The Singapore I Recognise: Essays on home, community and hope

The Singapore I Recognise: Essays on home, community and hope PDF

Author: Kirsten Han

Publisher: Ethos Books

Published: 2023-09-01

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 9811860300

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Singapore is small, a complex country full of contradictions, inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies. Often held up as a model nation, we sometimes forget that Singapore is seen differently by different people. With a decade of activism and journalism experience, Kirsten Han reveals various aspects of her home country that don’t follow what many of us know as the conventional ‘Singapore Story’. The Singapore I Recognise is Kirsten’s reckoning with civil society’s experiences of Singapore, perspectives that are often unheard, or fall through the cracks. Through researched interviews and heartfelt reflections, Kirsten tells us how parts of Singapore are already moving towards communal care, solidarity, empowerment and hope. This is a resonant portrayal of home in the island city-state.

Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore

Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore PDF

Author: Esther Vincent

Publisher: Ethos Books

Published: 2022-08-05

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9811818479

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Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore contemplates and re-centres Singapore women in the overlapping discourses of family, home, ecology and nation. For the first time, this collection of ecofeminist essays focuses on the crafts, minds, bodies and subjectivities of a diverse group of women making kin with the human and non-human world as they navigate their lives. From ruminations on caregiving, to surreal interspecies encounters, to indigenous ways of knowing, these women writers chart a new path on the map of Singapore’s literary scene, writing urgently about gender, nature, climate change, reciprocity and other critical environmental issues. In a climate-changed world where vital connections are lost, Making Kin is an essential collection that blurs boundaries between the personal and the political. It is a revolutionary approach towards intersectional environmentalism.

The Orchid Folios

The Orchid Folios PDF

Author: Mok Zining

Publisher: Ethos Books

Published: 2022-08-12

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 9811471657

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“When you take an orchid out of its pot, you must first loosen the roots’ hold on the soil. Late last evening as I unravelled the braids of the shattered phalaenopsis, I saw how the ends were white and shrivelled from neglect. You have to do it gently—it’s like combing hair. I remember Mum’s fingers running through mine, and mine through hers, until the final months when all of it started to fall.” A pot shatters. An arrangement falls apart. A florist finds herself amidst the scattered leaves of history. At once a poetry collection and a documentary novella, The Orchid Folios reimagines the orchid as a living, breathing document of history: a history that enmeshes the personal, colonial, linguistic, and biotechnological with the Vanda Miss Joaquim, the symbol of Singapore’s postcolonial hybridity. While the Orchid has shaped the fantastical narratives that govern our multiracial City in a Garden, it continues to shape-shift and bloom on its own terms, challenging us to imagine a decolonised Singapore. This is the organism at the heart of The Orchid Folios—by turns stark and unruly, documenting and challenging the narratives that are the roots of our national consciousness.

We Are Not the Enemy: The Practice of Advocacy in Singapore

We Are Not the Enemy: The Practice of Advocacy in Singapore PDF

Author: Cherian George

Publisher: Ethos Books

Published: 2024-03-17

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 9811885419

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Advocates and activists in Singapore contribute to policy discussions and positive change through a combination of deft manoeuvres and patient politics. Yet civil society is often unacknowledged, their skill and labour instead frequently misunderstood, even earning them the label of “troublemakers” or “enemies of the state”. This collection of essays and interviews is a candid reflection on the intentions, beliefs and strategies behind the practice of advocacy across a spectrum of causes. The contributors come from varying backgrounds and include academics, artists, lawyers, journalists, non-profit and advocacy organisations, student and community organisers. They share practical insights into their aims and community-building work, and the tactics they employ to overcome obstacles, shedding light on how to navigate a city-state with shifting socio-political fault lines and out-of-bound markers. With an introduction, “It is Time to Trim the Banyan Tree”, by Constance Singam, and a conclusion, “Their Struggle is Ours to Continue”, by Suraendher Kumarr.

They Told Us To Move: Dakota—Cassia

They Told Us To Move: Dakota—Cassia PDF

Author: Kok Hoe Ng

Publisher: Ethos Books

Published: 2024-08-21

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 981940469X

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What happens when an entire community is moved? Dakota Crescent was one of Singapore's oldest public housing estates and a rental flat neighbourhood for low-income households. In 2016, its residents—many of whom are elderly—were relocated to Cassia Crescent to make way for redevelopment. To help them resettle, a group of volunteers came together and formed the Cassia Resettlement Team. They Told Us to Move tells the story of the relocation through interviews with the residents from the Dakota community and reflections by the volunteers. Accompanying these are essays by various academics on urban planning; gender and family; ageing, poverty, and social services; civil society and citizenship; and architectural heritage and place-making. Through this three-part conversation, the book explores human stories of devotion, expectation, and remembrance. It asks what we can achieve through voluntary action and how we can balance self-reliance and public services. This book is for people who want to understand the kind of society we are, and question what kind of society we want to be.

Singa-Pura-Pura

Singa-Pura-Pura PDF

Author: Nazry Bahrawi

Publisher: Ethos Books

Published: 2022-08-10

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9811815003

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From a future of electronic doas and AI psychotherapists, sense-activated communion with forests and a portal to realms undersea, to a reimagined origin and afterlife—editor and translator Nazry Bahrawi brings together an exciting selection of never-before translated and new Malay spec-fic stories by established and emerging writers from Singapore. Especially in an anglophone-dominated genre, very little of Malay speculative fiction from Singapore is known to readers here and beyond. Yet contemporary Bahasa literature here is steeped in spec-fic writing that can account as a literary movement (aliran)—and unmistakably draws from the minority Malay experience in a city obsessed with progress.

The Naysayer’s Book Club: 26 Singaporeans You Need to Know

The Naysayer’s Book Club: 26 Singaporeans You Need to Know PDF

Author: Simon Vincent

Publisher: Epigram Books

Published: 2019-02-15

Total Pages: 534

ISBN-13: 9814785857

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In 26 conversations with 26 naysayers, this book is aimed at reflecting the spectrum of naysaying in Singapore's civil society. Each person is interviewed against the backdrop of his or her bookcase, putting front and centre a life of ideas and imagination. This is a book club for curious minds. "We need more naysayers... We need to create new formulas, which you can't until you attack and challenge every sacred cow." — Kishore Mahbubani, former dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Featured: Tan Tarn How Constance Singam Tay Kheng Soon Yeoh Lam Keong Cherian George Claire Leow Remy Choo Zheng Xi Teo Soh Lung Thirunalan Sasitharan Jennifer Teo Dan Wong Chua Beng Huat Kirsten Han Filzah Sumartono Alex Au Martyn See June Chua William SW Lim M. Ravi Loo Zihan Vanessa Ho Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib Seelan Palay Sonny Liew Margaret Thomas Thum Ping Tjin

Heartland

Heartland PDF

Author: Daren Shiau

Publisher: Ethos Books

Published: 2022-08-11

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9811811458

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Hailed as “the definitive Singaporean novel”, this new edition of Heartland is accompanied by a new preface by author Daren Shiau and a publisher’s foreword that contextualises the novel’s imprint on the Singapore literary landscape since its first publication in 1999. An iconic work, Heartland explores the paradox of rootedness and rootlessness in fast-changing Singapore. Set in the early 1990s, the novel follows the years of Wing Seng as he leaves school and is conscripted into full-time National Service. As Wing tries to reconcile his past with his future amid transitions through different phases of life, he finds meaning in his intense attachment to his surrounding landscape. Yet, as relationships and the years slip by, Wing is forced to question his own certainties and the wisdom of the people he values. Set in Singapore’s heartland at the turn of the century, Heartland’s capturing of the texture of everyday life provides the backdrop essential to the bildungsroman’s exploration of identity, belonging and connection in an increasingly urbanised Singapore.

Critical Issues in Asset Building in Singapore's Development

Critical Issues in Asset Building in Singapore's Development PDF

Author: Singh Bilveer

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2018-06-18

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9813239778

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Singapore's progress as an independent nation and the uplifting of its people's livelihood have been made possible by stable social and political conditions. A more important factor in driving these positive changes lies with people-centric leadership. One can contrast the case of Singapore with societies led by self-serving leaders whose lack of honesty and integrity brings about immense social and economic hardships to various communities. When people suffer under undesirable circumstances, they often migrate to seek better future for themselves and their families. This book reveals how Singapore's governance grounded on the principle of asset building facilitates the country's growth and development. Policies being discussed in this volume include multi-culturalism, accessible housing, social mobility for low-income families, water resource management, and national conscription. Highly relevant for students, policy makers and the general public interested in socio-political and economic development issues, this unique piece of work not only gives readers a documentary account of what has been undertaken to empower and assist citizens in the last 50 years or so, but also prompts them to reflect on Singapore's future trajectory.