By Crispin Rodrigues

The Singapore I Recognise: Essays on Home, Community and Hope
Kirsten Han
Ethos Books (2023) / 264 pages / SGD 26.00

When Shu Hoong, my dearest editor, asked me to review Kirsten Han's The Singapore I Recognise, I was initially hesitant, not because of what she described as "self-policing" (234), but more so because I have been so used to reviewing fiction rather than non-fiction. What can I lend to a review of Han's masterpiece of a book? I do not hold a political science degree. What qualifications do I have to review not just a comprehensive socio-political commentary, but also an extensive body of activism work? What critical lens could I apply to one's personal political truths? But Han's work is testimony that all forms of activism begin with the seed of letting the political self take root and finding the soil of solidarity to let it grow.

The Singapore I Recognise is so much more than a commentary of systemic injustices in Singapore's socio-political landscape. Like what its title states, it comes from such a personal centre, which adds the much-needed oomph factor that so many academic commentaries lack. The book circumvents the academic tourism that so many academic texts tend to employ, and while it is unfair to expect that academics should be activists (although there is a camp out there that might disagree), it is the minutiae that Han raises that makes it such a compelling read, not as academic text alone. It is a Künstlerroman of an activist because the political commentary is a direct product of her own political awakening and subsequent involvement in anti-capital punishment and larger communal movements that lend gravitas to her voice. The framing of the memoir is structured along Han's gradually increasing political involvement, from her apolitical self returning from studies abroad to her job covering anti-death penalty movements into participation in the anti-death penalty movement and finding solidarity in the wider community. Perhaps what is interesting for me is the self-revelation that activism in the Singapore context is always "plung[ing] into the deep end" (27) – there is no manual to how activism takes place, no public narrative, no course of study. What this book does is to string it all together.

Throughout the book, what I thoroughly was engaged in was Han's subtle yet proactive use of contrasting logic, which foregrounds the purpose of the memoir. After all, the memoir genre is often used to juxtapose an 'objective' public understanding of an issue or event with one's personal 'subjective' take. However, Han employs very clear logical flows of thought throughout the book to enable us to see these juxtapositions at work. For example, in the an early chapter 'A Process of Unlearning', which questions how the education system seems to silence the act of complex questioning, she raises the "simple 'logic' that Singapore's 'War on Drugs' is based on" (27) as a series of equational statements that she considered as a young student (which I shall not recreate here lest it ruins the fun of its oversimplification) as a means to juxtaposing the more complex system of questioning that one should consider when handling these issues. These two contrasting perspectives allow for the criticising of the depoliticisation of the complex political web of issues that those in the education system might seldom raise within the classroom. Likewise, Han raises the censuring of information as a political issue which prevents further activism from taking place in the chapter 'All the Things We Do Not Know', reflecting that a lack of open representative data diminishes the capacity for criticism and activism in Singapore – "In a system where there is control over archives and information, the dominant party can selectively amplify or obscure perspective in accordance with their interests, propping up myths and stories that lend legitimacy to the party, its founders and the structures, literal and figurative, that they've built" (60). However, she also juxtaposes this with her personal experiences as a history student in school, where she found that Singapore's history "seemed linear and boring" (56) with its political omissions as opposed to more complex and politically interesting historical events such as "the Russian Revolution and World War II" (56). Hence, the logical manoeuvrings that Han employs throughout the book allow for the self-reflection in the manner the reader considers political issues and if they perhaps have only been scratching the surface of Singapore's larger political narrative.

The other element that I enjoyed thoroughly was the narrative of a threading of the history of activism in Singapore that we seldom see from a personal lens. There are several memoirs that one can purchase; Constance Singam's Where I Was (republished by Ethos Books in 2022) and Teo Soh Lung's Beyond the Blue Gate (Function 8, 2011) come to mind. However, I find that Han's book nicely weaves the history of activism together with her own anecdotal spin. In the chapter 'We are What We Remember', she discusses her meeting of Teo as part of a lunch commemoration of the 13 May movement (in which Chinese middle school students protested about serving in part-time national service on 13 May 1954) as being "still awestruck by the fact that I was directly communicating with someone who'd been a political detainee" (99) – an experience that carries the aura of someone fulfilling a teenage fantasy by meeting their favourite K-pop star. Likewise, referencing a photoshoot by Vogue Singapore in 2022, where Han was featured alongside two women activists, Constance Singam and Tammy Gan, as part of the historical trajectory of women activism in Singapore, she refers to these surreal moments as "seeing me in outfits approximating pyjama-wear than in Issey Miyake and slicked-back hair" (167) (also, the internal rhyming going on here is just… *chef's kiss*) which captures the seeming juxtaposition of the so-called glamour of activism that we see abroad and the realities of activism in Singapore. In the memoir, Han details the daily grind of activism first-hand – from writing articles to creating placards and making peaceful demonstrations, to meeting fellow activists in cafes. There is a perhaps a sense of self-wonder at how one gets things done in spite of the government's control of non-approved demonstrations, and also how one can make serious change with their voice. Or as Han puts it: "It was hard to reconcile these two states of being: a 'troublemaker' singled out by the state, and my lived experience of being an ordinary citizen sitting in front of my laptop wearing UNIQLO pyjamas" (177).

Han's work is as much personal poetics as it is political. It is an Ars Poetica to what is lacking in our discourse on political involvement and activism. Nobody wakes up resisting the state, and yet most, if not all of us, are political actors, as Han points out, with some having more political will to do something about it than others. The weaving of a layered yet accessible political commentary, alongside her personal and candid voice, is much needed in our political discourse today as it shifts from the ivory towers of universities to the hands of citizen journalists and social media users. It is a memoir that comes with its own blazing wit, sharp commentary and hopeful humour, and this reader is a stan.

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