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Lions in Winter
10th Anniversary Edition with author's black and white photography of Singapore. Shortlisted for Ireland’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Singapore Literature Prize. “If there is ever a book for the Singaporean overseas or those preparing to leave home, this will be it. Read Wena Poon’s classic, Lions In Winter.” Overseas Singaporean Magazine “The exile returns to illuminate an intimate part of Singapore, and does so quite beautifully.” TIME Magazine These stories, about Singaporean Chinese emigrés in the West, were written in America and published in the late 1990s and early 2000s. At the time, nobody was interested in examining the role and identity of the modern, English-speaking Chinese outside of Asia. Since then, the diaspora of Chinese youth has grown too large to ignore, fueled by the dramatic increase in Chinese students in the universities of US, UK, Canada and Australia. Lions in Winter is but one facet of a modern, transnational Chinese identity that has just begun to take shape.
209 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
1 person is currently reading
70 people want to read
About the author
Wena Poon
28 books19 followersWena Poon is the author of 16 books of literary fiction. Her stories have been professionally produced on the London stage, serialized on BBC Radio 4, extensively anthologized, and translated into French, Italian, and Chinese. Winner of the UK’s Willesden Herald Prize for best short fiction, she has been nominated for Ireland’s Frank O’Connor Award, France’s Prix Hemingway, the Singapore Literature Prize, and the UK’s Bridport Prize for Poetry. Her work is studied by British and American academics of transnational literature and is part of the Cambridge ‘O’ Level Literature exam syllabus in Singapore high schools. She graduated magna cum laude in English Literature from Harvard and holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She is a lawyer by profession.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 27, 2015
Most of the stories were hard to read, especially since they were not especially insightful. The two main themes that the stories claim to discuss are only dealt with handily in a fraction of the stories, such as The Man Who Was Afraid of ATMs. Additionally, a few of the stories sounded less like actual stories than complaints about Chinese families. On that note, the author does not seem to understand the evolving mentality of Asian families and seems to show a disconnection with the Singaporean population. One thing that irked me was how the dialogue was awkward and the lexical and semantic choices are not in line with that of the average Singaporean. There are just some words that the average local would not use -- probably would not even know -- in daily conversation. Overall, 2-3 substantial stories at best, while the rest scratch the surface of the themes and offer flawed illustrations of local life.
August 22, 2014
Over the summer, I picked up Wena Poon's 'Lions in Winter' after hearing about all the international acclaim it fostered. Being nominated for the Frank O'Connor Award and the Singapore Literature Prize definitely caught my attention, although I must silently admit that it doesn't take much for me to be enchanted by any local fiction that champions one of my favorite discourses, post-colonial literature.
From the first few pages, I felt like I was alongside the characters, breathing and feeling their very circumstances, through her erudite descriptions. I related to every one of them, which on a broader level, garnered an intimate insight into the Singaporean cultural landscape. I felt transported into those awkward and invisible cultural spaces that she managed to access boldly and convincingly. Her characters were raw and she made no apologies for their circumstances, another reason that made the book so relatable and gave me lots to think about - from the teenage boys to the old Chinese man. She made the read easy through her complex crafting of the characters and their lives - sometimes two-dimensional, but can we ever really go beyond discourse? This is not science-fiction after all.
As the short stories went on, I felt the stories got more and more abstract such as Chicken and although initially I wasn't entirely convinced of the shift, I realised later, she probably didn't want to compromise the potential of fiction to explore greater literary philosophy and post-colonial themes such as hybridity, diasporas, belonging, history and power.
I thought as her first attempt, it was a great balance between literary and cultural expression. I would keep a copy in my library for sure.
From the first few pages, I felt like I was alongside the characters, breathing and feeling their very circumstances, through her erudite descriptions. I related to every one of them, which on a broader level, garnered an intimate insight into the Singaporean cultural landscape. I felt transported into those awkward and invisible cultural spaces that she managed to access boldly and convincingly. Her characters were raw and she made no apologies for their circumstances, another reason that made the book so relatable and gave me lots to think about - from the teenage boys to the old Chinese man. She made the read easy through her complex crafting of the characters and their lives - sometimes two-dimensional, but can we ever really go beyond discourse? This is not science-fiction after all.
As the short stories went on, I felt the stories got more and more abstract such as Chicken and although initially I wasn't entirely convinced of the shift, I realised later, she probably didn't want to compromise the potential of fiction to explore greater literary philosophy and post-colonial themes such as hybridity, diasporas, belonging, history and power.
I thought as her first attempt, it was a great balance between literary and cultural expression. I would keep a copy in my library for sure.
April 29, 2018
Although several of the stories in Wena Poon's Lions in Winter have been published in different places and at different times, the collection as a whole is unified by the common thread of displacement. Like the Chinese lions in the snowy New York landscape in the title story, many of her characters are Asians transplanted to the west.
Sometimes they also make the journey back to Singapore, giving us the chance to see the country through their eyes. There is a very telling moment when the protagonist of the same story, Freddie stops for a moment to sniff the air as he goes through immigration at Changi airport, knowing that withing twenty minutes his nose would have got so used to the distinctive
warm, seeping, slightly musty smell of earth, tinged with the faintest hint of diesel ...
that he will fail to notice it: it is in those first moments of homecoming, that we see everything with a sharp clarity that we quickly lose as we reassimulate.
Poon's great gift, though, is to keep that freshness of vision and to bring out the extraordinariness of the ordinary lives she describes, looking not only at immigration and the sometimes painful path to assimilation, but also questioning just what it means to be Singaporean.
She writes beautifully in a style that is both informal and conversational, and there are clever little asides thrown into the narrative that really tickle the funny-bone. This made me chuckle as I read Those Who Serve, Those Who Do Not :
National Service was the male equivalent of having one's period - predestined to occur at a certain age, repeated throughout the most productive years of one's life, and entirely and relentlessly gender specific. Like menstruation, it was an inscrutable rite of passage about which one gender hardly shared notes with the other.
I'd had Poon down as a clever humourist after enjoying her two stories which appeared in the Silverfish collections. Kenny's Big Break in which a boy snaffles the ang-pow money at his sister's wedding to finance his education made me laugh as much as ever (and how many times have I read it?). Addiction, the story of a Singaporean medical student in London who decides to defect to do a fashion design course while stringing his mother along on the end of the phone, was another complete delight.
But it is the poignancy of the other stories in the collection that hits home. In The Man Who Was Afraid of ATM's, an elderly Chinese teacher finds his confidence, and in fact his whole identity eroded after emigrating to Canada with his son and his family. He doesn't fit in Chinatown because he cannot speak the Cantonese which is the lingua-franca, and he finds he cannot cope with the westerners. A moment of crisis comes before an ATM machine as he struggles to make a withdrawal to pay for his daughter-in-law's dress (ironically of course, a cheong sam!). For me, the most moving part of the story is the description of this scholar's old Chinese books which he almost had to leave behind, and which represent a heritage that not even his own family care to share.
Toys is a particularly interesting story as the Asian character remains just outside the frame of the story throughout. The story is written from the point of view of a bed-ridden American woman recovering from a serious car accident. With little else to do but look out of the window, she becomes obsessed with the toys in the back of an Asian neighbour's car giving each one a name and becoming upset when the toys slowly start to disappear. Ironically the neighbour is never named, and lumped instead with all other Asians in an all-encompassing "they", we do not even learn what race she is. We can only wonder at how events might have turned out differently if that first impulse to invite her to thanksgiving dinner had not been stifled.
My favourite story though is The Shooting Ranch in which mother and daughter, Cynthia and Anouk, drive to Nevada to visit the daughter of an aunt who lives on a ranch. They imagine some pleasant get-away but instead they find themselves marooned in a situation of almost unbearable social awkwardness, and participating in one of the most uncomfortable meals I think I've ever read about in fiction. It turns out that this isn't even a ranch in the true sense, but a place where tourists come to shoot pheasants and rabbits released into the woods for their sporting pleasure.
The characterisation in this story is masterful, particularly in the contrast between sophisticated screenager Anouk with her terminal fear of the uncool, and Nancy's terrified and deprived twin daughters who undertake only the quietest form of rebellion, gathering the injured animals and nursing them back to health.
Poon doesn't surrender to the kind of sentimentalised depictions of heart wringing deprivation which are the hallmark of much Asian- American writing. In The Shooting Ranch she even takes time out to make fun of the stereotypes. As Cynthia tells Anouk:
In America, Asian means we're the kind of people who live between the covers of books with geisha's pictured on the front and titles written in brushstroke font. usually a bird of flower forms part of the title. Memories of Lotus Leaves. Grandmother's Peony Diaries. Palace of dreams and Wild Cranes. My Hurting Achy Bound feet. That kind of thing.
A case in point is The Hair-Washing Girl, a story which centres on a hair salon in New York's Chinatown. Mina works long shifts in conditions too cramped to allow her space to rest for just $8 an hour and shares and apartment with six others. Abandoned (out of necessity) by her Indonesian mother and made to shift for herself after her adoptive mother turned her back on her at the age of 15, she comes to work in New York as an illegal immigrant after being made unemployed in Singapore. Her employer, Mrs Fong, has a life story even more heartbreaking, yet as we eavesdrop on their lives for a few hours we realise that neither of them cast themselves as victims. Mina makes her first expedition into the city beyond Chinatown to see a film with a friend, while Mrs Fong makes plans for her 60th birthday celebrations.
I am so proud to have played a small part in this collection coming to print. I knew Wena deserved to be published, but this collection of short fiction is even stronger than I had expected, and I feel (honestly) that this is a book you could confidently put beside other collections by prominent Asian American short story writers.
Sometimes they also make the journey back to Singapore, giving us the chance to see the country through their eyes. There is a very telling moment when the protagonist of the same story, Freddie stops for a moment to sniff the air as he goes through immigration at Changi airport, knowing that withing twenty minutes his nose would have got so used to the distinctive
warm, seeping, slightly musty smell of earth, tinged with the faintest hint of diesel ...
that he will fail to notice it: it is in those first moments of homecoming, that we see everything with a sharp clarity that we quickly lose as we reassimulate.
Poon's great gift, though, is to keep that freshness of vision and to bring out the extraordinariness of the ordinary lives she describes, looking not only at immigration and the sometimes painful path to assimilation, but also questioning just what it means to be Singaporean.
She writes beautifully in a style that is both informal and conversational, and there are clever little asides thrown into the narrative that really tickle the funny-bone. This made me chuckle as I read Those Who Serve, Those Who Do Not :
National Service was the male equivalent of having one's period - predestined to occur at a certain age, repeated throughout the most productive years of one's life, and entirely and relentlessly gender specific. Like menstruation, it was an inscrutable rite of passage about which one gender hardly shared notes with the other.
I'd had Poon down as a clever humourist after enjoying her two stories which appeared in the Silverfish collections. Kenny's Big Break in which a boy snaffles the ang-pow money at his sister's wedding to finance his education made me laugh as much as ever (and how many times have I read it?). Addiction, the story of a Singaporean medical student in London who decides to defect to do a fashion design course while stringing his mother along on the end of the phone, was another complete delight.
But it is the poignancy of the other stories in the collection that hits home. In The Man Who Was Afraid of ATM's, an elderly Chinese teacher finds his confidence, and in fact his whole identity eroded after emigrating to Canada with his son and his family. He doesn't fit in Chinatown because he cannot speak the Cantonese which is the lingua-franca, and he finds he cannot cope with the westerners. A moment of crisis comes before an ATM machine as he struggles to make a withdrawal to pay for his daughter-in-law's dress (ironically of course, a cheong sam!). For me, the most moving part of the story is the description of this scholar's old Chinese books which he almost had to leave behind, and which represent a heritage that not even his own family care to share.
Toys is a particularly interesting story as the Asian character remains just outside the frame of the story throughout. The story is written from the point of view of a bed-ridden American woman recovering from a serious car accident. With little else to do but look out of the window, she becomes obsessed with the toys in the back of an Asian neighbour's car giving each one a name and becoming upset when the toys slowly start to disappear. Ironically the neighbour is never named, and lumped instead with all other Asians in an all-encompassing "they", we do not even learn what race she is. We can only wonder at how events might have turned out differently if that first impulse to invite her to thanksgiving dinner had not been stifled.
My favourite story though is The Shooting Ranch in which mother and daughter, Cynthia and Anouk, drive to Nevada to visit the daughter of an aunt who lives on a ranch. They imagine some pleasant get-away but instead they find themselves marooned in a situation of almost unbearable social awkwardness, and participating in one of the most uncomfortable meals I think I've ever read about in fiction. It turns out that this isn't even a ranch in the true sense, but a place where tourists come to shoot pheasants and rabbits released into the woods for their sporting pleasure.
The characterisation in this story is masterful, particularly in the contrast between sophisticated screenager Anouk with her terminal fear of the uncool, and Nancy's terrified and deprived twin daughters who undertake only the quietest form of rebellion, gathering the injured animals and nursing them back to health.
Poon doesn't surrender to the kind of sentimentalised depictions of heart wringing deprivation which are the hallmark of much Asian- American writing. In The Shooting Ranch she even takes time out to make fun of the stereotypes. As Cynthia tells Anouk:
In America, Asian means we're the kind of people who live between the covers of books with geisha's pictured on the front and titles written in brushstroke font. usually a bird of flower forms part of the title. Memories of Lotus Leaves. Grandmother's Peony Diaries. Palace of dreams and Wild Cranes. My Hurting Achy Bound feet. That kind of thing.
A case in point is The Hair-Washing Girl, a story which centres on a hair salon in New York's Chinatown. Mina works long shifts in conditions too cramped to allow her space to rest for just $8 an hour and shares and apartment with six others. Abandoned (out of necessity) by her Indonesian mother and made to shift for herself after her adoptive mother turned her back on her at the age of 15, she comes to work in New York as an illegal immigrant after being made unemployed in Singapore. Her employer, Mrs Fong, has a life story even more heartbreaking, yet as we eavesdrop on their lives for a few hours we realise that neither of them cast themselves as victims. Mina makes her first expedition into the city beyond Chinatown to see a film with a friend, while Mrs Fong makes plans for her 60th birthday celebrations.
I am so proud to have played a small part in this collection coming to print. I knew Wena deserved to be published, but this collection of short fiction is even stronger than I had expected, and I feel (honestly) that this is a book you could confidently put beside other collections by prominent Asian American short story writers.
October 14, 2019
The stories in the front half of the book were stronger, more coherent and had more texture compared to the second half of the collection. That being said, Poon’s collection of stories of dislocation and migration are multifaceted and provide different lenses to seeing Singapore — not just narratives of longing and fracture, but also capturing why people desire to leave Singapore in the first place; what one doesn’t miss.
March 28, 2020
"No one can hate a Singaporean so much as another Singaporean."
May 25, 2012
Lions in Winter may be described as a short story collection, but there are no stories in here.
Conflict is the reason stories exist...but many of these stories have no conflict. The stories follow a tired formula, peering over the shoulder of a character or two and describing the events all around that person. The character(s) have little, if any, actual input in the events of the story. Even conflict, wherever it arises, tends to be muted in favour of description of characters, actions and environments. The titular story, Lions in Winter, is a perfect example. It follows a man as he watches a Chinese family having dinner in New York, goes home to watch his family interacting with each other, and concludes with him wondering how to balance his identity. I couldn't even tell if he had some kind of identity crisis at all. That is the entirety of the story; there is literally nothing to spoil.
The author has received critical acclaim for her settings and her themes. She rightfully deserves praise in this department. But it becomes tiring to read about the same thing over and over again: every story is about the juxtaposition of Singaporean/Chinese/Asian culture with Western culture, of the traditional clashing with the modern, of the local and the global. The only variation lies in the subject matter being examined, such as National Service, the role of the elderly. On a big picture level, I see this contrast raised again and again -- without resolution, and sometimes without anything to resolve.
On first glance, most of the characters in these stories appear very Singaporean. To a certain extent, that is true. They talk like Singaporeans, think like Singaporeans, and act like Singaporeans. But to a Singaporean eye, they are flat. They are archetypes born from complex Singaporean stereotypes: the National Servicemen trading complaints, the Chinese-educated man cast adrift in an English-speaking world, the foreign student looking for a place somewhere. Many of these characters do little, if anything: they are static. This is especially true in the story "Those Who Serve, Those Who Do Not", in which the only thing that happens is a conversation between the characters. Many of the characters have no problems to solve, and those who do solve them without much drama or conflict or hassle. There is no sense of growth or development, just people running in ruts.
As literature, Lions in Winter is a useful exercise in studying static characters, language, environments and themes. As fiction, it is painfully boring.
Conflict is the reason stories exist...but many of these stories have no conflict. The stories follow a tired formula, peering over the shoulder of a character or two and describing the events all around that person. The character(s) have little, if any, actual input in the events of the story. Even conflict, wherever it arises, tends to be muted in favour of description of characters, actions and environments. The titular story, Lions in Winter, is a perfect example. It follows a man as he watches a Chinese family having dinner in New York, goes home to watch his family interacting with each other, and concludes with him wondering how to balance his identity. I couldn't even tell if he had some kind of identity crisis at all. That is the entirety of the story; there is literally nothing to spoil.
The author has received critical acclaim for her settings and her themes. She rightfully deserves praise in this department. But it becomes tiring to read about the same thing over and over again: every story is about the juxtaposition of Singaporean/Chinese/Asian culture with Western culture, of the traditional clashing with the modern, of the local and the global. The only variation lies in the subject matter being examined, such as National Service, the role of the elderly. On a big picture level, I see this contrast raised again and again -- without resolution, and sometimes without anything to resolve.
On first glance, most of the characters in these stories appear very Singaporean. To a certain extent, that is true. They talk like Singaporeans, think like Singaporeans, and act like Singaporeans. But to a Singaporean eye, they are flat. They are archetypes born from complex Singaporean stereotypes: the National Servicemen trading complaints, the Chinese-educated man cast adrift in an English-speaking world, the foreign student looking for a place somewhere. Many of these characters do little, if anything: they are static. This is especially true in the story "Those Who Serve, Those Who Do Not", in which the only thing that happens is a conversation between the characters. Many of the characters have no problems to solve, and those who do solve them without much drama or conflict or hassle. There is no sense of growth or development, just people running in ruts.
As literature, Lions in Winter is a useful exercise in studying static characters, language, environments and themes. As fiction, it is painfully boring.
November 13, 2014
Over the summer, I picked up Wena Poon's 'Lions in Winter' after hearing about all the international acclaim it fostered. Being nominated for the Frank O'Connor Award and the Singapore Literature Prize definitely caught my attention, although I must silently admit that it doesn't take much for me to be enchanted by any local fiction that champions one of my favorite discourses, post-colonial literature.
From the first few pages, I felt like I was alongside the characters, breathing and feeling their very circumstances, through her erudite descriptions. I related to every one of them, which on a broader level, garnered an intimate insight into the Singaporean cultural landscape. I felt transported into those awkward and invisible cultural spaces that she managed to access boldly and convincingly. Her characters were raw and she made no apologies for their circumstances, another reason that made the book so relatable and gave me lots to think about - from the teenage boys to the old Chinese man. She made the read easy through her complex crafting of the characters and their lives - sometimes two-dimensional, but can we ever really go beyond discourse? This is not science-fiction after all.
As the short stories went on, I felt the stories got more and more abstract such as Chicken and although initially I wasn't entirely convinced of the shift, I realised later, she probably didn't want to compromise the potential of fiction to explore greater literary philosophy and post-colonial themes such as hybridity, diasporas, belonging, history and power.
I thought as her first attempt, it was a great balance between literary and cultural expression. I would keep a copy in my library for sure.
From the first few pages, I felt like I was alongside the characters, breathing and feeling their very circumstances, through her erudite descriptions. I related to every one of them, which on a broader level, garnered an intimate insight into the Singaporean cultural landscape. I felt transported into those awkward and invisible cultural spaces that she managed to access boldly and convincingly. Her characters were raw and she made no apologies for their circumstances, another reason that made the book so relatable and gave me lots to think about - from the teenage boys to the old Chinese man. She made the read easy through her complex crafting of the characters and their lives - sometimes two-dimensional, but can we ever really go beyond discourse? This is not science-fiction after all.
As the short stories went on, I felt the stories got more and more abstract such as Chicken and although initially I wasn't entirely convinced of the shift, I realised later, she probably didn't want to compromise the potential of fiction to explore greater literary philosophy and post-colonial themes such as hybridity, diasporas, belonging, history and power.
I thought as her first attempt, it was a great balance between literary and cultural expression. I would keep a copy in my library for sure.
February 21, 2017
I picked this up quite randomly for research. But boy was I surprised when I read this. I enjoyed all of the stories and could relate to them. Maybe because Poon is writing as a Singaporean. I could truly feel a connection with the stories and the character's feelings. It isn't often I read about such familiar things like MRTs, HDBs and coffee shops.
My favourites were Addiction, The Man Who Was Afraid of ATMs, Those Who Serve, Those Who Do Not, Kenny's Big Break and The Shooting Range. I was particular angry at the last story especially how Henry treats his wife and children. I wanna say even though Singaporean Chinese like the older ones can be traditional they are not so extreme like Henry. Perhaps his actions were brought on by living in America. As Poon illustrates, immigrating is not easy.
I laughed with some if the stories like in "Kenny's Big Break" when his friend, Chee Beng said "Women have this anger, I see it in my mother and cousins. They're so pissed off that they have to be the ones who have the babies, so they have this kind of jealousy at our mobility. It's payback for the centuries of male Chinese patriachy. I swear to God." I really enjoyed this collection and may read more of her books.
My favourites were Addiction, The Man Who Was Afraid of ATMs, Those Who Serve, Those Who Do Not, Kenny's Big Break and The Shooting Range. I was particular angry at the last story especially how Henry treats his wife and children. I wanna say even though Singaporean Chinese like the older ones can be traditional they are not so extreme like Henry. Perhaps his actions were brought on by living in America. As Poon illustrates, immigrating is not easy.
I laughed with some if the stories like in "Kenny's Big Break" when his friend, Chee Beng said "Women have this anger, I see it in my mother and cousins. They're so pissed off that they have to be the ones who have the babies, so they have this kind of jealousy at our mobility. It's payback for the centuries of male Chinese patriachy. I swear to God." I really enjoyed this collection and may read more of her books.
December 2, 2010
I am interested in Singapore Literature because it is like reading what your family members are commenting about each other.
I know that the theme of the book is identity - gender, national, ethnic - and the dichotomy between the individual and the collective. However, as the stories go on, the discourse becomes belabored.
Kenny's Big Break and The Shooting range are examples of stories that are not very credible to be able to elicit discussions about the themes.
Poon does better with stories that discusses these themes subtly such as Addiction and The Man who was afraid of ATMS. I don't like it when the tensions are explicitly stated like in Lions in Winter. "Why do we constantly turn our prows to distant shores? Why do we know when to leave, and when to return? Could we really, really bear to leave those we knew behind, even if we no longer loved them?"
Questions left unuttered will burn longer in the hearts.
I know that the theme of the book is identity - gender, national, ethnic - and the dichotomy between the individual and the collective. However, as the stories go on, the discourse becomes belabored.
Kenny's Big Break and The Shooting range are examples of stories that are not very credible to be able to elicit discussions about the themes.
Poon does better with stories that discusses these themes subtly such as Addiction and The Man who was afraid of ATMS. I don't like it when the tensions are explicitly stated like in Lions in Winter. "Why do we constantly turn our prows to distant shores? Why do we know when to leave, and when to return? Could we really, really bear to leave those we knew behind, even if we no longer loved them?"
Questions left unuttered will burn longer in the hearts.
May 12, 2009
Fantastic. Ranks right up there with first collections from Jhumpa Lahiri, Nam Le, Junot Diaz, and Daniel Alarcon. Poon amazingly describes the Singapore experience through the eyes of expats and emigrants, dislocated souls bumping up against new cultures or traditions. The Singaporean references are slight, but speak volumes, and Poon's way with words is incandescent.
May 30, 2009
I could identify with the stories, though I don't think the collection is well-written. I only found one story strongly written.
But I still enjoyed reading it. The idea of the expat Singaporean and/or returnee Singaporean is something I can identify with. Her protagonists' views of Singapore, and Singaporeans, are all too familiar with me.
Would I recommend it to others? In one word, no.
But I still enjoyed reading it. The idea of the expat Singaporean and/or returnee Singaporean is something I can identify with. Her protagonists' views of Singapore, and Singaporeans, are all too familiar with me.
Would I recommend it to others? In one word, no.
February 19, 2009
Although I do not usually rave about books of short stories, I loved this. I bought my copy in Singapore and could not put it down. It says so much about Singaporeans and their culture. Each story is so entertaining that it spurs you on to read the next.
June 27, 2012
The stories altogether were a unique picture of contemporary Singaporeans in Singapore and abroad. They are the best thing I have read about Singaporean identity.
August 1, 2014
i like this collection, abt life struggle overseas written like a journal entry yet each story isnt related to one another
February 6, 2016
Short vignettes of Singaporians at home and abroad, their thoughts and aspirations. Very moving and sad in places, though also humorous. Great dialogue.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews