catskull
Myle Yan Tay
Ethos Books: 2023
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In the fifth section of the novel catskull—about a junior college student donning a mask to fight crime—the author Myle Yan Tay writes about the main character, Ram, witnessing a public caning in his secondary school’s assembly hall. Set in Singapore, catskull is described as a “neo-noir thriller meets coming-of-age mystery” that explores the violence of the city and the many forms it takes: physical, racial, institutional.
Yan and I are good friends, so I know that this public caning scene was pulled directly from Yan’s memory of seeing a schoolmate being caned when he was sixteen. We have talked about this, and corporal punishment in schools more broadly, many times. Often, it’s been a topic that we discuss in jest, albeit with an undercurrent of shock: Isn’t it wild that we saw that?
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