Singapore Shelf: From musings on Dakota childhood to poetry about mum’s illness
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SINGAPORE – In this week’s Singapore Shelf, The Straits Times surveys the latest local fiction, non-fiction and poetry titles. Buy the books at Amazon
Book review: Taste the sea in Lala-land: Singapore’s Seafood Heritage
Lala-land: Singapore’s Seafood Heritage, edited by Anthony D. Medrano, weaves together myriad voices for an insightful read on Singapore's food.
PHOTO: EPIGRAM BOOKSHOP, YALE-NUS COLLEGE
Singaporeans like to brag that they know their food and, yet, how many have tried the elusive Siglap laksa – precursor to the iconic Katong variant – or stir-fried ikan buntal, or pufferfish?
Though this delectable but deadly fish has become synonymous with Japanese fine dining, it can be found right here, swimming along the shores of Singapore. And one community, the Orang Laut, has caught and cooked it successfully for centuries.
Such hidden stories wash up on the pages of Lala-land: Singapore’s Seafood Heritage, a collection of essays edited by Anthony D. Medrano, the NUS Presidential Young Professor of Environmental Studies at Yale-NUS College.
Part ecological textbook, part historical survey and part recipe book, it weaves together myriad voices, from undergraduates to seasoned writers. Their meticulously researched essays aim to chart the journey from ocean to table, and prove an insightful read for anyone whose interest in seafood goes beyond just its taste.
Future of HDB flats: A delicate balancing act, says sociologist Chua Beng Huat
Sociologist Chua Beng Huat has written Public Subsidy/Private Accumulation: The Political Economy Of Singapore’s Public Housing.
PHOTOS: NUS PRESS
Housing may be one of the most clamorous issues in Singapore, but despite recurring calls for the Government to curb runaway prices for young couples buying their first flat, it has arguably not intervened aggressively enough.
This is because it cannot, without affecting the nest eggs of the vast majority of older home owners, according to sociologist Chua Beng Huat’s new book. He argues that the contradiction of Housing Board (HDB) flats as both public good and financial asset lies at the heart of an increasingly intricate balancing act for the Government, which cannot afford to let the value of flats plummet after so much of its citizens’ savings have been sunk into their home purchase.
Help for new entrants is limited mostly to “temporary and mild” cooling measures and perpetual cash grants, “a strategy with no potential endpoint”, he writes in Public Subsidy/Private Accumulation: The Political Economy Of Singapore’s Public Housing, published in 2024.
Former ballerina Cecilia Hon self-publishes two books on her career
Singaporean ballet dancer, choreographer and teacher Cecilia Hon self-published two books about ballet career.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF CECILIA HON, ST GAVIN FOO
Retired dancer Cecilia Hon was prompted to document her dance legacy when two other cultural pioneers died with little commemoration in Singapore’s media.
The 83-year-old says: “There was so little news about Vernon Martinus’ passing back in September 2022. The same thing happened when Goh Soo Nee passed away in 2021. There was nothing in the newspaper. The same could happen to any one of us, so I wrote Balletmaker to preserve my legacy.”
Martinus, who died aged 90 in the United Kingdom, and Goh, who died aged 86 in Canada, were co-founders of the Singapore Ballet Academy (SBA) in 1958.
Hon thus self-published two books in the past year. Styled like a coffee-table book, Pas De Deux (2023) contains pictures of all her duet performances with various dance partners throughout the years. It is titled after the ballet terminology, which means “dance for two”.
Dakota childhood filled with ghosts, games and gods is fodder for writer Wong Koi Tet
Chinese-language writer Wong Koi Tet says he has never left Dakota and has written about his 1970s and 1980s Singaporean childhood in an expanded version of his book Dakota.
PHOTOS: CITY BOOK ROOM, DESMOND WEE
Writer Wong Koi Tet is a true-blue Dakota boy. Born in the year that Old Airport Road Food Centre opened, the former Dakota Crescent resident now lives with his mother in Cassia Crescent – a stone’s throw from his demolished childhood home.
His cobbler grandfather used to ply his trade on the second floor of the food centre. For the first 27 years of his life, Wong heard ghost stories by Dakota’s murky longkau (Hokkien for drain), witnessed his neighbour get possessed by the deity Nezha and caught monitor lizards for an elderly neighbour’s lunch. It was in Dakota that the 51-year-old felt the first pangs of lust and love.
The red-bricked flat is now gone. In its place is a towering glass condominium complex.
But Wong has kept the memory of his childhood alive in a collection of personal coming-of-age essays – Dakota – that was first published in Chinese in 2018 and won the Singapore Literature Prize for creative non-fiction. Newly translated by the rising Singaporean translator Shanna Tan
Book review: Tricia Tan’s Patient History a promising poetry debut on illness
Patient History is the debut poetry collection of the young doctor-poet Tricia Tan.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF ETHOS BOOKS
Gachapon machines, Pixar films and South Korean K-pop band BTS abound in the debut poetry collection of young doctor-poet Tricia Tan. It is an unusually upbeat and quirky aesthetic choice for a book that deals with her mother’s cancer diagnosis.
Abandoning the usual sombreness and gravity of the genre, Tan’s promising work turns to whimsy and sparkle to reckon with the fear of death, a thwarted sense of time conditioned by illness, and her double identity as both doctor and daughter.
There are some serious revelations here – even though they appear sugar-coated at first glance.
Tan’s lingo in this book is thoroughly digital and steeped in pop culture. Before the speaker’s mother goes under the knife, the speaker asks her mother how it felt to experience “this life in unbulleted / PowerPoint and unloaded image”.
The Straits Times’ Weekly Bestsellers July 13
PHOTOS: BLOOMSBURY, LANDMARK BOOKS, SIMON & SCHUSTER
BMT Sketchbook by Asher Ong tops the non-fiction bestsellers list.
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