Brown Is Redacted: Reflecting on Race in Singapore
Edited by Kristian-Marc James Paul, Mysara Aljaru and Myle Yan Tay
Ethos Books: 2022
.
In Mysara Aljaru and Kristian-Marc James Paul’s lecture-performance Brown Is Haram, two Singaporean minorities are questioned by a pair of Chinese Singaporean policemen who speak to each other in Mandarin. The policemen know they cannot be understood. While English is the island’s official lingua franca, Singaporeans are taught a different ‘mother tongue’ based on their ethnic parentage.
“Normally I can just tune out, like it becomes background noise. But this specific night, I remember, I couldn’t stop hearing it. I couldn’t think because it was everywhere. In my ears, in my head.”
More from Mekong Review
-
In Ajoomma, a Singaporean-South Korean co-production directed by He Shuming, an auntie travels to South Korea to visit the shooting locations of her favourite K-dramas… but gets far more than she’d bargained for.
-
Eighteen Singaporean poets write with a refreshingly mawkish-free assurance about crises of identity, neo-colonialism, the place of LGBTQ people in society and mummy-daddy issues in New Singapore Poetries, edited by Marylyn Tan and Jee Leong Koh.
-
The taste of home