Song of a Reformed Headhunter

2nd Singapore Lit Fest ended on a high note on Saturday, with scholarly and passionate talks about Sonny Liew's The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye . I hope the panel is the first of many, many to come because the graphic novel rewards close analysis and open discussion. A favorite moment was when two panelists, Ying Sze Pek and Matt Humphreys, disagreed with one another. Is the depiction of Lim Chin Siong and Lee Kuan Yew as hero and villian an instance of the novel's oversimplification of complex people, or is it part of the novel's sentimentalist structure? Is it, in other words, a fault or a a strength? Another favorite moment in the festival is less of a clash and more of a clarification, when Alfian Sa'at asks Jason Koo whether he means "mean as fuck" or "mean ASS fuck" in a discussion about the depiction of race and sexuality in literature. Ha, ha, literature is full of double entendres. Then there was that awkward moment in the "Fictionali...

Dear Friends, We are excited to announce the return of Singapore Literature Festival in New York City. The theme this year is Singapore Unbound. Started in 2014, the biennial festival brings together Singaporean and American authors for in-depth conversations about literature and society. The inaugural festival, attended by more than 500 people, was very warmly received. Attendees formed personal connections to the writers whom they heard. This year we aim to raise USD15 000 for the festival and we ask you to consider making a generous gift. The 2 nd Singapore Literature Festival in NYC will be held from September 28 – 30, 2016. Award-winning authors Alfian Sa’at and Ovidia Yu will fly from Singapore to New York to present their trailblazing fiction, poetry, and plays. They will be joined by Singaporean and American authors and artistes based in the US, including Jessica Hagedorn , Gina Apostol , Naomi Jackson , Jeremy Tiang , Marcus Yi , Mei-Ann Teo , and Jason Wee . Our p...

Drawn from different sectors of Manila society in the 1950s, the characters in Dogeaters are so vividly drawn, so complexly animated, that they appear primed for the big screen that they love so much. Through their interactions, often indirect, Hagedorn lays bare the obsession with American glamor, the ruthless suppression of political dissent, the awkwardness of coming-of-age, the irrepressible yearning for love. The novel is artfully constructed with alternating points of views, supplemented with fabricated news reports and surrealistic dream sequences. The plot curves with great speed towards its denouement, a political assassination and its shattering consequences.

The blog-post title is also the theme of this year's conference of the Association of Asian American Studies in New Orleans. Four days, from May 18 to 21, with 132 panels and roundtables, covering multiple disciplines such as history, literature, media, sociology, geography, performance and fine arts, ethnic studies, gender studies and women's studies. Many papers referred to the transnational turn that has taken place in Asian American studies. The field has moved from recovery of buried pasts to looking beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. The turn involves expanding the term "American" to cover the hemisphere, linking the States to the countries of immigrant origins, studying diasporas and analyzing globalization. Most of the papers I heard were informed by social constructionist theory, primarily Marxist, feminist, postcolonial and poststructuralist. These papers, speaking the same language, seemed like ingenious applications of one theory or another. An...