QLRS: Full marks for freshman effort

Sun, 5 Nov 2017
1 min read
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My review of Philip Holden’s Heaven Has Eyes is now up on Quarterly Literary Review Singapore:

Full marks for freshman effort
Philip Holden hits the bull’s-eye with Heaven Has Eyes

Code-switching, or alternating between languages or language varieties, is never an easy feat.

But Philip Holden makes the practice look effortless with Heaven Has Eyes, his debut collection of short stories that centre on or revolve around Singapore.

Each of the 12 texts demonstrates Holden’s keen understanding of both the Singaporean condition and the linguistic oddities that characterise the nation-state.

Whether it is portraying characters that converse using a mix of English and Singlish, or shifting between English and the various Chinese language varieties in telling each of the stories, Holden is equally at ease.

“Aeroplane”, for one, utilises an intelligent interplay of English, Mandarin and Hokkien, conveying, through the symbol of flying, themes of migration, abandonment and exile.

It is done masterfully.

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QLRS: Dusty Gems

Mon, 11 Aug 2014
2 min read
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Since 2011, when I reviewed Tan Tarn How’s Six Plays, I’ve made it a point to review a Singaporean literary text for each Jul issue of the Quarterly Literary Review, Singapore (QLRS).

This year, I’ve reviewed Noon at Five O’Clock: The Collected Short Stories of Arthur Yap (Edited by Angus Whitehead).

Dusty Gems
Collection highlights little-known area of Arthur Yap’s work

Edited by Angus Whitehead, an assistant professor of English literature at the National Institute of Education in Singapore, Noon at Five O’Clock: The Collected Short Stories of Arthur Yap is a volume of eight short stories that comes on the back of The Collected Poems of Arthur Yap (NUS Press, 2013). Both volumes arrive eight years after Yap’s passing — a timely reminder of the 1983 Cultural Medallion winner’s contribution to Singapore’s arts scene in a milieu currently predisposed to lauding the “pioneer generation”.

While Yap’s poetry is synonymous with the Singapore literary canon, it is the mention of his short stories that pulls the reader up short: the average literature reader in my generation, and later, is probably unaware that Yap wrote fiction. Thus, kudos must go to Whitehead for his imagination and insight in tracking down and putting together this volume, so that the breadth of Yap’s talents can be fully appreciated by a wider audience.

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QLRS: Bending laws, reclaiming lore

Fri, 2 Aug 2013
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Eastern Heathens: An Anthology of Subverted Asian Folklore (Edited by Amanda Lee-Koe and Ng Yi-Sheng)

Since 2011, when I reviewed Tan Tarn How’s Six Plays, I’ve made it a point to review a Singaporean literary text for each Jul issue of the Quarterly Literary Review, Singapore (QLRS).

This year, I’ve reviewed Eastern Heathens: An Anthology of Subverted Asian Folklore (Edited by Amanda Lee-Koe and Ng Yi-Sheng).

I forgot to mention this on Facebook, but special thanks to Jessie Koh for helping me bring the text up to Korea when I was there from April to May 2013.

I like having some lead time to read and digest the text/stories so that the review can ferment on its own and more or less write itself by the time I begin writing.

Bending laws, reclaiming lore
Writers (re)narrate traditional tales for a contemporary audience

 

Literary writing in Singapore has entered a renaissance; a Reformation, in terms of both the amount of literary work and the type of writing produced. The last half a decade or so has seen a marked increase in the number of Singaporean writers publishing and performing their literary works. Within these works, a further trend can also be observed – the subversion, reclamation, revision or redirection of narratives (traditional or otherwise) in Singapore writing, evident in works such as Jean Tay’s Boom (2008), in which the modern Singaporean narrative of economic progress and prosperity is given a careful rethink, through to Ann Ang’s Bang My Car (2012), a novella that challenges form by mixing multiple writing genres and using Singlish in place of Standard Singapore English.

These counter-narratives are indicative of the post-postmodern Singapore zeitgeist: a desire to reclaim narratives as an act of remembrance of a Singaporean past that is constantly being demolished and, at the same time, to wrest power away from the ones who traditionally tell the narratives by retelling the same narratives in different ways. It is in this context that Eastern Heathens: An Anthology of Subverted Asian Folklore is situated, inhabiting an equally important space in this segment of Singapore literature that focuses on revising or unearthing narratives for a contemporary Singaporean audience and beyond.

 
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