Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . What to do with the beloved authors of our youth when we discover later in life that they have feet of clay? J.K. Rowling has been in the news for her attacks on the transgender community, and her arguments have been firmly rebutted by many people. For the fans of her Harry Potter books, however, there is still the question of how to think about the cherished adventures of the boy wizard with the lightning scar on his forehead. Nathan J. Robinson, in Current Affairs , provides a way to reconsider one's attachment to Harry Potter and friends. Although I do not think as highly of Rowling's literary style as Robinson does, he gives an excellent description of Rowling's many strengths as a writer. Then he proceeds to demarcate the limits of Rowling's imagination with regard to transgender people. After which, he makes the really interesting move of reading Rowling's imaginative lim...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . The Singapore Literature Prize is the top literary award in the country. The 2020 shortlist has just been announced and the category of poetry in English rightly includes the debuts of two bright young stars who have dared to craft highly experimental and yet totally absorbing books. Our SP Blog reviewer concludes that "In parsetreeforestfire Hamid Roslan has constructed an ingenious collection out of a melange of Singaporean languages." In a separate review of Marylyn Tan's Gaze Back , its reviewer enthuses that "This is a poetic collection told from the voice of the goat, from the eye on that spit, that has already been in the flames and now is going to de-code that experience for you." All the stranger then that the shortlist also includes the latest tired poetic offerings of Singapore's unofficial "poet laureate." Padded out by what the publisher calls ...

Just realized that I had not been blogging about the poetry I published as poetry editor in the spring/summer issue of the Evergreen Review. I had been introducing the poets and their poems on Facebook, so I will copy and paste those introductions here. * How to write political poems? Try comedy. Paul Stinson does it so variously and well in the group of five poems that I'm proud to publish in The Evergreen Review. He understands that laughter is never pure, but is always tinged with bitterness, regret, longing, self-criticism, and self-satisfaction. Laughter is always destabilizing. From "Americana": "If I’ve learned anything since then, it’s that empires love to die. Look, they’re not doing this for their health. And then we can jingle them in our pockets like coins, like a pile of palm-smoothed metal, with a laughing flood of memory, and not a single thought of wealth." The poems are accompanied by the terrific art of Barbara Weissberger. Images an...

Masterly storytelling that is capable of shining a pebble up into a jewel. A non-apology of a protagonist who is always unforgettably herself. Reading the novel is like being admitted into the confidence of this adolescent girl, into her mind games and mind troubles, into the ambivalence of growing up a woman in a world made for men, and the girl would hold you close as her best friend for a while, only to let you go because you are too silly or ignorant for her to keep as she grows up.

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Should writers support a particular political party, or should they stay above the fray of partisan politics? The question may appear ridiculous to Americans, whose writers routinely identify themselves as Democrat, Republican, Progressive, or what have you. However, the question is not a non-controversial one in Singapore. The People's Action Party (PAP), which has led the country since independence in 1965 and which has just won another election last Friday with more than two-third majority of seats in Parliament, has so dominated the country's institutions, economy, and culture that the line between party and state is blurred, if not erased. For many Singaporeans, Singapore is the PAP and vice versa. To be pro-PAP is to be pro-Singapore. To be against the PAP is to be partisan. In such a situation, writers who are pro-PAP can hide the fact of their partisanship by claiming to work for the whole, a...

I have 3 poems in the beautifully designed this/that/lit , thanks to Abayomi Animashaun. It was such a surprise to me to find a fellow Singaporean in the NYC private school where I teach. Phillip Cheah has been such a blessing to me, and others, through his friendship and his music, and I really wanted to write about his journey from the US to Singapore and back to the US. W.'s story is also extraordinary. Who would have thought that, raised to be so pragmatic as we were, that a Singaporean would marry in February, graduate in May, and adopt two boys in June. Well, W. explained that his Singaporean upbringing actually trained him for it, although the upbringing did not prepare him for the pains of early fatherhood. Finally, the poem I wrote for Zizi Azah's graduation from her MFA program is also here. The news that Broadway will be closed until the end of the year is devastating, but we writers and artists must remain strong and be in solidarity. Enjoy the poems !