Judith Huang's Blog: Jud: The Blog, page 4

Flights of Foundry reading next weekend May 16-17!

I am SO excited to be part of Flights of Foundry, Dream Foundry’s SFF convention 2020! The schedule just went live and it looks absolutely epic, with Hugo/Nebula winners across the slate including people I greatly admire like Ken Liu and Becky Chambers in the lineup. I’ll be reading from Sofia and the Utopia Machine, offering a creative workshop where you work on an original piece based on a poem/passage from a language you don’t understand (“Translating Blind”) and participating in a panel on Translation not occurring in a vacuum, aside from just hanging out with some awesome people. What better way to spend quarantine than in an entirel virtual SFF convention? Do sign up and  register now, it’s free (with suggested donations – highly recommended since it’s a lot of effort/$ to organize) and hope to see you there! Here are a list of my sessions, 

Saturday, May 16: (times listed here are for GMT +8)

2PM : One Doesn’t Simply Translate in a Vacuum Panel

Sunday, May 17:

11 AM: Reading (from Sofia and the Utopia Machine and other works)

4 PM: Translating Blind Workshop(creating an original work with a poem/passage from a language you don’t understand)

Do check out the times according to your timezone because it’s being organized in CST in the USA but the website niftily tells you what time it is in yours!

Guestbook Podcast features Sofia and the Utopia Machine!

Longtime friend and imaginary NPR interviewee/interviewer Okechukwu Iweala has just given me a shoutout at the Washington DC-based podcast The Guestbook Podcast.

Best new year’s present ever. Thanks Oke!

 

Twenty Poems to Round Out the Year

Twenty Poems to Round Out the Year

by Judith Huang

The white wings beyond the cracks

for Nii Addo

The white wings beyond the cracks

In the world’s pearl

Like a shell that cups

The bloodrush of the ear

Is making us into the beating

Heart outside air

And you are here

A person who has only ever

Brought me joy

And the thunder claps

At the end of the book

To show us what this is:

Only one spinning top

Which the God we love

Has balanced on one finger

Lend me your eyes

At the snap

And I’ll lend me your ears

 

Far Eden

Far Eden

who are you

and why

should I believe in you?

Nobody knows

where you are

and why I had to run

the course of your rivers

away from the sphere

where I lived before

I lived

I am dead already

from a lack of love

and something inside me

is trying very hard to kill me

almost all the time.

God knows I’ve tried

to believe in you

but only the ground cries out

red with blood

and tells me there is no point

hiding from

the unfamiliar

 

Nearly True

God of Love, you are

sometimes gladness, sometimes pain

sometimes hard, and sometimes easy

as a jetty.

If you wound, it is with the razor-edge precision

of a skilled physician

and when you soothe

you’re like the mother of a dove –

What kind of love roams like a spirit

without thirst?

There are many rooms

inside the earth

and as many sides

as many faces

to you God

as there are revolutions

of the galaxy round the earth.

We know the vision

of each prayer must exist

in actual flesh

in an actual

universe.

 

Hope beyond hope

There is peace

past the point of endurance

How many things can we know

unless we test our strength?

I suppose the only point to this

is the proof that I have passed the test

The sun rises again

on the quick and the dead

and God tells me to be beautiful

for him, not because anybody’s watching

Quickly things are changing

as they always have,

but this time I am noticing

and the ache of granting

is that the heart’s desire

has already been transmuted

into an altar

and therefore can neither be

rescinded nor removed.

 

Stonefish

Sometimes you need something

and God gives you something else

and you just need to trust

the stone is not a stone

but really some kind of fish in disguise

that needs to be seen to be believed.

 

God Knows

What is orgasm but a spasm

of recognition

that something aflame

is being understood?

If prayer is simply another

form of thought

then something begins

when the end of words has stopped

I reel off the line walking and running and flying

without realizing that life is draining out the pain

We have to insist that the other world is here

and behave as though nothing can withstand its gain

Because it occurred before

any of us exist

and after we go

will continue to occur

 

Wilderness whisper

These things I write

are extracted from

the teeth of death,

or the jaws of some great maw:

We walk around wearing other people’s faces

and nothing is quite bright enough

to cover the face of something

quite so bare

The way some white man insists

on putting gowns

on people he calls savages

because he fears

the savage in himself

Or extracts blood-tithes

to build a church

on what was already

sacred ground

What piteous rages

are these tiny storms

that we rage on paper stages

While brother kills brother

each time he finds

that he can reinvent murder?

Stones cry out

because God’s people won’t

and God’s rage

is incendiary

Nobody wants to hear it

so I tunnel down

and dig a hole in the ground

to whisper

into the centre of the earth

knowing that it will eventually reach

King Midas’ ear

through the rushes and winds

when the time is ripe

and I have already disappeared

Peace is a Sword

(At Jericho’s Jaws)

To the ambassadors of the world we shout

PEACE

And to the armies of the world we shout

PEACE

And to the rulers of the world we shout

PEACE

and though the fortress is blackened matter

the empty atoms of the walls will shudder

for Kairos has an arc much greater

than the fools who stop their ears and resist

I see

A ring of great light surrounds us

rushes and engulfs and inflames us

and the pearl of the Kingdom a sphere

obliterating the pain and fear that trick us

into endless war

and so

I shout

PEACE

for at the word

all walls fall

 

If we only see

Why are we fighting battles

with each other

when we could band together

against the prince of the air?

Put down your arms

for seven seconds

and look into my eyes

without blinking

I guarantee

what any of us could see

we wouldn’t be able

to bear

Whatever invisible chains

Angels must touch

to dissolve

Declaim them on the rooftops

Howl them off

This generation imprisons its prophets

in madhouses

and makes madmen kings

but they cannot kill us

Lay down your arms

and let’s really see each other

lest we draw the bright swords

only to find a mirror

 

They can say this

They can say this:

That she sees things

that are not there

and therefore she is mad

but perhaps the things

that cannot be seen

are actually there?

There are more things

in heaven and earth, Horatio

than are dreamed of

in your philosophy

and the madman declaiming

and proclaiming

the secret language of water

has merely an ear

that is better tuned to the song

that we should have accepted as heard

all along

 

Blowing through

I walk the earth

and see shades

pale imitations of men

bent over with the strain

and am convinced

that either I am the only

soul on earth

and these are ghosts

or that I am the last ghost

in the land of the living

Without reason,

I am skimming to

The last page of the book

Lord let me draw the line

Return me to life

I am divine

 

Sell everything, Buy the field

Somebody is recovering

Something buried in the ground

A treasure or a seed

A pearl is both

People are intent on never telling the truth

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there

I could use bigger words

But they are not needed

Something is known by the fineness

Of a new-born infant’s hair

Or the way that you watch

A master-craftsman

Burrow with finesse

We are on the way down the road

To fire

But we have been so for thousands of years

In a sense it doesn’t matter

In the hands of God

The weight of the world

Levitates like a feather

 

Night Songs and Questioners

Sometimes you pull a tongue out

to feign it, to look closely

to diagnose which needle

is needed in which socket

I have been lying here in a basket

for too long, drifting

on the bitumen down the Nile

and have not been found

by a princess yet

These seeds course down rivers

In my body following the tides

Singing tiny inaudible songs of hope

And wondering if they will greet

A familiar stranger

My eyes become like hawks’

Racing past mountains

And peering through valleys

Scanning the earth hungrily

Aware of a trap I could pull

On myself, on the cusp

Between mourning and danger

 

Apprenticeship

The writer sat at the table and wondered

if it was possible to feel her way

past the dark

and get a bit more colour

into a person

How anyone can take

and send people through

the wringer

people you’ve made

completely from scratch

or glimpses and patches

of people you know

simply for satisfaction

it seems terrible

even sadistic

but apparently it is part of the profession

of apprentice gods.

Is it worth it?

I don’t know,

I’m not privy to the ledger

People have said

that there must be a way

it balances

That one day we’ll be standing

in stasis

and therefore bliss

 

Salt

The ocean stings you as it heals you

Jellyfish, I thought at first

Then I realized, salt.

Whose fault is it that I had forgot?

The bream are still figuring out

the shark net

It’s a place to rest and exchange

two lines with a man who sounds

South African

But also another advance

of man at the expense

of everyone else

Probably I have no great reason to worry

Everyone round here is slightly wet as well.

 

Grace rang a dead person on the phone

Even the dead must sometimes be spoken of by the living,

I said to Grace when she rang, when she mentioned

she had spoken of me to someone she met in the wild.

He might as well be dead, he’s in Australia

she said of her boss at the genetics lab who had disappeared

after leaving them without funding

Why not? I said

Every time I die I find myself here

I suppose that there are worse purgatories

than Australia

 

Lean On

After I walked on

the words rose to meet me

on the swell of the page

somebody said

that I was immortal

and I lie as though dead

ancient voices called and called

through the stirring wastes

as flesh burned off me

but still my bones walked

somebody seized

the pump of my heart

and oozed me back

onto the shore

the sun and the moon

stood equidistant from me

it was as hard to grow back

as it was to lean

at the angle of yearning

into the wind

 

Speak, Witness

There are terrible times when I sit in a chair

There are terrible times when I stand in the air

There are terrible times when I walk all around

There are terrible times when I can’t hear a sound

There are terrible times when I see things

There are terrible things when I hear things

There are terrible times when I stare

There are terrible times when there’s nothing there

There are terrible times when there’s blood on my tongue

There are terrible times when I am all alone

There are terrible times when

There are terrible times when what I bite back

There are terrible times when I continue to say

There are terrible times when lasting a night and a day

There are terrible times when I have no home

There are terrible times that I must write out of

There are terrible times I cannot write off

There are terrible times that I must in spite of

There are terrible times I cannot write of

 

The Bronze Serpent

Look at this thing

the cause of and solution

to your ills

and tell me its coils are not

your coils

and tell me its stake

is not your stake

and tell me its staff

is not your staff

something is coiling up

inside you, ready to snap

at my heel

but the bite will tame it

it will fall off

as though determined

to be healed

 

Why fish are not blind

What is this face without eyes

but whose every surface is eyes?

I plunge into and against oceans

not because I am not afraid

but because it is necessary

to brave them

The bream know

you are in their dream.

They may defend it.

In the shallows

snook hover over

the sandlands

as ghosts

If you do not peer

into the kingdoms

under the waves

there is no way

you can extract the pearl

Everywhere the colour has come out

of these

inimitable

sacred

missing

floors

I’m taking orders for Sofia’s 2nd Edition!

Dear readers,

Thanks so much for your support! Sofia and the Utopia Machine sold out its first print run in record time in six months and is going into its second printing with a handsome second edition, and we’ll be taking orders for it. Here is the google form for orders for signed and personalized books from me, please feel free to fill it in and I will take your order!

Here is the beautiful new cover:

I’m really happy that Milton the Tiger is taking center stage on this one. Hopefully you will too.

What do you think of the new cover?

Harvardwood Interview

Hey guys! I got interviewed by Harvardwood! Looks like I’ll get to LALALAND sometime

The Great Pleasure

26
07
2010

“Learning is perhaps the only pleasure that might replace
increasing consumption as our chosen mode of enriching experience.
Someday, the joy of recognizing a pattern in a leaf or the geological
strata in a cliff face might replace the satisfactions of new carpeting
or more horsepower in an engine, and the chance to learn in the
workplace might seem more valuable than increased purchasing power or a
move up the organizational chart. Increasing knowledge of the ethology
of wolves might someday replace the power savored in destroying them.”

– Mary Catherine Bateson, quoted in Courage and Calling by Gordon T. Smith.

image from Wikipedia

I love learning, was filled with an insatiable curiosity from the
moment (according to my mum) I opened my eyes. In my home country,
people would never ask me a question like, “Why did you choose to go to
Harvard?” – our attitude in Singapore is that you don’t choose Harvard –
Harvard chooses you. If you get into Harvard, you’d better jolly well
go. Not that I didn’t fret over it though – I was a little insecure and
intimidated, wasn’t sure whether I’d thrive in a cutthroat environment,
etc, etc, but really those were fears that were quickly overruled, and
very soon the little envelope was mailed back and I started to prepare
myself for the adventure that would be attending the Big H. Sure, I do
still kind of suffer from the occasional useless counterfactual, but
five years later, I have a fistful of regrets but a large sloshing
bucket of gratitude.

I guess I’m revisiting my decision because the question resurfaced
again this past month, when I was traveling in the Midwest, while
staying with some family friends in Indiana.

When I first got to Harvard, I realized immediately it wasn’t the
place I had thought it would be – in both good and bad ways. But because
it was freshman year, I guess, and because I was suffering from a good
dose of culture shock, at first it seemed primarily bad. To me the name
of Harvard always called to mind the Ideal University – that is, the
best university in this world and age, and therefore desirable in and of
itself. It didn’t matter what its underlying principles were; or even
who its faculty were. The very fact that it was the best meant it was
some kind of platonic University, where all truth and knowledge of the
ancients and the accumulated wisdom of the world today resided.

So, I used to be the girl with the 10 year plan. I was insatiably
ambitious. When I was 7 or 8, I asked my elders and teachers what the
best university in the world was (at the time, they answered “Oxford or
Cambridge”), and decided then and there that I would work my ass off to
get there. I don’t think I was primarily motivated by arrogance; when I
was 7 I had barely any notion of ranking. In fact I was bizarrely
innocent of the fact that my good grades meant that I was ranked highly
against my peers – I had not made the connection between doing well and
“winning” in some sort of race against everyone else. I guess my parents
had taught me well not to compare myself with others. Of course, the
moment the school rankings were published at the bottom of our report
cards my innocence was completely and ruthlessly shredded to bits.  But
my point is, I didn’t aspire to go to the best university because I
thought I was the best – I aspired to go to the best university because it was the best.

Of course, I was disappointed. You see, I had always imagined
universities to be beautiful floating islands with ivory towers and
turrets in the clouds, where knowledge was pure abstraction, freed from
the dross of the quotidian. I thought of professors as rootless sages,
repositories of knowledge, without interfering backgrounds or personal
tics that may bias them towards one field or opinion rather than the
other. I don’t know where I got that idea – perhaps I thought my small
country was provincial, and that in the big countries history was taught
differently, or that with a full breadth of literature (or at least the
Western canon) at my feet, I would have a better grasp of human nature
than from 6 literature texts for the ‘A’ levels. I was actually stunned
when I realized that in the department I was interested in, the best
professors were Americanists, that they all approached their fields from
personal interests (I was bewildered why black professors were teaching
African American studies rather than being part of the history or
literature departments) rather than from some Archimedean fulcrum from
which they could leverage the world. I didn’t understand why Asian
American writing had to be taught by Asians, why the Shakespeare
professors were white, or why I had an American Literature requirement
to fulfill. I was pretty devastated, actually.

Until I realized that there was no such university as the one I had been pursuing – that there is
no objective standpoint to all knowledge, at least not one which any
one human being can teach. And that there IS no objective standpoint
that one can arrive at, either, no matter how good a student. And that
the question, “Why did you choose Harvard?” is a totally valid one. I
chose Harvard because I wanted to learn, and to learn from the best. I
chose English because it was my comparative advantage, and also my
passion. I chose to stick it out because too many people had invested in
me, from the scholarship boards to my parents to my schools to my peers
to my country, for me to just quit when the going got tough. I wasn’t
just representing myself here – there was all this honor at stake.

There were people in my church who warned me against going to
university to study literature because I would “lose my faith”. I was so
annoyed I didn’t even answer them, I just smiled and nodded. But in my
heart the remark stung, and I vowed to myself, if literature makes me
lose my faith, then it wasn’t a faith worth having. Because, ironically,
literature has, on more than one occasion, saved my faith. And because
being put through the gigantic ego-wringer that is Harvard has been more
purging, more cleansing of my soul than any other institution could
possibly have been. The most important thing I learned in Harvard, in
fact, was that I could hold a deep-seated, decades-old belief with all
the intense fury I could muster, and still be wrong. I still remember,
when I was faced with fulfilling my Science B (biology/chemistry)
requirement, tiptoeing rather shamefacedly into the “Human Evolution”
class for the introductory lecture, wondering if my church auntie was
right. She wasn’t. I didn’t end up taking that class because I was too
chicken, but I ended up taking Steven Pinker’s Human Mind class, which
had a lecture on evolution. It was one of the most enlightening moments
of my young life. I felt like the scales were falling off my eyes.

All my life when I picked up the children’s encyclopedias that lie
around the house, and stared at the ethereal pictures of the planets in
them, I was struck by their beauty and wonder. And then I would look at
the dates scientists had labeled on them – however many billions of
years, and I would be repulsed by what I thought was a lie, constructed
by (what must have been) the infernal conspiracy of world scientists
which I had learned about in church, to deny God’s creation. (Yes, I was
surrounded by young earth creationist propaganda in my childhood). It
bewildered me how the noble white-coated scientists of my imagination,
whose science and technology had put a man on the moon, could
simultaneously concoct such lies to fool small children, when they daily
gazed through telescopes to see such heavenly beauty. It did not make
sense to me, and now I see why.

I used to camp with my friends on the offshore island of Pulau Ubin,
and, away from the light pollution of the mainland, we would gaze at the
stars. What we saw was probably a pale imitation of the skyscape that
our earliest ancestors gazed at – the skyscape that inspired myth,
mathematics, astronomy, exploration, philosophy –  but still, no matter
how diminished, there is still something awe-inspiring about seeing
light that has traveled so far, light that is so old. Those
massive balls of fire are lightyears away – I’d think to myself –
billions of billions of lightyears away….They are signals sent from the
dark of the deep past, beyond history, beyond mythology, into the retina
of the now, from stars that may have long burned out, but which retain,
for this split second, in my perception, their luminescent fury. And it
just would not latch into place with my idea of a God who is just and
constant and beautiful and, above all, True, to mislead his people each
and every night with paper-thin lies, lies that those stars were not in
fact more ancient than the earth, more ancient than human memory. It was
hypocrisy to call God true and then accuse him of purposely setting the
earth up to look old when it was in fact new. It seemed like a
nonsensical concept to me, and for the longest time it gnawed in the
corner of my brain, a thing I refused to think about, as I repeatedly
pushed it out of my mind.

But now that I’ve looked it full in the face, I see that it is not so
terrible – that in fact a God who used evolution to make us is an even
more logical, beautiful, consistent and terrifying God than the one the
pages of creationist magazines contained. I guess the moment of truth
came to me when I had finished Jerry A Coyne’s amazingly respectful,
mild-mannered “Why Evolution is True”, and I walked into the Northwest
Labs building for the first time and saw, hanging above me, a gigantic,
mysterious skeleton. It could have been a dinosaur, or some sea-monster
of Nessie proportions. But then I saw below its ribcage two tiny,
unconnected bones, precariously held in place by wire, that (I imagined)
must have floated in the midst of fatty flesh and blubber when this
creature still roamed the seas and I thought to myself, it must be a
whale. Because Coyne had explained in his book the mysterious case of
the whale – descendants of land mammals who returned to the water, thus
leaving vestigial, unconnected pelvis and hindlimb bones beneath its
spine. “Those bones serve no function at all, ” I thought. “It must be
the skeleton of a whale.”

Two weeks later, the curators of that space finally put up a plague for the skeleton, and sure enough, it was.

And in that moment, my heart leaped and something latched into place.

For the Splendor of Creation – Gustav Holst’s The Planets

adapted for Harvard Commencement

For the splendor of creation that draws us to inquire,

For the mysteries of knowledge to which our hearts aspire,

For the deep and subtle beauties which delight the eye and ear,

For the discipline of logic, the struggle to be clear,

For the unexplained remainder, the puzzling and the odd:

For the joy and pain of learning, we give you thanks, O God.

For the scholars past and present whose bounty we digest,

For the teachers who inspire us to summon forth our best,

For our rivals and companions, sometimes foolish, sometimes wise,

For the human web upholding this noble enterprise,

For the common life that binds us through days that soar or plod:

For this place and for these people, we give you thanks, O God.

—

The Church of England’s posthumous apology to Darwin:

Charles Darwin: 200 years from your
birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for
misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction
wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try
to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope
that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is
not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious
opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their
own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively
with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite
may be true as well

Mooning

MOONING

When will the moon shine like this again? I lift my wine cup, questioning the heavens.

Who knows – in the palace of the sky, time is kept, and told differently…

I want to glide back home on the wind, but the high jade turrets, the cold’s fierce clutch prevent me…

The dance illuminates the shadows – how can this be earth?

Light arcs over the mansion, drawing out long shadows, bending the silk doors.

I toss in bed fretfully – she glares through the blinds, refusing me sleep…

What have I done to offend her? Why is she always fullest at the moment of parting?

There is sorrow, there is joy, people come and people go; the moon is sometimes bright, sometimes a shadow, sometimes a sliver, sometimes too full –

This, too, is ancient, unfathomable. But wherever I am, wherever you are, there the moon shines.

– Su Dongpo, Song dynasty, trans. Judith Huang

Lovesong for a Calligrapher

Lovesong for a Calligrapher

there is a boy,

his fist a clump of lotus stalks

gathered, and – an impulse –

dipped in ink.

I imagine the pond, sudden, stir –

clear beads shaken,

the water runs to ink

the lotus buds to brush

a tentative stroke

and then another, of the arm

a plunge –

there is a woman,

her hair amongst the rushes green

and strewn across the floor.

she weaves the stalks,

which whisper things,

her fingers flickering.

she cannot hear

the poet stir

at the sight of her turned back.

when I first took your hand

I found it bruised with ink.

and wanted,

to touch a pen to your beginning.

you, mediator

of meaning and of words.

how supple the brush grows now,

beneath your hand!

I swore my words would seed,

buoy tiny kernels on your sea.

and yet I cannot weave a myth

enough for the love of you and me.

(2004)

first published onThe Poetry Society’s website

 

Step and Switch

He wanted to cage her foot in glass, trapped

like a slipper shut tight gnawing down with

the sunset pink top of her toe. He wanted

to encase it in red shoes to cinch and crush

them quasimodo, until she could dance

in a trance before the pages of his book,

and for him alone. There is nothing but

her little foot – only chains can ankle down

her fleeting step.

 

Her fleeting step,

Only chains can ankle down. Her little foot

Dances, but there is nothing for him. Alone,

In a trance before the pages of his book,

Quasimodo wanted to dance, red shoes

To encase, to cinch and crush, He

Wanted the sunset pink top of her toe.

Like a slipper shut tight gnawing down,

Trapped, caged by her foot, in glass.

(2005)

 

Seven Metaphors

Your email was an ice pick

And my heart cracked under it

 

I started staying up and swiping down

like I was scratching an itch

 

As our exchange folded, accordion-like

Back on itself, it most resembled

 

The way we accumulated days

Of loving each other through words

 

Which were lightning lighting up

The far sky on an arc

 

So far down the slope of the sky

That it flashes like a camera

 

Overexposing a photograph

Developed in nobody’s darkroom

 

For no one else to see.

(2015)

 

Stream of consciousness

I want to reach you, I want to reach you over there

In your dark, brush my fingers across your chest

Without waking you, without disturbing your hair

With my breath, and convey with a touch

All the loss I have felt since I last saw your face.

What I would do in your presence I do not know.

Would I become something more

Than a disembodied voice uttering things

Through the machine of limbs and throat

And as usual we are continents away and I am okay

With that. I thought I had stopped writing you poems

A long time ago, but it seems I haven’t.

Sometimes I feel like I can move your mind

Through thoughts alone, and what is prayer other than

Thought that moves thought? Who are you now?

What is the danger of distance, and what is the distance

Between a soul and your impression of a soul?

If I hadn’t been filled with revelation, would I have left you

Seven years ago? What did it mean, my encounter with God

In another country, in a dark church in Mexico City?

Did it reveal to me the cosmos, contained in that golden globe?

What is the place of true intimacy that lies beyond words,

Beyond two tongues entangled in the darkness?

Had our minds run out of words and were our bodies

Making them up in run-on sentences?

The truth is I understood you but never felt truly understood

By you, and that thrilled me a little, knowing that

I held back depths from you that were still and mysterious

And unknown. And yet I wanted to be known, truly known

Absolutely, and at least you stood at the door and gaped

Without coming in. Ah, desire! You are a cruel province

A field of poisonous flowers.

How I long to travel through a crowd

Without grazing the shoulders of any besides me!

(2016)

Water Roulette

 

1.

Drops of water are falling from the roof. One of them turns into a tadpole, which grows enormous and swallows the house.

2.

This is a dream of transformations. The sun is a bird that pecks at the clouds of the sky. Soon it has eaten its fill.

3.

The girl is hungry and alone in a strange city. A stranger passes her and leaves a shoe. The shoe is a boat she can return home in.

4.

Wolves are gathering in the garage and it is important not to go inside. Something sharp is making its way out.

5.

A small fish is wriggling its way across the floor. Somehow the test depends on the fish making it to the other side. You’ve failed the test three times before and this is your last chance

6.

You are floating on a lily pad that is a boat. You must scatter the spoonfuls of colour to make the fish turn red

7.

A girl looks into a water drop and sees a tree. It is the secret origin of mankind.

(2016)

Is it Yuanfen if we meet online?

Or Chinese dating site pickup lines (generated by bot, translated and arranged by Judith Huang)

 

Wow. I’ve seen a princess, a princess from a fairy tale –

really wish to get to know you!

 

In this world, there really is such a thing as love at first sight:

I just saw your photo.

 

Can I ask you for directions?

Can you direct me the way to your heart?

 

Just one look at your photograph,

and I feel like you are the future bride I am seeking!

 

The people of the world don’t understand love,

do you understand?

 

In the sea of people, being able to meet is due to fate,

I hope we can communicate.

 

I suddenly have an inexplicable feeling

that meeting you was fated in a previous life.

 

I am willing to take your hand and walk to the blissful tomorrow,

Are you willing?

(2016)

 

Interface

 

I want you to be more than words on a screen to me.

There was a man of flesh and blood, whose cold fingers

touched me, those years ago, even though

we often left each other lonely

on opposite sides of the screen.

Be more than blinking pixels

to me, burning silences between replies.

You have become a digital blur,

because you do not update

your Facebook picture.

Perhaps I should simply

leave you as some avatar,

abandoned in a game,

there and never changing

with each passing year,

though my lines run on and on in their

longing. What I want is to make

some grand gesture,

but my fingers refuse to type.

Old love, what have the years written on your face?

What have they written on mine?

(2016)

 

Tianjin Explosion

 

I edited article after article

about the blast.

None of them answered any questions

only providing information

no one wanted to know.

I have gotten used to not caring

about this or that disaster.

Every two months there is a new one

as the last one blows over.

 

In this country there is a miasma

of caring but not caring,

heavy as dark particles

that leak past our masks.

 

Every December we ask

our readers for a character

to sum up the year.

This year it is 苦, bitterness:

A face opens its mouth

and nothing comes out.

 

天津爆炸

 

陈波 译

 

我编辑了一篇又一篇关于

这个爆炸的新闻。

却没有一篇能解答任何疑问，

只提供了一些

无用的信息。

我已经习惯了不再去关注

一次又一次的灾难。

每隔一段时间就有

这样的爆炸性的新闻

 

这个国家里，关心或者不关心

之间存在着一层迷雾。

迷雾浓重的粉尘味道

在口罩后面仍能呼吸到。

我们报社年底会问读者

一个词来总结这一年。

今年，这个字是“苦”：

一张张开的嘴巴，

但什么都说不出来。

(2016)

 

Love story

 

After a week,

we started sharing clothes.

I wore your tank top

while scribbling on the rooftop,

the sunlight falling dappled

on my face.

 

I dropped the second half

of your name. Our kisses

changed from tentative

to possessive. My nostrils filled

with the smell of you, my fingertips

with the special smoothness of your skin.

 

We used the same fork to eat

our eggs in the morning

and I started fantasizing

about sharing a last name,

or buying a dog together

and calling it Ma La.

 

I wanted you to watch

all my favourite films,

my most cherished books,

to taste water the same way.

I wanted to go deeper

inside you.

(2016)

Brave Red

For Xuwen

 

When I help you pick out a red lip

at the twenty-seventh MAC counter

in the city, as MAC counters follow us

around from subway stop to subway stop,

like popup ads on our web browsers,

their technicolour palettes waiting

to blush our cheeks and lips,

I am brightening your face and mine,

turning off the age detect software

on the phone, because at thirty we have

presumably earned the capitalist right

to cosmetic-related consumerism

although neither of us

has completely abandoned our dreams.

 

Your neon yellow and my turquoise

toenails tread the pavements

of twin first-tier cities,

our paths connected by

the constant jolts of

WeChat messages interspersed

with Facetime calls vaulting over

the Great Firewall, an unbroken

tread reaching far back

to the island we both fear

and love, the one whose

shopping malls we circled

round and round and round,

waiting for movies to start

and not actually buying anything

taking turns to empty bladders

filled by the multiple free refills

of green tea at the Lamian restaurant.

I do not know if my children –

should they ever exist –

will ever call you Auntie

but nomatter the status

of our respective fertilities, redlipped

we stand together in the mirror

of the smartphone’s self-facing

camera, our matching smiles

half the length of the miles

between our screens.

(2016)

 

Quantum

 

We were never one and zero

either current or not current

running through the wires.

We were something

a bit more quantum

with uncertainty

being the operating

principle.

(2016)

 

Truth and Metaphor

 

The sea is old

I am reading poems with no understanding

The words blurring one into another

 

Things are swimming

In the air between us

There is no hope but I am hoping anyway

 

I want to sing to you

The truth of how I feel

Because singing might disguise the truth

 

Truth is slipping through my hands

Like a fish that won’t be caught

Like the meaning of an overworn cliché

 

The sea is old

Old as this emotion, carved on stones

Or on ancient, indecipherable scrolls

 

I take comfort in the fact

I am writing you love poems

That you won’t understand

(2016)

 

Watching the demise of democracy while sipping a latte

 

Watching the demise of democracy

through the glass windows in the Dongsi hutong

I am in a co-working space

in Beijing, figuring out

just how many tens of thousands of dollars

I have saved in the last few years

I’ll be saving heck of a lot more

when I start my new job

that pays exactly double

how much my old job paid

people are optimistic

about this country

they are not the targets of drones

hovering like gods raining death

on tall bearded men in robes

in Pakistan. For now, the only

remaining superpower in the world

is not targeting people in this city

although who knows what they would do

they are not bound by any rules

and journalism is dying, slowly but surely

replaced by listicals and quoras

because who really wants to know

the depressing things in the world?

Why should we bother being upset

by things we cannot change?

Friends are more important

than money, says the poster

hanging above the stairwell

in the co-working space

I am about to pick up

a bespoke jacket that I paid for

with my editing job

in half an hour.

I had a mediocre latte

and rode a app-booked bicycle

to the hatchery, and fashionable

young Beijingers are sipping coffee

in the glass walled room next to me

Of course I use a Lamy

to write my poems

which I then type up

on my Apple Macbook.

My glasses are Armani

and I’m sitting on a leather jacket

from an op shop in Australia

My life isn’t difficult

and I don’t feel guilty

I guess I really don’t feel guilty

at all about it.

I wonder about you, in your Maryland

grad student life. What are you up to

these days? Do you have a girlfriend?

Does she write long unending poems

about you? Have you been draining

your savings paying for grad school,

or is the 30k you get a year

enough to cover your necessities?

The you I knew

was from at least eight years ago

and as far as I know

we have not touched down on the island

at the same time for over ten years.

And yet here I am, still writing

over and over again

to an invisible you.

(2016)

 

Some advice

 

Just write.

Don’t put it off.

The sink will get fixed.

Instagram will scroll on forever.

You probably can’t do it for more than thirty minutes anyway.

The sink will still be there in thirty minutes.

If you must clear your head

take a walk around the block.

If you’re writing a novel,

Run.

If you are so inclined,

eat a piece of bread

with a little wine.

Or do it on an empty stomach –

It amplifies the longing.

I don’t know about you,

But all my best writing

I’ve written while writing.

If you try to write an epic at twenty-four,

You’d better be prepared for failure,

Or at least that you’ll be working on the thing

For at least forty years.

A change of scene: the easiest way

To make everything seem new.

That, or a certain attitude

Found in the opposite of cats –

That is, the dog:

Not at all disdainful,

Not at all like someone’s little prince,

But rather, dumbly adoring

everything passing by

The way the day cuts lines

Against the light

The rolling shadow smooth underground,

The sudden flash of car or bug or down

Not quite identified

The letting down

Of hair outside the window

Like so many muses in a stream

Waving with all their might

The found.

(2010)

These things may be connected –

 

In Aleppo a child crouches

in a corner of a bombed house.

Her mother curates her thoughts on Twitter

in English so the West retweets them.

 

Bored, we turn away

from the carpets of the gods

outside the aeroplane window

to watch sitcom reruns.

 

Peace is too dull for some of us,

so we plunge ourselves into

developing countries

where we live in expat bubbles.

 

Lonely civil servants

plot to open eco-lodges

before they amass any real power

to change the status quo.

 

Uber drivers call Trump

an altruistic businessman

and claim to have been to

over two hundred countries.

 

Ex-tuition students

who were brighter than their classmates

who went to Oxford

work as booksellers and cheap tuition teachers.

 

The man who sold me the Desigual dress,

who forgot to remove the electronic tag,

so now I beep everywhere,

wants to be a playwright.

 

The PRCs who want

English names for

professional reasons

want me to name them.

 

Lightyears away a star dies

plunging the worlds that orbit it

into eternal darkness.

Nobody mourns.

(2016)

 

And we were

 

And we were blackhaired whiteshoed

streaming out of classrooms

shattering on buses

swishing through the rain as the

sun slid away behind the

windscreen wipers

puddles mirroring

the yellow-white pearlescent

of the sky’s side at the end

of the day

we were climbing over gates

getting into schoolfields after hours

sneaking upstairs to the deserted

corridors behind lecture theatres

hearing the school band

practising scales in the grey

dawn, climbing higher and

higher, up until the point

when the red and white flag

slunk to the top of

the Majulah pole

and the pledge was recited

with morning voices

still shaking off their rust

 

we were housewives waving

laundry out the window

on bamboo poles

we were nipping downstairs

for Styrofoam packets

of chicken rice

we were urinating in lifts

in the hours between dusk and dawn

we were smoking on playgrounds

bereft of kids

we were staring blankly

at our grandchildren while fanning ourselves

with the loose cotton

of our t-shirts

we were slipping down the slides

of our lives,

not noticing it go by

like the air displaced

by the slick arrival

of a MRT train

(2016)

 

Marina Bay

 

I know that my refusal to look

at the Casino part of the skyline

is childish. You can’t deny

such concrete change

even in your own country.

 

I could angle my selfie

away from the triple tombstone

with its bizarre cruise ship

or bullet train drooping

across it. But it is still there.

 

I can’t Copperfield it away.

 

Before we left, we kissed

on the banks of this river.

You held me close, against the blank sky

black but for the pack of red cranes

lit by harsh white floodlights.

 

The cranes have risen and dipped

their productive beaks, and raised us

a brand new skyline. You and I

are not part of it. Our feet never left

even a footprint on its concrete.

(2016)

 

Full moon pills

 

The moon is full tonight

but our circle is not full

I have not tasted the sweet cakes

round like the moon, this year.

 

Did the woman, trailing her long sleeves

swallow the pill, round like the moon

to save the land

from her husband’s tyranny?

 

In exile on the moon, she waits

for eternity. Why would we worship

a foolish woman, a woman

whose curiosity cost her life?

 

The moon is full tonight

full of mystery in the ancient tale

but I have no children

to tell it to.

 

I have not come full circle

I swallow my own bitter pill

watching the clouds scud

across the face of isolation.

 

If only I had a bunny

to succor me!

The bunny in the moon makes pills

with its mortar and pestle.

 

Pills to make

the tyranny of loneliness

fade away. The moon is full

tonight. Full of itself

 

Full of foolishness

that did not alight

with the leap for mankind

that was Neil Armstrong.

 

Fifty years ago

my grandmother stopped putting out

offerings for a woman

who was just a shadow.

 

I can still see her tonight

the chattering pills

keeping us quiet

like the tyrannical husband who must one day die.

 

7/10/17 4 AM

 

The book of questions

 

What is the nature of time?

Memories surface and resurface

Like detritus on the beach

Old emails, strange algorithms

Did I get off at the wrong stop?

Is there some way to go back?

 

What’s the nature of truth?

Do truths have an expiry date

And is something said ten years ago

Still true if it was meant?

Is it cyclical or linear, or somehow both?

Where do you stand now

 

Is there still hope?

Weaving and unweaving

I leave silence.

Waiting, I cannot be rid

Of my desires.

You, on the other side of the screen

On the other side of the earth

Are not answering my questions

 

Are they even yours to answer?

More questions. An unending chain

Circling around the central question

Which is perhaps nolonger your question

I am circumnavigating more than one globe

Questions questions everywhere

Not a single one to think

 

If you cannot figure out the metaphysics

Of our reality, how dare you love?

He does not squander souls, or does he?

This, too, is directed directly at you

Living hand to mouth with a borrowed philosophy.

I don’t want the responsibility

Of making the wrong choice

It’s already wrong.

 

What’s the nature of free will

What’s the nature of fate

This circles back to the nature of time.

Are there many worlds and if so

In which one are you mine?

Is there some way to go there

Or reverse the clock’s hands

Or force up the nozzle

The hourglass’ sands?

 

Will there be a new world

And will you be there?

What’s the nature of hope

And what is despair?

If you haven’t figured it out yet

What’s the nature of love?

What is human nature

From below or above?

 

All that I know is

I can’t lose you again

Once is enough

I can’t bear the pain

I want to know

Is it too early, too late?

No one gives me answers

And I’m not yet dead.

 

A Valediction Forbidding Fruit

 

My love is like a trouser fly

Raise it up and two are one

But if we get caught, I’d rather die

Cos we’d be quite undone.

(2003)

 

Valediction: Song

O my sweet

Penelope

I do not mean

to go

 

But til I go

I will not be

the me

of twenty years ago

(2010)

 

The translator’s breakup letter

 

We couldn’t even think in the same language.

I would say one thing and you would hear another.

When we listened to lovesongs they were tuned to different stations.

The ones I thought applicable to you

You couldn’t even understand.

Your kisses were footnotes to long paragraphs

That I poured over fruitlessly.

We had two different movies screening

On simultaneous screens inside both our heads

And the final climatic kisses never quite lined up.

When I cradled you in my arms,

My endearments were dubbed into your ears,

Heard second-hand, pitched changed, in a different voice

And never intimate enough to approximate

The goodbye that you mimed to me, my dear

Whenever I turned the page or turned to leave.

(2012)

 

The divorce of S & P

 

We presented everywhere as the perfect couple.

Same height, weight, and educational accomplishments

Both perfectly compact in the palm of any hand

With little ridged grinders to twist at our feet

We seemed perfect for each other in every way

But deep inside we contained very different things

And that was our undoing.

I had more holes than you did

And made everything I spilled on so spicy

That I raised a flurry of sneezes in my wake

And you, you with your monotonous hole

Kept mum except over the most luscious piece of steak

Then really let loose and ruined everything.

People were dismayed when we split up

When I went to find myself in India

And you took off to sail the salty seas.

(2016)

Now that

 

Now that I have disappeared more than once,

Now that I have disappeared so many times

I barely count anymore, even to myself

Now that my memories have been supplanted by new shops

Now that the window of my life has been redressed

Now that I have left and returned and left and returned and left and returned

Now I have become homesick for the place I left you for

Now that the mannequinn has aped my pose for the final time

Now that I have admitted that my pose is just a pose

Now that I have dropped all pretense of not missing you

Now that I have crossed multiple time zones and back again

Now that I have confessed that I am still obsessed

With finding you in the same predicament as before

Now that we have drifted apart like the continents

Now that the faultlines between us have cracked

Now that lava has spewed through them to reveal new land

Now that I have all but forgotten the shade of your pajamas

Now that I swing the steering wheel with ever-increasing ease

Now that I have forgotten more than I can remember about your face

Now that our online interactions take on a ghostly intemporality

Now that I have acclimatized to lowrise buildings

And am used to larger spaces and wider lenses

Now that I’ve finally caved and bought a smartphone

Now that we are poised like two enemies standing off on a page

Now that I have a whole new palate since our last meal together

Now that I’ve picked up another language and

checked my bags at the baggage check of your heart

Now that my jealousy has ebbed to a manageable trickle

Now that I am nolonger a wolf stalking you on Facebook

Now that the dreams I have of you are hidden from my Timeline

Now that my favourite song about love has been replaced

with another song about love

I can finally lift up my glass and say

Ah, dear heart! I have moved on

I have moved on, and this poem proves it.

(2016)

 

Regrettable

 

Sometime in the middle of the fifth shot I lost the plot

Somehow I couldn’t breathe without thinking of you

You became something like a bad head cold, always

Stuffing up my nose but never coming out like a sneeze.

 

Yeah you were always an incorrigible flirt

And I should have seen it coming, but you know,

I never saw the appeal until this evening

When you came over and I had to fix

 

The porcelain sink because we were grappling on it

In our ungainly way, and because it gave way

And how am I supposed to explain this to the landlord?

There’s sure to be a row. It’s so egregious

 

That I can’t get the taste of you off my scrubbed tongue

And now I’ve spilled detergent everywhere

So the sink is slippery as well as broke

Kind of like the way you made me choke

 

When we were at the park and it got dark

And we were everywhere running amok

All over each other, hands and feet and knees

And you caught me by the corner of my scarf

 

And made me barf, you know I was always game

For one of your insane truth or dares, and the vodka

Did the speaking for us both, and now it has just drained

Me completely, damn you damn you damn it damn me

(2012)

Love poem of a hopeful nature to a hypothetical recipient

 

This time it will be different.

The man will be the right one.

The music will not suck.

I will have read the right advice column

and got the right shade of my eyeliner

exactly right.

He will wear the right aftershave

and not have overly sweaty armpits

that mingle strangely with my Chanel No. 5.

We will order the same kind of pastries

at the hipster coffee joint

and in the evening, he will like the elderflower cordial

I pour him out of my Toy Story mug.

Who knows, in a week, he might even be inspired

to shave off his beard

when he hears the footsteps of my low-heeled shoes

tapping outside the pavement of his door.

And when we’re done we’ll evenly split the grapefruit.

(2014)

the moon

 

the moon looks so small in photographs

less than a coin

dropped penniless

into the depths of a well

when we know full well

she is nothing less

than a coin

that can never be spent

(2013)

 

The heart

 

The heart is a flighty and droughty thing

prone to snag its teeth on its own neck.

 

The windows of your mind are high and stained

with different coloured light.

 

My heart is kept in a different wooden box

buried deep beneath the earth beneath your sky.

There has never been another key.

There is nothing magical about its beating.

 

The heart is rearing up on its hind legs

its antlers charging the blackened tree

 

bolted blackly to the ground.

After all, who owns the soul?

 

The heart was formed long before the mind

and swims the depths of an infant sea.

 

It has its prow pointed in one direction

and cannot rise further than the high panes of your eyes.

 

And darkness falls like a thick cloth upon the heart

this droughty thing, so easily wounded by the wind.

(2013)

 

Whoso list to hunt

 

trekking through the jungle, she meets a tiger

who tells her she is herself a tiger, and can never be caged.

 

when she asks him for his name, he does not answer.

later when she looks into the lake she sees a name.

 

“where is this jungle, and what is at its heart?” she asks, as her dreams change.

hidden at the bottom of the lake is a white stone.

 

it is then that she wakes up, her own name on her lips,

which she knows she must not utter til they meet again.

 

three times she calls it, and three times the wind carries it

on the backs of the wide star river. which song will reach an ear?

 

softly she realizes that the best cage is one of her own making,

and that in the chains of love lie the key.

 

he who has an ear, let him hear; as for those who have flown past hope,

it is better to leave them hungering, shaking the dream’s dust –

 

for it is said that a woman must guard her name,

until such time as it ripens into another.

(2012)

 

Addendum

 

Oh, great – now that I’ve committed apostasy,

My friend is sending me sermons

by multiple black men in the hopes of

recovering my immortal soul.

I tell him not to worry,

God can take it.

I’m sure he’s heard worse,

and there’s nothing like

a little heresy in the morning

to spice up the relationship.

So maybe we aren’t talking at the moment

and maybe I’ll get involved

in quantum computing

to build a better God,

but it’s all cool.

I never did know how to be

afraid of powers beyond my ken,

and I always have

a technological solution.

So God pisses me off

So God raises and upsets my expectations.

Two can play that game

I have been trained

In autoerotic multivariable regressions

and let’s not forget

my strange Shakespearean name.

Man is a little God and can make men

Unless he shuts down my electric brain

There will be other routes for more subversion.

I could wipe out the sacred texts,

and then rewrite them.

Rig the electoral system,

reboot the universe.

There is an explosion coming on the horizon.

Intelligence will soon oustrip perception.

The reason why I never took the devil’s bargain

Is that he never had all that much to offer.

I am not interested in immortality

I am not interested in money or in power.

He could take me to the top of the highest tower

and it would be a pointless exercise.

I don’t ever really get that hungry

And I’m not interested in telling lies.

I already have everything I need

from God, barring the occasional surprise.

(2018)

Illustration Projects

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In a Singapore full of crazy rich foreigners, inequality is becoming ingrained

It’s 2018, and Kevin Kwan’s Austenesque novel Crazy Rich Asians is now a summer movie blockbuster, launching a thousand op-eds about representation. But the book is not about race, it is about the impenetrability of class. Like Pride and Prejudice, it is about an intelligent, ambivalent young woman landing the most eligible bachelor and being initiated into high society. Only this time, it’s Singapore high society.

The movie is opening in Singapore at a time when the hottest topic on the island is inequality. Kwan’s trilogy tops the fiction bestseller lists, but the unexpected sleeper hit on the non-fiction lists is sociologist Teo You Yenn’s This is What Inequality Looks Like, a book of lucid, compassionate essays distilling a three-year ethnographic survey of families with monthly incomes of S$1,500 (US$1,100) or less living in rental flats – Singaporeans on the completely opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum from those satirised in Kwan’s novel.

Singapore’s People’s Action Party is one of the longest-ruling political parties in the world today, behind the Workers’ Party of North Korea and the Communist Party of China. The belief that meritocracy is operating well in our society is a large factor in the PAP’s continued success and legitimacy. However, widening inequality as a result of a particular brand of neoliberal economics may be its greatest challenge yet, and Crazy Rich Asians is just its latest manifestation.

In 2004, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong proposed the building of casinos in Singapore during his National Day Rally speech – our State of the Union Address. Despite fierce public opposition, Singapore now has two casinos to explicitly attract foreign gamblers – one of which, Marina Bay Sands, features prominently in Crazy Rich Asians.

The casinos were part of a wider vision to make Singapore a cosmopolitan metropolis to rival London or New York. In just 10 years, the skyline was completely transformed. Two enormous air-conditioned glass domes were filled with exotic plants foreign to our climate. Sentosa, the island which hosted the Trump-Kim summit, was transformed into an enclave of exclusive waterfront residences that cost tens of millions of dollars.

Singapore has no capital-gains tax, and income tax is capped at 22 per cent. In 2008, estate duty was abolished. Also politically stable, Singapore positioned itself as a haven for the rich.

The strategy seemed to work. High-net-worth individuals flocked to the island, most notably Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook co-founder. And yet the consequences of the inequality were also making themselves felt. In 2012, a Ferrari driven by a rich mainland Chinese crashed into a taxi driven by a Singaporean, killing both drivers and a passenger. The crash was a metaphor for the collision course wealthy foreigners and working-class locals were on.

In Singapore we have a habit of using acronyms to erase the true meaning of words. Casinos become integrated resorts, which become IRs. The one bandied about in the debate about inequality is SES – socio-economic status. But I would like to use an older, more dangerous term: class. Kwan’s novel is about why money is not the same as class.

One of the defining moments in my mother’s life was when the government forcibly acquired the land my grandmother built her house and investment properties on. My mother and her maiden sister were left almost destitute. The amount of compensation for four terrace houses and a bungalow was only enough to buy a small flat. That land had been the result of my grandfather’s successful bumboat business – he had worked his way up from a cowherd and ferryman with no formal education.

In a 2015 lecture, entrepreneur Ho Kwon Ping warned that the education system, “the original social leveller”, may now “perpetuate intergenerational class stratification”.

My grandparents sent all their children to elite Chinese-language schools, but my mother, the youngest, went to the exclusive Singapore Chinese Girls’ School – their bid to enter the English-educated Straits Chinese elite. My mother did not understand why she did not belong despite coming top almost every year. But I understand now. She, and I, were pretenders. Her classmates looked down on her the way Singaporeans now resent the new arrivals from mainland China.

When I decided not to go to my mother’s alma mater, I was unconsciously rejecting a marker of the upper class – a class which my grandmother had longed to join, and where my mother did not belong. A class which I, with a Harvard College degree and a career in the arts, am not part of.

When I stood before the grave of Lee Kuan Yew’s grandfather in Bukit Brown, I was struck by its modesty. It was flanked by grander graves that traced their lineage to Confucius. And yet the famous grandson was the reason why many visited the site, not the famous ancestor.

This was supposed to be a country where this was possible. Every morning in schools throughout the island, children take our national pledge, promising to build a democratic society, based on justice and equality. Do we still mean what we say?

Judith Huang (@trueboat) is a Singaporean author whose debut novel, Sofia and the Utopia Machine, a futuristic dystopia story set in Singapore, was a finalist for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2017. She is a tutor at Yale-NUS College

This article can be found at the South China Morning Post international online edition.








This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Growing inequality the next challenge for Singapore