Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here .  Singapore Unbound is pleased to announce three awards for the best undergraduate critical essays on Singapore and other literatures this year. Each winner receives USD250 and publication in our journal  SUSPECT . The awards are generously funded by Professor Koh Tai Ann (Nanyang Technological University) We're grateful to literary scholar Weihsin Gui (University of California, Riverside) for reading the submissions and making the selection. He gives his comments below, first on all the submissions and then on the individual winners.  “The essays submitted for this award are all to be commended for the depth of their textual analyses and the breadth of their engagement with various cultural and literary theories. I can envision all eight essays, after undergoing peer review and varying degrees of revision and expansion, being published in academic journals. I encourage the authors to consider doing...

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Singapore Unbound is holding our 4th Singapore Literature Festival from October 1-3, 2020. To be held online for the first time, this independent, biennial festival brings together Singaporean and American authors and audiences for lively conversations about literature and society. All events are free and open to everyone. The theme of this year's festival is "The Politics of Hope." Singapore Unbound wishes to respond to this fraught moment not only in Singapore and the USA but also around the world. Everywhere, democracy, human rights, and social justice are facing existential threats, and we want to provide writers and thinkers a platform to speak to the current global turmoil.   Check out the full festival program . RSVP early for the Zoom link and extras (excerpts, interviews, updates).   Festival highlights   Timely, Pertinent Topics The festival is bo...

"For some reason I cannot pin down, I go to the word “soft” often in my poetry. It does not only speak, it also touches and tastes, and it does all this while meaning, variously, listen, gentle, vulnerable, honest, subtle, strong, tender, comfortable, pre-erection, post-orgasm, receptive, sympathetic, malleable, formal, transformative. It is not the opposite of hard, but is a state of hardness, just as hard is but a state of softness. It appears in conjunction with “ware,” “water,” and “power.”" Pleased to be included in this special Singapore feature of the Portugal-based journal Jogos Florais. Shout-outs in my interview to Tan Pin Pin, Sonny Liew, Gwee Li Sui, Dorothy Wang, Timothy Yu, Jahan Ramazani, and Gina Apostol. And thanks, Marguerita, for sharing your story with me. Your poem has appeared! Poems and interviews by Angeline Yap, Anne Lee Tzu Pheng, Cyril Wong, Edwin Thumboo, Jee Leong Koh, Loh Guan Liang, Pooja Nansi, Shirley Geok-lIn Lim, Tania De Rozario, and...

A biography of the artist as a hero, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye is full of swagger even as it pays tribute to its comics predecessors. The virtuosic display of different comics styles, the mind-boggling meta-meta-meta narratives, the political satire. The result is an astounding feat, which sets a high bar not only for Singapore comics, but also for Singapore fiction. Yet much remains familiar. Singapore history may be re-interpreted but its periodization is not challenged. The reading of the historical protagonists may be flipped, but there are still clearly heroes and villains. And the greatest hero of all is the artist, who is depicted as uncompromisingly dedicated to his art. Singapore art needs such a heroic image, perhaps, given its frequent and forced accommodations to authority. Still, the terms of the artist's exaltation are traditional: he foregoes a love interest; gives up having a family; disappoints his parents. Heterosexual love, family, and happy parents ...