Stories - Singapore Hot Takes

"I think it’s my hunger for approbation that’s driven me to continue writing to this day."

"Singaporean literature has finally come out of its consciously postcolonial shell, and I love that."

"I try to tell stories of Singapore through the eyes of the small Tamil community in English, and put Tamil heroes and heroines at the front of these stories."

"The thought of eventually writing a book was on my mind, of course, but I always thought I’d do it when I was old and wise and had suffered enough."

"For me, the emotions are so deep and intense that the only way to survive is to find a way to articulate them so I do not drown within an ocean of my own making."

"Art for art’s sake is a valid, valued enterprise here; it was not always this way."

"I wanted to write about how the diaspora experience influences these women and adds to their complicated relationship to a country that at once feels like the motherland, but also seems foreign and confounding."

"I want to write novels that the teenage me wished had existed..."

"I remember clearly my mother bringing me and my sister to the public library quite often, and nearly every time I exited with an armload of new books."