does not have much history or heritage to fall back on – Singapore does not have many decades of history, and whatever authentic heritage we have has mostly been lost to economic development and capitalism.”

  • Homeless people and the Internet
  • The title of this post is not a joke.

  • Contraception: Singapore Style.
  • ‘If we had sex without the condom, I’ll make sure that I wash my private area very thoroughly and drink a lot of water and pee a lot,’ she told The New Paper in a phone interview.

    Does she think that will prevent pregnancy?

    ‘I’m not sure, but I think it will help,’ she said.

    Again, she’s not alone.

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