s/pores

Welcome to the second issue of s/pores. This issue focuses on the theme of Memory and History.

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Philip Holden

Wang Gungwu is best known as a historian of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, and for a stellar academic career commencing at the University of Malaya in Singapore and culminating in periods as Vice Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, and Director of the East Asia Institute, National University of Singapore. Like [...]

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Wang Gungwu
The Singapore Heritage Society presented a public talk by Professor Wang Gungwu, then Director of the East Asia Institute, on 10 April 2006 at the National Library, entitled “Learning Me Your Language”. Professor Wang discussed the politics of decolonization and English language writing in Singapore/Malaya in the early 1950s, a period when he [...]

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Wang Gungwu
From The Malayan Undergrad, Vol 9 No 5 July 1958

When I was a schoolboy a little more than ten years ago, no one talked of such a thing as Malayan poetry. It was not even known if there was any poetry written by people who lived in Malaya.

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Wang Gungwu

Quavers quiver along the violin strings
And fingers grasp the: whale-skin threads,
Trace the image of hallowed things.
Hark the bass dum dum
Followed by the swish swish feet;
And the talking jerky with the swinging beat.

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Wang Gungwu

The moon, impure as ever, like tea-leaves,
Coffee dregs, on a cup of cream, cleaves
On to drooping leaves of rubber trees,
Scatters bright thieves to steal the keys
That open to mem’ries of home.

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Sai Siew Min, with Lim Cheng Tju

CC Chin: I have my ways. After all, history is not something that can be monopolized by a few individuals. Hundreds of thousands of people were involved in this movement. If I include supporters and sympathizers, there could be a million people involved over such a long time period. [...]

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Loh Kah Seng
In the interviews I did in 2005 at the Singapore Leprosy Relief Association (Silra) Home with individuals who formerly suffered from leprosy is a statement which keeps returning to me, reminding me of the complex relationship between history and memory. The words came from two of the Home’s residents, good friends Lim Ah [...]

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Edgar Liao
Few young Singaporeans today would know of Dennis Joseph Enright, a name that might ring only faint bells to some from older generation. As Professor of English at the University of Malaya in Singapore, he had taught for a decade between 1960 and 1970. Enright is inadvertently remembered for his role as key antagonist [...]

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Tan Jing Quee
December 2001

The passing away of Usman Awang in November 2001 was in many ways, a watershed in the literary history of Malaysia and Singapore. He was perhaps one of the few literary giants who are known on both sides of the Causeway, read by a diverse section of the reading public. He is [...]

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Hong Lysa

‘In preparation/preparedness for being forgotten’, (beiwanglu, 备忘录 ) the Chinese title for Tan Pin Pin’s Invisible City (2007) involves an overlapping process, both bracing oneself for that inevitability yet also doing what one can to forestall memories from being lost. Tan Pin Pin’s camera documents individuals who in varying phases of their lives have [...]

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PJ Thum

2007 marks the 30th anniversary of Prof. Mary Turnbull’s A History of Singapore, a landmark work which has defined the field of Singapore historiography since its publication. On Saturday, 9 June 2007, a conference was held at St Antony’s College, Oxford, sponsored by the Asian Studies Centre, St. Antony’s College, in order to both [...]

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