Skip to main content

Emily

"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety."

"Do you understand what made me what I am?... I learned that a woman is nothing in this world that men have made, except in the role that men demand of her. Your life is meaningless, you have no value, except as you are a wife and mother: then be the very devil of a wife and mother... so that husband and son and sister-in-law must all depend on you, so that you control them and keep them in the palm of your hand. So that the

Whole World knows your Worth -

So that a screaming girl-child,

long ago, may be reassured that her life has some significance,

that no-one is going to throw her back into the gutter."


"It's all over now. It's all past, it can't be changed..."

"'How to sell,' I said, 'This is the family house for you all to stay.'"

"They sound like voices laughing and talking, echoing in the house."

"Enough driving now, Richard. Mother is getting very tired, you take me home now. Ya, I want to go home and sleep. You are a good boy, you take care of Mother, ya?... My big strong son."


My Old Kentucky Home
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,
'Tis summer, the darkies are gay,
The corn top's ripe and the meadow's in the bloom
While the birds make music all the day.
The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy and bright:
By'n by Hard Times comes a knocking at the door,
Then my old Kentucky Home, good night!

CHORUS:
Weep no more, my lady,
Oh! weep no more today!
We will sing one song
For the old Kentucky Home,
For the old Kentucky Home, far away.

They hunt no more for the possum and the coon
On the meadow, the hill and the shore,
They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,
On the bench by the old cabin door.
The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart,
With sorrow where all was delight:
The time has come when the darkies have to part,
Then my old Kentucky Home, good night!

The head must bow and the back will have to bend,
Wherever the darkey may go:
A few more days, and the trouble all will end
In the field where the sugar canes grow.
A few more days for to tote the weary load,
No matter 'twill never be light,
A few more days till we totter on the road,
Then my old Kentucky Home, good night!



Emily you are my grandma, 
you are my grandaunt, 
and I love you even if I cannot understand you. 

But I think I do. 
Or at least I think I will. 

When I look back on my mistakes, on the life I've lead, perhaps I shall. 

Is it too simple to say that you are a woman who simply tried her best. I fear it cheapens your story. 
Who are you but a work of fiction? 
Who am I but a face in a long line of readers? 

Emily, you are so far from me. 
I know nothing about the things you are so sure of. 
I know nothing of Peranakan recipes, Malay words, and housekeeping.
I know nothing of what it is to be a woman in 50/60/70/80s Singapore,
a linguistic master, a polyglot of Singaporean renown. 

You are the jewel of Singapore, 
a light on the hill. 

You are so far from me,
but you illuminate nonetheless. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thematic summary of When It Changed by Joanna Russ

Joanna Russ’ When It Changed centers on a human society made entirely up of women on a planet called ‘Whileaway’. The human colony is void of men because of a plague that occurred thirty generations ago. The females that remained after the plagued managed to survive without the males by a process that sees the merging of ova. This allowed women to reproduced with women, taking away the need for penetrative reproduction and thereby making redundant the role of men in the human reproductive cycle. The story begins when four Russian astronauts arrive on Whileaway. All four of them are male, which makes them the first 4 men that have set foot on the planet in hundreds of years. Their arrival has a profound effect on the women they meet, and we see this effect from the perspective of Janet, a thirty-four-year-old woman that is married to Katy, with whom she has three children. Upon meeting the four men, Janet is immediately taken aback by their physical size – “They are bigger than we ar
Post a Comment
Read more

Thematic Summary of The Star by H.G. Wells

H.G. Well’s wrote The Star in 1897, but apocalyptic/disaster fiction had already existed for thousands of years. Well, the authors didn’t think they were writing fiction, but nevertheless, they were still writing speculative ‘non-fiction’. A quick Wikipedia look-up on Google will tell you that hundreds of seers have prophesized the end of mankind. Unfortunately, fortunately, they have all been wrong! Yet, these countless predictions prove a point about our very own human nature: many of us have fetishized the ‘end of the world’. Christians call it the rapture. Vikings called it Ragnarok. Others called it the Apocalypse. All these stories about our eventual end on this earth have a common thread: there is some greater reason for our end to occur – most of the time, it involves the triumph of good over evil. This is where The Star differs in its narrative. Instead of focusing on some grand narrative of good gods achieving a final victory over the forces of evil, it sticks to d
2 comments
Read more

Inheritance [Balli Kaur Jaswal]

I really shouldn't attempt to write this... as if this were an assignment due on Monday. It isn't, so I shall not.  Two days - it took me this to finish my first SingLit novel, as far as I can recall.  It was about a family who goes through tough times. This family was Sikh. This family was Singaporean. This family felt, for a few heart-wrenching seconds, like my own.  Dalveer and Harbeer have three children: Gurdev, Narain, and Amrit. Karam is Harbeer's nephew, but he doesn't get to be a narrator in the story, so, screw him. Also, he's an asshole.  We see their story unfold over a period of twenty years - this is paralleled by Singapore's own growth as a nation. We see the effects of rapid industrialisation on the nascent city state, and we begin to identify some of the more... unspoken problems faced by its people. In its endeavour to grow, advance, burgeon -- people, genuinely good people, are left behind. In our  struggle for success, the few am
Post a Comment
Read more