Dear reader,
Jom’s new head of research. Sakinah Safiee, our current social media manager, will also be taking on the duties of head of research. “Saki” emerged as our top pick after an intense recruitment involving over 40 applications (thank you, all). Saki’s replacing Jean Hew (aka Employee #1), who’ll be writing a farewell newsletter next week after three years at Jom, and will remain in our wider orbit as the host of Jom’s first-ever podcast, still in the works. Read more about Saki and the rest of our team here.
Jom’s general election (GE) coverage. We’re ramping up, in preparation for the GE. Rather than flood your inbox, we’re going to be posting more stuff on Jom’s social media channels—like this week’s rapid response to the Pritam verdict, and his desire to “step up”. If you want to be kept up to date on the GE, please follow us now on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and/or LinkedIn.
- Did Lawrence’s “I will provide” budget win over Singaporeans? Or make them wary of being bought?
- Will Pritam’s “Step up” slogan help him win new fans despite the guilty verdict?
- Pannir Selvam’s stay of execution amidst incredible cross-border solidarity
- Shocking, undeserved vitriol towards ST’s Teo Kai Xiang for tackling misogyny
- Historian Faizah Zakaria’s award–winning book on religion and ecological change in South-east Asia
- “Right-sizing” Books Kinokuniya
- Did DeepSeek use Singapore to circumvent controls and get Nvidia chips?
And more, in our weekly digest. Read it now.
Essay. What does it mean to be a migrant to Singapore? What are the “push” and “pull” factors involved when a person leaves their home for Singapore, and how do these shape their being once they’ve joined us on this little red dot? What does belonging here really mean?
These are some of the fascinating, knotty issues that Aditi Shivaramakrishnan contemplates in “Movement as survival: the migratory paths of ‘Eclipse’ and ‘The Troupe’”, her third piece of criticism for Jom. She does so through reviews of two plays that grappled with forced displacement at the recent Singapore Fringe Festival.
“Eclipse” is about three generations of Sindhi men, all played by the same actor, Shrey Bhargava. It’s a restaging of a play first written by Haresh Sharma in 2007 about how one small family navigates the massive political displacement of Partition, from 1947 to the present day.
“The Troupe” is by Birds Migrant Theatre, which comprises migrant workers here. It’s a play within a play, where we witness a fictional troupe of actors rehearse a series of vignettes about displacement and migration.
Like so much good criticism, this review is as much a story of the works it responds to as it is of the author. Aditi begins: “As a young first-generation migrant, I sometimes felt fettered by my over-dutiful nature and fatigued by my tendency to hyper-empathise. Durga Chew-Bose, in her essay ‘How I Learned to Stop Erasing Myself’, described herself as “first-generation and in turn, proficient at splintering who I am in order to accommodate everyone else’s environment”. When asked about my aspirations, I gave brief, diplomatic answers that adults were happy to hear. I didn’t want to disappoint my family…Choice feminism suggested I could, and should, do anything I dreamed of. The model minority narrative reminded me of everything I shouldn’t say or do.”
Jom baca,
Sudhir
Editor-in-chief, Jom
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