jazsfox's review
4.0
I don't usually review books but I feel like it this time since reading this felt particularly poignant as Kim Cheng Boey was my teacher for several semesters while I was studying Creative Writing/English Literature. I had this book sitting on one of my shelves for at least a good year or two after stumbling across it randomly in one of the many used bookstores I make my rounds at. After having just finished it today, I'm quite kicking myself about that now having finished my Bachelor of Arts a while ago because I really, really enjoyed it - especially since I don't usually read essay books - and can relate to a lot of what he was describing in relation to being a immigrant/emigrant as my family relocated to Australia as well (from Canada, rather then Singapore) when I was in my early teens. The way he was conveying the duality of belonging and not belonging in either country. The sense of wanting to return to that Mother country as you get a bit older but wondering if it's too late, if too much time has passed, too much has changed, if you've changed too much, for it to ever be possible again. This passage in particular really summed that up for me and resonated the most out of the various essays and I find myself doing this consciously and unconsciously all the time depending on who I'm talking too and what I'm talking about:
'One way to visualise this shifting ground is a mathematical trope you remember from problem sums you did in primary school. Circle A is for Australia and Circle S for Singapore. The overlap between the two circles is the shaded area where you dwell mostly. Determine what percentage belongs to A, and what to S. Sometimes the shaded area changes to the area excluding S; sometimes it migrates to the area excluding A. Most times it occupies the overlap between A and S, contracting and expanding by turns. In strange and uncanny moments the two circles come together, become one whole shaded area.
You are an emigrant to those you left behind and immigrant to your new friends.'
As I'm sure many other emigrants do too, there is a part of me that consciously stubbornly refuses to completely relinquish what Canadian strains still remain despite having spent nearly half of my life in Australia now. The way I talk, the words I use and still hang onto, the accent I continue to take pride in and have never once tried to water down and will away. But then there are other parts of that old life in Canada I know I've lost, it's been that long now, I was still young when we left, I can't remember places or faces anymore even if I try and will them up out of childhood memories. And that was where the point that Boey was making with circles really resonated as I know and can feel when those circles are shifting and I'm more Circle A or Circle C and those rare moments when they come together. I can't think of another passage I've read to date that's summed up those feelings as concisely and poignantly as that did.
This is absolutely a book I can see myself reading again in the future and recommending to others. I just wish I'd read this sooner so I could have talked to Boey about it in person when I'd had the chance.
'One way to visualise this shifting ground is a mathematical trope you remember from problem sums you did in primary school. Circle A is for Australia and Circle S for Singapore. The overlap between the two circles is the shaded area where you dwell mostly. Determine what percentage belongs to A, and what to S. Sometimes the shaded area changes to the area excluding S; sometimes it migrates to the area excluding A. Most times it occupies the overlap between A and S, contracting and expanding by turns. In strange and uncanny moments the two circles come together, become one whole shaded area.
You are an emigrant to those you left behind and immigrant to your new friends.'
As I'm sure many other emigrants do too, there is a part of me that consciously stubbornly refuses to completely relinquish what Canadian strains still remain despite having spent nearly half of my life in Australia now. The way I talk, the words I use and still hang onto, the accent I continue to take pride in and have never once tried to water down and will away. But then there are other parts of that old life in Canada I know I've lost, it's been that long now, I was still young when we left, I can't remember places or faces anymore even if I try and will them up out of childhood memories. And that was where the point that Boey was making with circles really resonated as I know and can feel when those circles are shifting and I'm more Circle A or Circle C and those rare moments when they come together. I can't think of another passage I've read to date that's summed up those feelings as concisely and poignantly as that did.
This is absolutely a book I can see myself reading again in the future and recommending to others. I just wish I'd read this sooner so I could have talked to Boey about it in person when I'd had the chance.
jeeleongkoh's review
4.0
I knew from his poetry that Boey is a restless traveler, but I did not know how restless until I read his recently published collection of essays Between Stations (Giramondo, 2009). The essays range, with its backpacking author, from Xian in China to London, via Calcutta, Kashgar, Cairo and Alexandria. The essays and their migrant author finally settle in Australia. Despite the ground covered, the book is not so much about travel as the reasons we travel.
Boey has many reasons for leaving his native Singapore but his deepest reason is to find a Singapore he has lost. Calcutta, with its street life, reminds him of Singapore in the late 60s. The crumbling colonial buildings and the waterfront of Alexandria bring back Singapore's old Esplanade. And inextricably entangled with these childhood memories is the memory of a father who abandoned the family time and again, and reappeared each time to take the son on walks around the old haunts.
There are wonderful evocations of travel destinations in the book. The essays on Du Fu's Xian and Cavafy's Alexandria are particularly fine, both places presided over by Boey's tutelary spirits. Du Fu moved his family all over the country in order to feed them. Cavafy's poem "Ithaca" has a special place in Boey's heart. I will certainly be reading these two essays again.
The most valuable part of the book, however, is the restoration, in writing, of an older Singapore now rapidly forgotten in the drive towards modernization. This restoration is accomplished through direct and memorable appeal to sight, smell and hearing. We see Dinky's House of Russian Goods, one of many shops selling knickknacks of all sorts in the Change Alley Aerial Bridge. We smell the five spices Boey's grandmother loved to use in her cooking. We hear the sad yet hopeful tune of Guantanamera, that ruled the Singaporean airwaves in the late 60s.
Two essays take up the sensory experience of memory for their theme, "Passing Snapshots" and "The Smell of Memory." They provide a good change from the predominant approach of these essays, which interweaves descriptions of foreign cities with memories of Singapore. Some of these essays were written earlier for different newspapers and journals, and so show some overlap of material. For instance, the memory of sleeping besides a grandmother appears in two different essays. The repeated descriptions of the walks with his father could also bear some trimming. The language is usually supple, concrete and direct, except where the author is "fascinated" in too many places.
Seen another way, these essays reflect on the formation of a major Singaporean poet. Striking to me in this regard is the lack of reference to other Singaporean poets or writers. The poetic touchstones in this book are T. S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Lowell, John Montague, Pablo Neruda, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas and Edward Thomas, besides the already-mentioned Du Fu and Cavafy. If I write about my own poetic development, I will show a similar lack of reference to Singaporean poetry. Poetry by Singaporeans just had not been a part of our growing up. Things may be changing but the change is slow, haphazard and uncertain. These essays by Boey Kim Cheng may help to make the change a little more permanent.
Boey has many reasons for leaving his native Singapore but his deepest reason is to find a Singapore he has lost. Calcutta, with its street life, reminds him of Singapore in the late 60s. The crumbling colonial buildings and the waterfront of Alexandria bring back Singapore's old Esplanade. And inextricably entangled with these childhood memories is the memory of a father who abandoned the family time and again, and reappeared each time to take the son on walks around the old haunts.
There are wonderful evocations of travel destinations in the book. The essays on Du Fu's Xian and Cavafy's Alexandria are particularly fine, both places presided over by Boey's tutelary spirits. Du Fu moved his family all over the country in order to feed them. Cavafy's poem "Ithaca" has a special place in Boey's heart. I will certainly be reading these two essays again.
The most valuable part of the book, however, is the restoration, in writing, of an older Singapore now rapidly forgotten in the drive towards modernization. This restoration is accomplished through direct and memorable appeal to sight, smell and hearing. We see Dinky's House of Russian Goods, one of many shops selling knickknacks of all sorts in the Change Alley Aerial Bridge. We smell the five spices Boey's grandmother loved to use in her cooking. We hear the sad yet hopeful tune of Guantanamera, that ruled the Singaporean airwaves in the late 60s.
Two essays take up the sensory experience of memory for their theme, "Passing Snapshots" and "The Smell of Memory." They provide a good change from the predominant approach of these essays, which interweaves descriptions of foreign cities with memories of Singapore. Some of these essays were written earlier for different newspapers and journals, and so show some overlap of material. For instance, the memory of sleeping besides a grandmother appears in two different essays. The repeated descriptions of the walks with his father could also bear some trimming. The language is usually supple, concrete and direct, except where the author is "fascinated" in too many places.
Seen another way, these essays reflect on the formation of a major Singaporean poet. Striking to me in this regard is the lack of reference to other Singaporean poets or writers. The poetic touchstones in this book are T. S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Lowell, John Montague, Pablo Neruda, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas and Edward Thomas, besides the already-mentioned Du Fu and Cavafy. If I write about my own poetic development, I will show a similar lack of reference to Singaporean poetry. Poetry by Singaporeans just had not been a part of our growing up. Things may be changing but the change is slow, haphazard and uncertain. These essays by Boey Kim Cheng may help to make the change a little more permanent.
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