balik kampung "review"

from my goodreads:

Balik Kampung - "return to village" - a phrase that's existed in the aural landscape of my life since I was little. In many ways, returning to Singapore after being abroad is difficult. There is disconnect, there is confusion about what building a home means, and whether the country I find myself moving through is still that - my home? This is something I struggled with coming home on my breaks from school, and though there was normally a period of adjustment, I always found it funny how as soon as I'd begun to adjust to life here, it was a sure sign that I was a few days away from leaving again - it was one of those quirks I felt life played for me, one I had to smile and take. Coming home again for National Service, I knew it would be the case that I'd be leaving again anytime soon, and settling into Singapore has taken time and genuine concerted effort. It's not just about going out, doing things, meeting friends: it's about the way you approach those things, a mindset. It's unlearning my distaste for things in Singapore that weren't westernized, teaching myself to untangle a view of interesting from my ideas of Western society. Examining and reinterpreting an aesthetic sensibility that I didn't even know was being dictated to me. All this and much more is required to look at this place with brand new eyes. One of my favorite ways to see has been through my commitment to reading Singaporean literature. And in this way, Balik Kampung 2A: People and Places, has not disappointed.

What a veritable delight, a smorgasbord of gifts, that this book leaves its reader. It's funny - in one of the author's notes, where they detail their connection to the place they've written about, they write how funny it is to them to gander to the East Coast of Singapore and feel like they are in a completely different world. I have often felt the same way too - how small Singapore is and yet how many places have I never laid my feet in? Luckily for me, this book helps me do some of the work of exploring a country I've spent most of my life living in. It provides a map of Singapore - and then generously fills in every contour, every space, with characters, who have rich emotional interior lives: they have hopes, dreams, thoughts, irritations, loves, and more. I so thoroughly enjoyed reading these stories, not only because reading short stories always leaves me amazed by the talent of writers to assemble something so simple and concise, but packed with so much depth. Thinking back now, I can recall such delight I took in reading of wonderful idiosyncratic characters, so specific, so believable, that they jump off the page. I think this is the blessing of reading local literature: they help me to take what I regard as mundane in my brain, and they make it important. They take something as simple as the clouds rolling by and make it beautiful - teaching me to make it beautiful too. It's the depictions of Singapore in it's earlier days, the descriptions of playgrounds, kitchens, libraries, all these spaces so familiar to me; and filling them with the magic of imagination. I can't stress enough how fulfilled I feel reading this book. Reading it brings up so much for me to ponder and reflect on: my relationship to our helper at home, how integral a part of my family she is, and how anguished I'd be if she left, yet acknowledging that she came into our home in order to support her own family overseas. This is just one example of the way this book has made me think deeply about my life here and the country I inhabit.

These stories ache with longing, with struggle, with hardship - but also an understanding that this is what living is all about, and they give Singaporeans the space to be; to live their lives just the way they already are. I am so thankful to live a life with them in it. In reading this I am returning to my village, happy to be going back.