Charmaine Leung

Picked this up after watching the author speak during a session at the Ethos Festive Sale and also due to the recommendation of a friend. The story is riveting the way personal stories can be and ultimately valuable for the purposes of understanding what would otherwise be entirely forgotten against the tide of development here in Singapore. It's not every day that you can read the story of a girl who grew up in a brothel, and can articulate and comprehend the emotional difficulties of her and those around her with such emotional intelligence. This is tagged as a "personal story" but of course it is also one that speaks a lot about the changing social landscape of the times the women in her family lived through, and the gender politics is something that stood out very strongly too.

The first half of the book was more "general", or perhaps less personal in the sense that she spoke more about her mother, and the history of Keong Saik Road. It was heartbreaking to read of how her mother was sold as a child because she was regarded by her father not to be as worthy or useful of being since she is female, and her subsequent adoption by Yu Lin and her mistreatment by Yu Fu, and I thought that it was great that the author supplemented these parts with some historical facts about the Ma Je, Pei Pa Zai, and the background of migrant women from China who came here to work, and the circumstances that usually propelled them to find work so far from home and how they are able to survive and adapt.

I think the writing is quite clear and simple to read, and I think the dialogue is a bit cheesy at times, or a bit unsubtle and direct. I guess I mention this because I recognise that the emotional turmoil the author went through is anything but simple and direct. There was some struggle I sensed in the writing to communicate the sheer density and weight of the loneliness she felt as a child, and then growing up, along with the loneliness of the other women in her family. I think these required a kind of finer language that the writing did not have, but I sympathise very much with what she has managed to say. I read a review that said it was "draggy" to read through this & find that a little insensitive, but I guess this dragginess is from this struggle to communicate how big this pain & loneliness must have been.

Towards the end it became sort of like a wrap up of how the district looks like now, which is good for contrast after reading through the whole book. Not sure I was quite into the whole Lee Kuan Yew part. Overall I would recommend this read for the story itself. I think it's definitely one worth telling and I am grateful that the author took the time to share this story with an audience, and that I could read it.… (lisätietoja)