Singapore local sheds light on the dark side of the city

IF you weren’t big on Singapore before, you might have been convinced after watching Crazy Rich Asians.

The box office success is like a two-hour tourism ad for Singapore, dazzling audiences with its delectable looking food and glorious sights.

Singapore also has a reputation as one of the world’s safesty tourist destinations, but those who have grown up in the city also know of its dark side.

Poet Deborah Emmanuel doesn’t look Singaporean, so from the outset she never felt like she necessarily fit in.

She only spoke English in a city made up mostly of Chinese, Malay and Indian cultures.

When she was just 19 she was sent to jail. Police raided a wild nightclub party and Ms Emmanuel was made to do a urine drug test.

She spent six months in the Changi Women’s Prison and six months in a halfway house.

“I feel a lot of strong things about incarceration and government control,” she said.

“We grew up with this idea that’s been hammered, you better watch your back, they can get you.

“Everyone is a little bit afraid — that’s the image Singapore wants to get across — and it works.

“There’s super-low crime rates, it’s supposed to be one of the safest places in the world. It’s this idea if we make everyone afraid to push boundaries they don’t do it.”

Ms Emmanuel said she felt as if she was “brainwashed”, that she deserved to be in jail and everything was “black and white”.

When she was released Ms Emmanuel turned to writing as an outlet chronicling her experience.

She still lives in Singapore, and since her stint in prison has been a regular guest on TEDx panels, discussing cultural heritage, classism and womanhood, and has performed as both a slam poet and musician with her various bands at festivals worldwide.

This weekend Ms Emmanuel will perform her new work Alien Flower In Fundamentalist Fields, dissecting cultural identity, and gender inequality, at Sydney’s Story-Fest for the very first time.

“There’s a line from one of my poems, Unidentified Object, about feeling alien even within your own natural space, which is a recurring experience for me,” she said.

“Most people fit quite neatly in one of three groups in Singapore — Chinese, Malay and Indian.

“A lot of people when they look at me, Singaporeans ask me where I’m from and I have to justify it because I don’t speak like it, I don’t look like it.

“But I accept and embrace the ‘otherness’ because it allows me to embrace my identity.”

This weekend Australia’s largest performing writers’ program, Story-Fest ‘18, brings together the world’s wittiest word masters for three days of poetry slams, talks, and live literary mayhem at The Rocks and Sydney Opera House.

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