To Be Vocal

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here.

Thank you for buying books from our imprint Gaudy Boy in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Gaudy Boy donated our sales proceeds from June through August to Voices of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL-NY). Together we raised $500, including two outright donations. Led by Black and brown people, VOCAL-NY is a statewide grassroots membership organization that builds power among low-income people directly impacted by HIV/AIDS, the drug war, mass incarceration, and homelessness. The organization has active chapters in New York City, Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, and Westchester County. We're pleased to support its community organizing, leadership development, advocacy, direct services, and direct action. Do check out VOCAL-NY's tremendous work for disadvantaged communities.

I don't do this often but I will toot my own horn. My first hybrid work of fiction Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an insignificant Japanese poet has just been released! "The rescue of a literary manuscript results in a war of words over the interpretation of 107 haiku about New York’s Central Park. In the battle of commentaries, what is at stake is nothing less than the meaning of America in an imaginary but highly plausible future. Reenvisioning Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire for a technologized age, Snow at 5 PM discovers revolutionary uses, and abuses, for literature and history." Please check it out. I'm inordinately proud of this new, experimental work.

If you have not RSVPed for the 2020 Singapore Literature Festival in NYC, do it now. You will receive weekly emails with interviews, excerpts, and updates to acquaint you with the thinking and writing of the featured authors. We're very excited about these conversations between Singaporean and American authors around the festival theme of "The Politics of Hope." SP Blog has just published an excerpt from Carceral Capitalism by Jackie Wang, who is giving the festival's Closing Address on the future of prison abolition.

Jee Leong Koh
September 17, 2020

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