Mekong Review

Tag: Singapore

What is Asia?

Isaac Neo

Is the twenty-first century an Asian one? According to former Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan, this is entirely the wrong question to be asking.

Keeping secrets

Michael D. Barr

The publication of The Albatross File: Inside Separation is very welcome for those with an interest in the Singapore story—though less for the hitherto secret documents it reproduces and more for the hitherto secret oral histories.

Haircuts

Varsha Sivaram

In Singapore, queerness is considered an aberration—it jams up the works, causes panic and confusion. Numerous accounts of in-person discrimination support this, especially when it comes to hair.

New springs

Kirsten Han

We don’t know how history will remember or talk about the Milk Tea Alliance. But it isn’t the only recent manifestation of transnational solidarity with the youth at its core.

Pragmatic idealism

Isaac Neo

An idealistic and highly personal approach to foreign policy is what sets Tommy Koh apart from many of his fellow luminaries in Singapore’s diplomatic sphere.

Writing nearby, gathering hope

Lenette Lua

How does one love a world that is increasingly fractured? A reflection on curating at Objectifs and participating in the artistic projects by Chu Hao Pei and Arie Syarifuddin in Singapore.

Resurrection

Tse Hao Guang

Waves Rising beautifully commemorates Ho Poh Fun’s life’s work, perhaps feeling like it needed to smoothen out some things bubbling just under the surface.

Singapore’s utopia of rules

Naima Morelli

David Graeber’s notion of “total bureaucratisation” isn’t just a fitting analytical tool for global contemporary life; it also mirrors, with uncanny accuracy, the paradoxes of Singapore’s cultural policy.

Political theatre

Calum Stuart

Singaporean actor Lim Kay Siu on the differences between acting in Hollywood and in Singapore, the power of theatre to raise public awareness of important issues, and getting political on live streams while playing a ukulele.

Undiplomatically speaking

Isaac Neo

While the bulk of the book focuses on diplomacy, Living the Asian Century can also be read as an introduction to the governance style of Singapore’s first generation of leaders as seen through Mahbubani’s eyes.

The forgotten lion

Liew Kai Khiun

Despite having held a number of important portfolios as a minister in the city-state’s early years, S. Rajaratnam’s legacy remains largely obscured in Singapore’s public imagination.

We are gonna make it

Ruby Thiagarajan

Instead of asking what is or how to be one’s authentic self under capitalism, Peripathetic is curious about whether capitalism leaves us with any room for authenticity at all.

Survival and unconventional success

Ariel Athwal-Yap

The lesson in Ganapathy’s book is salient and applicable to societies beyond Singapore: working class ethnic minorities disenfranchised by dominant societal structures often find themselves enmeshed with criminal justice institutions.

Grey, all grey

Haresh Sharma

Like many in Singapore, artists exist on a strange monochromatic spectrum—the lighter side provides access to opportunities and awards, the darker potentially leading to loss of employment. How should one navigate this space?

A bookworm’s haunt

Nicholas Yong

A focus on Singaporean authors, coupled with the fact that bookstores in the city have found it increasingly difficult to survive, makes Book Bar feel like an anomaly.

Barnard’s bestiary

Peter A. Coclanis

That animals and plants have been inserted, in increasingly powerful ways, in historical narratives represents a powerful challenge to human-centred accounts that have long been dominant.

Jade, Pine, Orchid, Kidney

Robert Wood

Eileen Chong’s poetry defies national categories, making its way into cracks and crevices like an orchid in cement, grown beautiful and a little wild.

“I is another”

Sasha Han

In his films, Singaporean director Daniel Hui seeks out peripheral figures, tending to them with the kind of attention usually reserved for prominent historical figures.

Living otherwise

Kirsten Han

The works featured in Joanne Leow’s monograph, Counter-Cartographies: Reading Singapore Otherwise, are examples of (mostly) Singaporeans who refuse to conform to top-down formulations of how to live on this island.

A love letter to bak chor mee

Nicholas Yong

Amid Southeast Asia’s array of noodle dishes, bak chor mee doesn’t have the exalted status of pho or pad thai. Nevertheless, it’s a beloved staple dish consumed by Singaporeans, and even became a political statement once.

Jangan buang current

Carolyn Oei

bani haykal’s work embodies durational labour, culminating in serial ruminations on topics that keep him awake at night—capitalism, environmental protection, widening inequality divides.

Polish Joe

Kam Raslan

In the two novellas, journeys depart from or hope to return to “an eastern port” (Singapore) but instead they both disappear into the obscurities of the seas.

This is not the Galapagos

Robert Wood

Like a magnificent tortoise, my aunt, the long-time Singaporean activist Constance Singam, ambles towards us to meet my children for the first time.

Just transitions

Kadal Jesuthasan

Climate activists are still stumped by the question of how to ensure that public power results in real, meaningful change. At the same time, the climate movement is setting its sights further than ever.

Art as catalogue

Jonathan Victor Baldoza

What unfolds in Pulp III: An Intimate Inventory of the Banished Book is Shubigi Rao’s documentation of her encounters with texts in varying formats that, at some point in the past, confronted ‘banishment’.