英文

WHAT GIVES US OUR NAMES
by Alvin Pang
published by Math Paper Press

*

He’d gotten the idea from a book, not unlike the one you last read and loved, whose lurid covers you have already forgotten. For a canvas, he used not his own skin but his very life, spending his days as if he were made up of the most telling bits of other people. To do this, he learned to watch quietly and look deeply, past the busy surfaces until he could discern the colours beneath, the ones that did not change. One by one he would name them as he wove them into his heart in the deep of night. He touched you once, borrowing pieces of your story in passing. They are here still, in case you wish to look.

About the Book

Sex workers in Singapore — and most places around the world — tend to be dehumanised, glamourised or sensationalised by the public and media alike. Rarely do mainstream narratives centre sex workers’ voices and agency. The Missing Anthology presents fifteen bold new voices from sex workers, whose writings resist society’s simplistic assumptions about sex work. In these works, authors recount their lived experiences, share their struggles and triumphs, and imagine different futures for the sex industry.

Born from an open call and writing workshops organised by Project X — the only non-profit organisation in Singapore that provides social, emotional, and health services to people in the sex industry — these pieces daringly experiment with form, genre, and perspective. In these pages, you’ll find two “chickens” discussing their dreams while blowing up a condom; pieces on the dynamics of domme-ing and servicing second-hand hearts; essays on the importance of activism and its obstacles; short fiction exploring fantasies of violent liberation; tender letters to loved ones and younger selves that reflect on their journeys and how far they’ve come.

The Missing Anthology re-centres sex workers’ voices from the margins, bringing them into the conversation about an industry often treated as illicit and taboo. By doing so, it aims to address issues of inequality, social and economic mobility, stigmatization, and safety that are fuelled by misconceptions about sex workers and their profession.

Advance Praise

"I’ve been a sex worker since 2011, and even I found my eyes opened reading this collection. The stories, vignettes, and poems within feel like whispers of secrets, fragments of dreams, or the kind of raw, unfiltered honesty you only get from a deep chat with an old friend. Through the voices of Singapore’s sex workers, this remarkable anthology reveals the incredible diversity of joy, rage, hope, and humanity that exists in our lives.

Too often, others try to tell our stories for us — flattening them into stereotypes or sensationalised clichés. But this collection refuses to let those distant assumptions speak. These are our stories, told in our voices, with all the complexity and richness of lived experience. Reading it was deeply moving, at times heartbreaking, and profoundly real.

It is a rare privilege to see the world through these eyes — to be reminded of the shared, challenging, and beautiful gift of life in all its forms. I am honoured to recommend this work. It is vital, human, and, above all, true."

EVA OH, also known as 'Mistress Eva' — award winning International Dominatrix

"An inter-generational, inter-genre, and inter-spatial exploration of the lives of sex workers and their labour conditions in Singapore. Exciting, intimate, endearing, vengeful, repressed, and cathartic all at once, The Missing Anthology reflects the sweeping diversity of sex workers' experiences, motivations, and lives. From the streets of 80s red light districts in Singapore, the online chat rooms of the aughts, and the transgressive imagination of the empowered millennial, the anthology is a landmark publication that stabs a stiletto heel against the singular story and image of a deliberately misunderstood labour class. The stories of sex workers strain against a society’s ability or inability to accept its own desires and the people who work to fulfil them. This book is as necessary a reading as any about the nation, for behind these stories, the country finds an unwritten one of its own."

DIANA RAHIM — visual artist, writer, community worker and editor of Beyond The Hijab

About the Editors

Vanessa Ho (she/they) joined Project X in 2011 and became its executive director in 2019. Her tenure at Project X has provided her many valuable opportunities to meet and connect with sex workers in Singapore and around the world. She has also written and spoken extensively about sex work, human trafficking, rape culture, and LGBTQ rights in Singapore. Vanessa holds the view that if people can speak about sex, gender, and sexuality in open and in non-judgmental ways, society will become a safer place for everyone.

Raksha Mahtani (they/them) is a researcher-writer-facilitator and vice-president on the board of Project X. Notable contributions include working on the organisation's membership model, the voluntary industry exit programme, and report writing. Their master’s thesis research examines labour market hierarchies in Singapore’s sex industry, with research interests that nestle at the intersections of social inequality, friendship, migration, feminism, and multiracialism. Raksha has been published in rivulet 10 and Exhale, and has also performed spoken word as part of Sekaliwags and Mass Hysteria.

nor (they/them) is the Programmes Manager at Project X. Their favourite part of working at Project X is being able to experience the generosity shown by sex workers in telling their stories. Outside of Project X, nor is a multidisciplinary artist, poet and 1/6th of the Studio Ong collective.

'OTHERS' IS NOT A RACE (3RD PRINTING)
by Melissa De Silva
published by Math Paper Press
*  
What is a Eurasian? Are Eurasians Singaporean? What does it mean to be a Eurasian living in Singapore?

While having existed in Singapore as long as any other community, Eurasians, who comprise less than one percent of the population, still remain a fairly obscure group to many Singaporeans.

'OTHERS' IS NOT A RACE is a tapestry that weaves together the multiple genres of narrative fiction, creative nonfiction, literary food writing and family memoir, to offer insight into the micro-minority Eurasian community through the intensely personal lens of the writer's own experience living and growing up as a Eurasian in Singapore. Throughout are interwoven the themes of memory, loss, language, identity and cultural reclamation.

Similarly, it is a reflective and provocative journey of self-discovery; a journey the reader may also take to explore what it means to exist at the confluence of being Singaporean and being Eurasian, and to interrogate the liminal space between two cultures, Asian and European, occupied by this community

“We obsess about who they look like - the papa, the mama, a cousin, one or other of grandparents.

Mostly, they look like each other. Or like bugs. Or burritos.”

What does it truly mean to be a grandparent — to care for and nurture young life as you look back on your own, and experience the world afresh through their eyes?

The Art of Being a Grandmother: An Incomplete Diary of Becoming is an honest and heartfelt exploration of self — as a mother, grandmother, visual artist and writer. Following her acclaimed autobiographical play, Still Life (2019) with Checkpoint Theatre, Dana Lam invites you into her world as she chronicles the process of becoming a grandparent through her art and writings. The careful interweaving of candid, meditative journal entries with stunning watercolour and ink renderings of scenes of her daily life deftly captures the unique pleasures and challenges of grandparenthood. Poignant, tender, and funny all at once, this volume will delight readers of all ages with its warmth and wonder.

“Being a mother is, arguably, a choice for some.

Being a grandmother is a decision made for you by someone else.”

A 200-page visual journal by Dana Lam; edited by Huzir Sulaiman, with curation, design and layout by Marc Gabriel Loh.

Author's Bio 

Dana Lam is a visual artist and writer, and an Associate Artist with Checkpoint Theatre. In 2019, she performed her play Still Life, which she developed with Huzir Sulaiman and Claire Wong of Checkpoint Theatre over three years. It included a year of exploration and painting in her studio.

She most recently wrote and performed the erotic monologue Why Not Sex in Not Grey: Intimacy, Ageing and Being as part of the Festival of Women: N.O.W. 2021, directed by Noorlinah Mohamed for T:>Works.

Dana has performed in Jerome Bel’s Gala (TheatreWorks, 2016), Joavien Ng’s Incarnation of the Beast (TheatreWorks, 2015) and Dream Country – A Lost Monologue (Singapore Arts Festival, 2012). Her writing credits include the book Days of Being Wild: GE2006 Walking the Line with the Opposition (Ethos Books, 2006). Her visual art has been shown in the Singapore Art Museum and the Substation Gallery. Her 500-piece installation work When Bellies Speak: You Are Your Own Work of Art was held at Hong Lim Park on 8 March 2015.

Outside of performance, Dana has worked as a newspaper reporter and volunteered with AWARE (Association of Women for Action and Research), serving as its President from 2000-2002 and again, from 2009-2011.

“The land is furrowed deep with worry. The angsana trees are turning orange with pain.” This collection emerges, squeaking and poorly oiled, from this rubbish heap we’ve all piled up. It revels in the transfixing beauty of this last age of man. These poems have dwelt too close to the nuclear waste facility. These poems have traversed through fields of madness for grains for truth. These poems attempt to wring the last dregs out of language. Anything but Human grasps for a poetry beyond our collective exhaustion.

About the Author

Daryl Lim Wei Jie is a poet, writer and literary critic from Singapore. His first book of poetry is A Book of Changes (2016). He is the co-editor of Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet (2020), the first definitive anthology of literary food writing from Singapore. He was quoted in international media for his tabulation of similar texts in the plagiarism of the cookbook by Sharon Wee by Elizabeth Haigh. His poems won him the Golden Point Award in English Poetry in 2015, awarded by the National Arts Council, Singapore.

Change is what happens to everything: history is humanity's attempt to make sense of this inevitability. In his debut collection of poetry, Daryl Lim Wei Jie paints minute strokes that give way to panoramas, strewn with unusual asides: migrants crossing oceans; an ancient king reclaiming a throne; rivers clogged with corpses; the paperwork for an invasion; a milo dinosaur the height of Mount Everest. A Book of Changes is a young poet's attempt to make sense of the impossible ebb and flow of time.

In 2003, a young woman leaves home without telling her family that she is not coming back. She spends the next six years moving from house to house and living hand-to- mouth; at first with her lover, and then alone.

And The Walls Come Crumbling Down parallels three events in the author’s life: the physical deterioration of the house in which she lives, the emotional disintegration of a couple once in love, and the unearthing of childhood ghosts that can’t seem to be cast off. Part memoir and part poetic rumination, it is an ode to love, loss and the people and places we call home.

A Luxury: Omnibus Edition is simultaneously a time capsule and a time-machine. The first volume, A Luxury We Cannot Afford, bottled the lightning of poetry, prose and plays in 2015. The second, A Luxury We Must Afford, took a leap forward into the unknown future of Singapore. You will find something to please and pique every reader in this anthology.

SATORI BLUES 
by Cyril Wong  
published by Math Paper Press

*

Cyril Wong’s longest and only Zen-inspired poem to date, Satori Blues is a response to writings by teachers of Buddhism and post-Buddhist philosophies. Composed as a stream of thought—at times epigrammatic, philosophical, fragmented, even exclamatory—the poem has been described by The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English as ‘a sustained meditation that recalls turn-of-the- century Geoffrey Hill in its intricately patterned probing.’

THE MONSTERS BETWEEN US
poems by Jason Wee
published by Math Paper Press

*

In his debut poetry collection, Jason Wee returns to ‘1987’, the installation work he first introduced to art audiences at the first Singapore Biennale in 2006.

The monsters Wee renders are present creatures, some cruelly alive, each shadowed by a long tail of mastery and mortality. With interlocking sequences, Wee shifts from Grimm’s stories to the small frail species among us, arriving at the volume’s central sequence, “Unreliable Evidence”. Composed from newsprint, detainee reports, speech transcripts and redacted accounts, this bravura sequence is suffused with the songs of childhood and the anger of unaccounted injustices. We watch and listen to a voice come of age in a time of great superhero comics and romcom movies, pop music and primary schools.

"Engaging and thought-provoking... Wee presents a fresh  and ageless view of the bizarre and the mundane."

— Ovidia Yu

UNMARKED TREASURE
by Cyril Wong
published by Math Paper Press

*

A ghost steps out of its body after a suicide and looks back at it in wonder. The poet wonders at his own existence and struggles between actual living and a desire to depart. Recipient of the Singapore Literature Prize, this collection is Cyril Wong’s most personal sequence of poems, held together by memories about family life and intimate relationships, these moments charged with the pain of love, dreams and death and an unflinching exploration of the self.

Synopsis

A Pep Talk for Overachievers with ADHD Ever felt like your brain's running on panic, potential and pure guesswork? You're not alone – and you're definitely not broken.

This punchy, ADHS-friendly guide by neurodivergent educator Sharen Ong is your permission slop to slow down, reset, and laugh a little while figuring things out. Whether you're melting under your calendar, drowning in "shoulds", or procratinating with pride, this book gets you.

It's part pep talk, part toolkit, and part "you are not lazy" sticky note – all wrapped in humour, honesty, and real strategies that actually work for ADHD brains.

Inside, you'll find:

• For the burned-out, high-functioning chaos crew
• The perfect gift for your ADHD bestie (or yourself)
• Read it in one sitting or 37 – no pressure

About the Author

Sharen has 15 years of experience helping neurodivergent students, especially those with ADHD, Autism and Dyslexia, navigate a world that wasn't built for their brains. She's passionate about creating frameworks that actually works – so students can thrive, not just survive. 

When she's not leading support initiatives, for the SEN (special education needs) community at a university, Sharen enjoys making complex topics a little less complicated, whether through workshops or collaborative projects. Her goal? To turn the chaos of life into something that makes sense (or at least seems like it does).

When she's not working, you'll find her juggling 21 browser tabs, sipping her sixth cup of coffee, or laughing at her own ADHD moments (because let's be honest – there's always something). I Bit Off More Than I Can Chew is her first book, written to help others who often feel like they're holding it all together with nothing more than a to-do list and a prayer (or a song, maybe).

About the Book

A country’s history is like a jigsaw puzzle. The bigger picture of how a country and its people came to be can be pieced together through multiple narratives, perspectives, and stories. In Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves, Lio Mangubat reaches back into the depths of colonial archives and brings to life long-lost stories that would otherwise have been footnotes in Philippine history.

Featuring 13 essays inspired by his podcast series The Colonial Dept., Mangubat spins tales of galleons, triads, fickle spirits, long-lost maps, and the secret history of otters. In these pages, learn about how the entire country became mad for baseball; how Mexican fighter pilots flew dangerous missions over the Philippines during World War II; or how American occupiers fell victim to a mysterious illness called “Philippinitis".

Beyond revisiting days gone by, Mangubat also connects the threads of each story to the wider tapestry of world history — and how these can unspool even up to our current time. A masterful storyteller and podcaster, he proves that the past can loom larger than the present.


Praise for Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves

"Mangubat appears, more than anything, deeply invested in cultivating a joyful exploration of the country’s past."

Mekong Review
"Mangubat links past and present, knows a good character when he sees one, and writes engagingly .... Short-story collections are often a prelude for something longer: perhaps Mangubat can be the one to write a Filipino history that resonates with a wider English-speaking public. Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves is proof that there’s more than enough material."

Asian Review of Books
"We are, all of us, made of stories, Mangubat reminds us. Our families’ and individual lives’ tales are irremovable from the tidal wave of local and global stories. No story is too small, no person too inconsequential, as we all have parts to play in the never-ending drama of nation building."

Ex Libris Philippines
"For all intents and purposes, every chapter of Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves is a masterclass in RRL (Review of Related Literature)-writing, with Mangubat normalizing the practice for an enriched hold of history.While we see the same technique in the succeeding chapters, every page always surprises us as the author turns something we already know into its head and digs deep into the recesses of the past."

Esquire Philippines
"Philippine history is bursting at the seams with politics, intrigue, and  momentous events. With thousands of islands and several entry points serving as bases for business and exchange, there's no doubt these exchanges have resulted in byproducts that have left a mark on the culture. Author Lio Mangubat's podcast-turned-book Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves mines these many cross-cultural meetings and engagements to make unraveling the archipelago's past one entertaining ride."

SPOT.ph
"Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves tackles a wide range of topics, some peculiar and others a marvel to ponder."BusinessWorld

About the Author

Lio Mangubat is the creator of Philippine history podcast The Colonial Dept., which features long-lost stories from the country's past under Spanish, British, American, and Japanese rule. He is currently editor in chief of publishing house Summit Books, and is based in Manila. Follow him on Instagram at @liomangubat and @thecolonialdept.

About the Book

Malaysia is no easy country to analyse, or even to understand. With so many narratives about the country, its peoples, and its histories, the noise generated — both online and off — can be as deafening as that of any rave party.

Since 2019, Malaysians have lived through a unique period in the country’s history. Amid the Covid pandemic and its many challenges, Malaysia experienced three prime minister changes, and countless other political dramas and plot twists.

Signals in the Noise is not just a book on politics, though. Moving with ease between different sociopolitical and socioeconomic discourses, this collection of Ooi Kee Beng’s columns and commentaries — published between 2019 and 2023 — showcases more than ever his talent as a historian and philosopher, alongside his prowess as a political scientist. This wide-ranging collection is a must-read beginner's guide to Malaysian politics. It also highlights Ooi’s love for his hometown of Penang, his concern for the environment, and how the arts define a society and its perceptions of the world.

About the Author

Dato’ Dr Ooi Kee Beng is Executive Director of Penang Institute. He entered think tank work in 2004 and was Deputy Director of Singapore’s ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in 2011-2017, where he remains attached as Visiting Senior Fellow. His homepage can be found at wikibeng.com.

About the Book

In the humid dark of a eucalyptus-scented room, a woman named Hui lies on a mattress telling stories about herself to her listener, a little girl. She talks about her identity as the child of an immigrant, her feelings about being in a mixed-race marriage, her opinions on mental health. But as her stories progress, it becomes clear a volatile secret lurks beneath their surface. There are events in Hui’s past that have great significance for the person she’s become, but that have gone missing from her memory. What is it, exactly, that is haunting Hui? Who is the little girl she talks to? And who is Hui herself? 

As the conversation continues, what unfolds is a breathtaking, unexpected journey through layers of story toward truth and recovered identity; a memoir that reenacts, in tautly novelistic fashion, the process of healing that author Shze-Hui Tjoa moved through to recover memories lost to complex PTSD and, eventually, reconstruct her sense of self. Stunning in its originality and intimacy, The Story Game is a piercing tribute to selfhood and sisterhood, a genre-shattering testament to the power of imagination, and a one-of-a-kind work of art.

Praise for The Story Game

"A unique memoir that constantly undermines and reworks itself as it braids together episodes from the author's life, a destabilising approach that calls into question how accurately we can remember the past while we are still processing it."
Jeremy Tiang, writer and translator

Reading The Story Game is nothing short of an immense privilege. Shze-Hui Tjoa writes with her heart on her sleeve and the sanctity of her soul risked on every page. I wish every writer could pay testament to life—and our tricky relationship to the writing of life—the way she has done so earnestly, thoughtfully and playfully here.
Daryl Qilin Yam, writer, editor and author of Be Your Own Bae

Shze-Hui Tjoa has written a book that understands that stories are built out of erasure and silence, but they are also made from a relentless belief in transformation. To tell the story, again. And maybe this time, we might finally reveal what is hidden, even from ourselves. What a beautiful, brave act this book is of reclaiming, forgiving but also of un-naming. Sometimes stories teach us to say yes. This one reminds me we can also say No.
Lawrence Ypil, author of The Experiment of the Tropics

The Story Game is a truly inventive memoir told in the form of autobiographical essays that ask what it means to be political in body and mind while aspiring to always be more than we are. Nothing is as it seems in this memoir that’s both reflexive and reflective, and Shze-Hui Tjoa’s careful excavation of disembodiment’s nature knits together the very mind-body separation her memoir interrogates in a journey of healing that will have the reader questioning the narratives we cling to in order to survive. What emerges is an act of courage, confrontation, and intimacy rendered in beautiful, lucid prose.
Jemimah Wei, author of The Original Daughter

About the Author

Shze-Hui Tjoa is a Singaporean writer who lives in Edinburgh, UK. Her debut, The Story Game, was named a best nonfiction book of 2024 by Electric Literature and Paste Magazine when it was first published in the US and Canada. Shze-Hui is an editor at Guernica and Adi Magazine. Her writing has received support from arts organisations in the US, Portugal, Singapore, and Morocco. You can read her author interviews and find out more about her creative philosophy via her website, www.tjoashzehui.com.

Evocative and detailed, poetic and reflective, "Shaolin and You" takes a plunge into the pugilistic and epic world of Shaolin, bringing readers on a colourful journey to discover an ancient craft rooted in history and tradition.  A tribute and celebration of Shaolin Kung Fu, "Shaolin and You" delves into its history, origins, little complexities and lessons through a delightful feast for the senses - where chapters are stuffed with snippets of art, photographs, poems, anecdotes and illustrations of all things Shaolin.

Author's Bio 

Poon Yew Fai started practising pencil drawing as a serious hobby only after entering the workforce, despite having a love for it while growing up in Singapore. He also enjoys Hong Kong action, Kungfu and Wuxia films, especially those from the mid-1980s to 1990s - widely considered to be the golden age of Hong Kong action films. Yew Fai considers his blending of graphite drawing with digital effects an ongoing personal experiment, and is never quite sure how his next Kungfu artwork could turn out. Shaolin Musings is his first self-published collection of Kungfu artworks.