book birthday

The Singapore I Recognise: Essays on home, community and hope was officially launched a year ago today.

It’s simultaneously ridiculous that (1) it’s already been a year, and (2) it’s only been a year.

I first started thinking about writing a book sometime around 2014. I went through a number of ideas and had a few false starts. I could never really take time off work to just write—not that work wasn’t also writing—so it was a struggle to try to fit things around all my other obligations, hoping (often in vain) that my brain would get it together enough to get in the zone and allow me to actually make progress. It rarely did. It was 2021 before I finally managed to complete a first draft of something resembling a book.

Looking back, it worked out in the end because I couldn’t have written The Singapore I Recognise back in 2014. I needed all those years of starting and stopping, working and trying, to have been able to produce the book that The Singapore I Recognise is. I needed all that time to think and learn and, yes, suffer a bit. So now, when I look back on the process that culminated in that book launch on 1 September 2023, I just feel grateful for how it turned out. I learnt a lesson about how some things have to come in their own time.

The Singapore I Recognise was not part of the Singapore Writers Festival the year it was published. It did not get shortlisted for a Singapore Book Award, nor did it make the nomination list for the Singapore Literature Prize. I’d be lying if I said I’m not a little bit sad about these things. But I’m not that sad, because I also know that, ultimately, I don’t want or need to judge my book by these benchmarks.

First and foremost, this book means a lot to me because it allowed me to put so many thoughts and feelings into words and send them out into the world in a way that feels more enduring than a blog post or an article for a website that could get shut down or deleted at any time. No matter where I go from here, The Singapore I Recognise will exist as a record of my first decade (plus a bit more) in my country’s civil society space—a time that made me who I am today and brought me places I would never have imagined I’d go before. However my relationship with (or residence in) my country works out, I will always have this.

People have been incredibly kind and supportive and said such lovely things. It’s a relief that the things I wrote in the book has resonated with others. It’s been really rewarding to hear fellow Singaporeans say that they could relate or that they’d learnt something new about their country. The other evening, while we were at Book Bar, my husband picked up a copy from the stack, sat down in a corner and read bits of it again. That he thinks that I did well with this book actually means more than being in the Singapore Writers Festival or getting shortlisted for an award.

The Singapore I Recognise continues to surprise. I’d thought that it was only stocked in Singapore, and therefore impossible to get overseas without having to order it online, but I keep discovering it in unexpected places. When I landed in Taipei in May for a work meeting, a colleague who’d also flown in told me they’d found my book in a small bookstore on Dihua Street. Just last month, while in Jakarta, someone came up to me after my panel and mentioned the book. “Oh, I don’t think you’ll be able to find it here,” I said apologetically.

He grinned. “I already bought it from a bookstore in South Jakarta.” I was so surprised I forgot to ask him which bookstore before someone else approached to ask a question, but I’m grateful to whichever one it is!

The journey is not over yet—there’s still more The Singapore I Recognise-related stuff in the pipeline that I’m very excited about. I hope to be able to share more updates soon!

Since finishing The Singapore I Recognise I’ve also been thinking about myself more and more as a writer rather than “just” a journalist. After so many years of churning out shorter pieces with quicker turn-arounds, I’m thinking more about what I can do, how I can challenge and stretch myself and perhaps explore something more creative and expansive than the writing I’ve already been doing. I don’t know exactly what I mean by that myself, but it’s exciting to think about, although I’ve come back full circle to not having enough time away from work and activism to write for myself! 😅

~ vibes ~

A song on my playlist while I was writing this newsletter.