Singapore Literature and Culture: Current Directions in Local and Global Contexts

✍ Scribed by Angelia Mui Cheng Poon (editor), Angus Whitehead (editor)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 310
• Series: Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature 40
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Since the nation-state sprang into being in 1965, Singapore literature in English has blossomed energetically, and yet there have been few books focusing on contextualizing and analyzing Singapore literature despite the increasing international attention garnered by Singaporean writers. This volume brings Anglophone Singapore literature to a wider global audience for the first time, embedding it more closely within literary developments worldwide. Drawing upon postcolonial studies, Singapore studies, and critical discussions in transnationalism and globalization, essays unearth and introduce neglected writers, cast new light on established writers, and examine texts in relation to their specific Singaporean local-historical contexts while also engaging with contemporary issues in Singapore society. Singaporean writers are producing work informed by debates and trends in queer studies, feminism, multiculturalism and social justice -- work which urgently calls for scholarly engagement. This groundbreaking collection of essays aims to set new directions for further scholarship in this exciting and various body of writing from a place that, despite being just a small ‘red dot’ on the global map, has much to say to scholars and students worldwide interested in issues of nationalism, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, neoliberalism, immigration, urban space, as well as literary form and content. This book brings Singapore literature and literary criticism into greater global legibility and charts pathways for future developments.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Singapore Literature in English
SECTION I
1 We who have no country but our century: Wong May, Singapore-Stateless Poet
2 ‘A Kind of Pursuit’: On Boey Kim Cheng’s Poetry
3 A Luxury We Cannot Afford: The Poetry of Yong Shu Hoong, Toh Hsien Min, and Boey Kim Cheng
4 A City Without a Nation: Personal and Collective Memory in the Fiction of Gopal Baratham
SECTION II
5 The Social Life of Genres: Short Stories as a Singapore Form
6 Of Language and Beyond: Enoch Ng Kwang Cheng, firstfruits, and Singapore Literature
7 Singaporean Literature and Global Modernism: Wang Gungwu, Lloyd Fernando, Lydia Kwa
8 ‘Leeet lor’: Singapore Plays as Drama
SECTION III
9 Super-Diversity and Its Implications in Two Singapore Texts
10 Strangers, Surrogates, Lovers: Foreign Domestic Workers in Contemporary Singapore Texts
11 In Praise of Failed Men (and the Woman Writer): Gender Politics in the Singapore Novel
12 Singapore as Strategic Location: Setting and Positionality in Goh Poh Seng’s If We Dream Too Long and Lydia
13 Burning in Your Hands: Singapore’s Queer Literary Tradition
Notes on Contributors
Index