Where I Was: A Memoir About Forgetting and Remembering

By Constance Singam
Non-fiction/Ethos Books/Paperback/299 pages/$24 before GST/Buy here 
5 out of 5

A powerful passion for life shines through stories of grief, injustice and marginalisation in veteran Singaporean activist Constance Singam's updated memoir.

This reissue includes new reflections from her on the Aware saga, as well as current advocacy movements, ageing and mortality.

It made headlines last month when its launch at The Arts House was pulled, drawing backlash from the arts community. It was eventually launched at 10 Square in Orchard Central.

The book moves chronologically through her early years in the South Indian state of Kerala, her return to Singapore after World War II and her education.

It also recounts her widowing at age 42 after the death of her husband, journalist N.T.R Singam, and her involvement and growth as an activist in Singapore.

Most marked is her involvement with Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware), the gender equality advocacy group set up in 1985. She was first a member before rising to become president.

Singam details her role in the growth of Aware and the setting up of civil society groups such as migrant worker advocacy group TWC2 (Transient Workers Count Too), giving an inside look at the people and processes behind the often- maligned work of activists here.

She also goes into great detail about the hostile takeover of the secular Aware in 2009 by a group of Christian women, which has come to be known as "The Aware Saga".

She articulates what the takeover cost her and her allies professionally and emotionally. It was this event that precipitated the first version of this memoir, published in 2013.

She frames it as a conflict of cultures, "one a slightly chaotic, democratic, inclusive, exuberant culture, and the other, conservative, paternalistic and authoritarian".

"The two groups were like chalk and cheese."

While her memoir is deeply involved in the critique of Singapore's politics and culture, as well as political, social and literary theory, she addresses these heavy subjects with a consistently light and even hand.

Her prose is clear and lyrical, and her structuring of human experience is elegant and articulate.

Her chapters begin by dividing time around world and local events, such as the 2001 bombing of the World Trade Centre in the United States and the race riots of the 1950s in Singapore, sketching their rippling effects on her personal life.

But the book is also full of texture in the form of anecdotes and tales of family, touching on her religious upbringing and her adult ideas on faith, as well as smaller stories like having nits taken out of her hair as a child by nuns at school.

It is through moments like this that Singam dexterously addresses the struggles she faced as a widowed Indian woman in Singapore.

She writes that she was only able to share the incident with the nits as a member of Aware, because of the prejudice behind the singling out of her and her siblings - that they were viewed as "unclean" due to a stereotype about their race.

It is in this expansive, associative style that Singam carefully teases out her experiences of discrimination. In doing so, she holds space for herself and others who feel marginalised in modern Singapore.

If you like this, read: The Best I Could by Subhas Anandan (Marshall Cavendish, 2015, $31.99, buy here, borrow here), a memoir by Singapore's most famous criminal defence lawyer, detailing his career as an advocate in Singapore's criminal justice system.