Hey everyone! Today I'll talk about Singaporean
literature with three amazing stories, one novel and two short stories that
will tell you a lot about this country, its literally scene. Also stick around
for some cheap jokes and stereotypes about Singapore. Singapore is a young
country, only 60 years old. When the British left, Singapore was like an
orphaned baby meerkat desperately trying to find a mother. The Cold War was a
scary time to be alone. It joined Malaysia but only for a few years.
Not only it survived but it got nicknamed the Asian Tiger. It should be
Asian Lion, as Singapore literally means Lion City in Malay language. I suppose we
associated lions with African Tigers with Asia although Tigers don't live in
Africa but lions do live in Asia, in some parts of India.
How about Singaporean literature? It does have a rich literary history but there
are a few obstacles here to have a unified literature that what one can
categorize it as Singaporean. First, 4 different languages spoken: Tamil, Malay.
Chinese and English. Not a fertile ground to have a unified literature. However,
there have been attempts to morph all these languages into a Single-ish
language called Tamalaynezish. Only kidding!
Singlish is literally English by just adding "la" after every single word or sentence. Duh!
The second problem for a unified Singaporean literature is who
does the country belong to does everyone feel at home here?
A lot of novels by Singaporean writers are set elsewhere, in USA, China and Japan
which is perhaps easy as you don't want to offend the other community in your country
by including or excluding them in your stories. 3rd, I could be wrong but I
think Singapore being so close to the equator the climate is not conducive to
creative writing like Russia's cold winters. You would rather go to the beach.
I don't know about you but having one season all year round? In my research I
found many Singaporean writers write while in the UK or USA which also
explains why most of them are critical of Singapore, its work culture and
repressive air.Perhaps they don't fit in or seeking audience elsewhere. Hard to tell.
Finally, I think this is a big reason for
Singapore not to have a very strong robust literature. The problem is when
you are orphaned as a country survival and economic efficiency take center stage,
pushing art and literature to the side.
But the good news is that this has changed now. There's been a flurry of activity
in the past few decades as you can see through these stories I have picked; all
are published in the last 10 years so the lion has started roaring.
I think Singapore has seen the Korean Wave and understands that economy is not
everything, you need to have a vibrant literature and art scene too.
Okay now to our stories. Our first pick is a short story appropriately called
"Lion City" published in 2018 and a collection also tied to Lion City by Ng Yi-Sheng.
I don't know if that's the correct pronunciation, who is a man of
many trades including poetry, fiction, plays, journalism, and gay activism.
He wrote this while studying for his MA in creative writing and in East Anglia
University in England which is interesting as to who the audience he
had in mind. It seems he's written it for a Western audience as there is a lot of
cliched image of Singapore as a lion city with the best zoo and so and so.
What is the story? It's a typical boy-meets-girl story.
Not really. It's not typical. It's about zoo where all the animals are actually fake,
just robots. The attempt is to make them so realistic that nobody finds out and
if they do they might not come again so the boy and a girl in this story meet
and have sex in this zoo quite frequently. The story starts off pretty
badly. Language is clumsy as though someone pretend to be cool kid, has too
much American influence but this is to throw you off.
There's even an innocent childhood talk in the middle of a sex scene just to
baffle you. There's the danger of people finding out about fake animals and you
are fearful. Once you have gone through all these mixed emotions about the story
then comes a time bomb. The boy desperate to find out why his girlfriend isn't
responding to his endless messages, walks in on her to discover something
extraordinary. It's like seeing someone without makeup for the first time.
No it's more than that. It's like seeing someone completely broken down and you
realize your girlfriend is actually a machine, a robot, a specimen which is
described as an economists' fantasy come true. The most efficient citizen robot.
But wait we're not done yet. There's another twist in this tale. The boy our
narrator reveals himself. He isn't human either. He turns out to be a beast.
A lion who changed into a human dress when people showed up on the island of
Singapore all those years ago. The animals that roam the
island didn't die out instead they adapted to the human culture. Now both of
our couple know each other's true identity but sadly here the story ends
somewhat suddenly. What did I think of this story? Singapore is a zoo with
technology at the helm where nothing is real? All animals a robot even the girl
who works there but the lion is real? I had to look it up there's an Asian
species of lion that's smaller than African lion, now limited only to a
region in India so the myth of lions grooming Singapore back in the days is
perhaps true. This story implies that Singapore is hiding his true identity
behind this huge curtailing economic curtain that grinds like a German machine.
This image of the cleanest country hides something else which we
will discover more in our next story. I really enjoyed this story. It's very
cleverly done but the ending was a bit abrupt and the language as a whole a bit
too unsophisticated in my humble opinion. I guess that was intended to throw readers
off or imply that when technology takes over language somehow dies.
Okay now to our next pick. State of Emergency by Jeremy Tiang was published
in 2017. It was also the winner of 2018 Singaporean Literature Prize for fiction
which is interesting given how critical of the Singaporean establishment this
novel is. Jeremy Tiang is also a translator from Chinese to English and
given the subject matter of this book it makes sense as he has first-hand access
to the Chinese sources and while reading this it feels as though these stories are
translated rather than written, if that makes sense.
It seems unbiased that is what I mean. It tells both sides of stories, the goods,
and the bads the uglies, like a good translator might. First let me tell you
the story. The novel spans over 75 years from 1940s to today. To understand it
better, we need to go back to the days of Singapore's independence from the
British government in 1940s and their short marriage of Malaysia in the 1950s.
In those pioneering days there are two forces at odds. The focus of this story.
on class struggle among the Chinese ethnic group. On the one hand, the
ruling elite subscribed to Confucian meritocracy or simply Western capitalism,
while on the other hand, a group of Marxist who fight for equality for the
underprivileged. The paranoia among the ruling elite leads them to persecute
anyone remotely connected to Marxists who in turn flee the country ends up in
the jungles of Malaysia and Thailand. They also commit some terrible acts.
The novel is divided into six parts, six perspectives of six characters who are
somehow related. A family torn apart by conflicting
ideologies. Jason a British-educated marries Siew Lee a Marxist somewhat less
privileged. It's like capitalism marrying communism, which is hapenning in China
now. But the state of emergency means the family cannot stay together.
Siew Lee ends up in the jungles of Malaysia. Years later
their son Henry returns from the UK to find out about his mother with the help
of a journalist friend. They discover some shocking things.
What is this novel about? As the title suggests the State of Emergency is a way
to control and tame citizens into a system based on meritocracy not equality.
So Singapore becomes like a country where everyone is on a race to prove your
worth. Your brain is prized while your humanity not so much I think that's the
main message of this novel. Singapore's widely seen as a success story. An
economic miracle so to speak. What this novel presents is the ugly side of that
success. It's like behind the scenes of this beautiful facade: clean, well shaven, in
elegant clothes while hiding a sincere world of torture persecution paranoia
and repression. It's like the mass media camera is on
your smiling face while this novel revealing that you are kicking the shit
out of those on the ground to achieve the title of the cleanest country on earth.
The novel invites us to see the ugliness and the repression that went on
behind the scenes. It's a really well-written novel. Words, sentences and
narrative flow seamlessly that show the author's perhaps hiding years of ugly
toiling that has gone on to produce this beautiful novel. In the same way
Singapore was built on some nasty things in its past history.
Okay now to our final story from Singaporen literature. "Flamingo Valley"
is a short story published in a collection called "Ministry of Moral
Panic" in 2013 by Amanda Lee Koe. This collection won the 2014 Singapore
Lterature Prize for Fiction. Before I tell the story you should know that in Singapore
the Chinese community is known to be much richer than Malay community. There
are a lot of negative stereotypes as a result. Like one being lazy and the other
being in love with money. Now that's out of the way let's dive in. First let me
summarize the story. It's a love story between a poor Malay boy and a rich
Chinese girl that ends badly, for the boy's beaten up and scared away
by the girl's family. Years later they get another chance to reignite their
love under very different circumstance.s Deddy Haikal an ethnically Malay
musician has a chance meeting at a hospital with his teenage crush Ling, an
affluent Chinese girl who suffers from amnesia so she has forgotten about him.
You can interpret this as rich people forgetting their childhood friends as
you grow up money blinds you. In other words "children see as who you are and
grown-up see as who you are not". Maybe I should trademark this sentence. Anyway
the story unfolds at a hospital. Deddy remembers and trying to remind Ling of
their brief romantic experience all those years ago and how their romance
was broken up by Ling's future husband by force and how the experience motivated
Deddy to become a successful musician. Ling is on the verge of recovering her
memory when Deddy suddenly leaves the hospital leaving her feeling rejected.
Revenge? Perhaps. Ling or more accurately those
around her rejected him for being poor and Malay all those years ago now he has
a chance to reject her. And he does as Diddy has three wives. Too many
stereotypes Chinese are shallow and see nothing but money. Malays, they have
many wives and women who have no rights so they produce nothing but kids as
Deddy has seven kids. At the end daddy wants to write a song about an 18 year old girl.
Love is always in the past I guess. It's a tale of doomed interracial romance that
never materialized. It's also about class, rich girl versus poor boy. It's also about
art verses materialism. Deddy is a musician. But the main focus is that no
matter who you are in economic ladder, a Chinese girl will never marry a Malay boy.
Hmmm!? Not sure about that. Out of these 3 stories this was the
weakest I felt. It's also playing the stereotype a bit too much and with
simplicity. I don't know Singapore's racial dynamics too well but being a
human myself, well most of the time anyway, I feel those days are gone when
nothing could break the racial barrier as this short story suggests.
Now before I conclude this video I have a few stereotypes
of my own about Singapore which I would like to share with you.
Singapore is in like Vatican City where money isn't worshipped like God. Instead
people break Gods and save them into several bank accounts and invest in
multiple stocks. Also not everyone chews gum instead they chew on banknotes
because banknotes are a healthier option It's also not a Confucian paradise with
strict order and meritocratic rules that dumps those who don't perform well to
become artists or writers. Instead it awards them with fake prizes
while taking away their cash grants. This happened to our story Jeremy Tiang's
"State of Emergency" whose groan was withdrawn because the book didn't paint
a nice picture of Singapore. It's also not a country where city and country
lose its meaning.There's a clear boundary where Singapore ends and
Malaysia begins. Okay to conclude this video I learned a great deal about what
is hidden behind the shiny miracle that Singapore is. But I also learned that there
are plenty of creative writers who are breaking the stereotypes. I feel literature
roars among all those money talk. There are plenty of lions among all the robots.
Of course I'm joking. There are no Lions in Singapore only people in lion clothes
or pretending to be lions. Well, I hope you enjoyed this video. Please let me
know which of these stories you liked. Thank you very much.