Brian Lee
Issue 1: RISE, July 2023
Singapore: Landmark Books, 2022
The opening poem of Jonathan Chan’s debut collection going home, “5 foundings”, traces the intricate and multilayered heritage of his ancestral families, traversing Asia and America, and following his forebears’ many journeys converging in Singapore. As someone who spent my childhood in three different countries, this complex expression of identity and a scattering of memory across nations particularly resonated with me. Born to a South Korean mother and a Malaysian father, Chan is equal parts poet and cartographer: mapping the emotional landscapes of his family from Seoul to Hong Kong, from Kuala Lumpur to New York—with Singapore as his epicentre.
The spirit of Chan’s collection is thus best encapsulated by its title: going home. The present continuous suggests that Chan’s process of searching for a place he belongs to is one that is never quite finished; as someone who has spent his formative years straddling continents, he is unable to pinpoint his belonging wholly to a singular place. Instead, Chan’s process of finding his identity is an amalgamation of his and his family’s travels.
Starting Point, Singapore
As the place where Chan traversed many important milestones, Singapore features as the centrepiece of the collection. Indubitably, as a person with multiple heritages, Chan faces struggles to fully integrate himself into the narrow confines of the official ‘Chinese, Malay, Indian or Others’ (CMIO) model of Singapore’s racial policy. In “yellowface”, the sting of his difficulties to fully belong as an individual of mixed heritage is recounted as a series of parallel, repetitive questions:
[…] why you
slang, where you learn Chinese,
[…] were
you the only Korean in your class?
your level? your unit?
The poem, in the form of Chan’s recounting of blunt and insensitive questions about his multicultural heritage, succinctly sets up the age-old societal dichotomy of the Self-Other, where the poet is relegated to the outsider and thus undesirable status of the Other. The process of “othering” based on racial differences sets up an unequal power dynamic whereby the “self” or in-group possesses more power based on certain characteristics deemed desirable, to which the “other” or out-group is denied, on the basis of the lack of said characteristics (Brons, 2015). The series of interrogations in “yellowface”, intentionally or not, reduce the poet’s multifaceted and complex identity to an undesirable status. The interrogative form “why you/ slang” seems to invalidate the poet’s use of language by questioning its necessity. In a similar fashion, “where you learn Chinese” levels an attack on Chan’s appearance; the subtext is that his physical features do not hint at his being proficient at the language of the in-group. Faced with the incomprehension of “furrowed brows”, Chan’s emotional response is that of resignation: he “stop[s]/ trying, settle[s] with unease”. Yet, the othering process does not end here. Chan is further isolated as the singular “only Korean”, against the daunting majority of the in-group: the overwhelmingly Chinese “class”, then “level”, and culminating with the implied brutality of the military “unit”.
In his personal essay “My time in the military” (Chan, 2020), Chan opines that “the ethics of learned violence are always complicated”. Herein lies another dimension to Chan’s difficulties at complete integration with Singaporean identity: the quintessential Singaporean male experience of mandatory two years’ service. In “real violence”, he details his personal distaste for the “learned violence” of the military:
it was the bite of a different
evening […]
i fought the
crawling fear, the revolt in my stomach
The choice of “bite” is a double entendre—Chan recalls the physical chill of the “breeze” that evening, while recounting the memory of being presented with a rifle brings back an indelible emotional pain. His “fear” viscerally “crawl[s]” through him, as though an insect; his feelings of “revolt” are so acutely felt that they manifest physically, in the “stomach”. Juxtaposed against his sensitivity are the reactions of less thoughtful “game boys”, who “drea[m] of/ disassembled bodies”. The idealism and hope of a “dream” combined with the sheer grotesqueness of the “disassembled bodies” produces a jarring effect on the reader. It is the poet’s protest against the trivialisation of such violence, as though it were an enjoyable activity, part of a “game”. Yet, ultimately, Chan finds solace in the catharsis of writing, as portrayed in ‘do it for your nation’:
in the months i learned
i couldn’t march to the
Singapore beat, the inky flurry
became an opiate
Chan’s comparison of his creative process to an “opiate” indubitably speaks to the angst that necessitated writing’s diversionary presence in his life to begin with. Instead of a deliberate act of creation, poetry takes on the role of a phenomenon he seemingly cannot control; it is illustrated as a prolific, unrestrained “flurry”. Chan continues to portray his work in a self-deprecatory manner with “indulgent/ smog”. Perhaps it is this self- proclaimed inability to “march to the/ Singapore beat”, due to his complex and multifaceted identity, that propels him outward—in search for a new place for nestling.
Turning Point, Cambridge
Chan’s relocation to Cambridge as a mature college student births a kind of complex attachment to his previous homes, and almost paradoxically, Singapore. Despite Chan’s evident discomfort and even occasional alienation at his difficulties to belong in Singapore, the subsequent loneliness he faces as a tertiary student can only be counteracted by a bittersweet homesickness. Indeed, in “two dovers”, there is a sense of Chan lingering in his memories, belonging fully to neither place—the epigraph reads “Between Dover, Kent, and Dover Road, Singapore”. The use of “between” truly creates the impression of the poet as wanderer and globetrotter, stationed in neither of the locations mentioned:
the eye forgets the koi pond
benches and the stolid ferns by trees;
the hands entwine with coarser grasses,
enclosing wildflowers and sainsbury seeds
Despite the image of the eye “forget[ting]”, it is that which is left unsaid by the poem that speaks to the nature of memory; it is clear that the heart remembers the vivid detail of the Singapore schoolyard scenery. Chan’s use of the definite article to refer to himself, “the eye […] the hands” as opposed to the pronoun (“my eye” or “my hands”) creates a distancing effect between himself and memory. It is as though the poet is a disembodied, passive observer, floating through time and space. This idea of dislocation is expanded upon in “i have lost track of the days”, where the tautological use of negative forms indeed reinforce the sense of “los[s]” as laid out in the title:
the warmth
of feigned festivity […] no
flashes of red nor ornamental
oranges […] deflated,
vacant stares
A bleak picture is thus painted of Cambridge during the festivities which Chan’s family celebrates. The entire poem hinges on a notion of absence, or falsehood: nothing can recreate the true “warmth” of being physically present with his family. Instead, he is forced to settle with the unsatisfactory, ironic alternative of “the warmth/ of feigned festivity”. The poet’s sentiments towards his new environs then give rise to a bittersweet homesickness, illustrated by the juxtaposition of the past and present in “i celebrated chuseok”:
eyes fixated on the round,
shimmery moon […]
i looked to the sky.
i couldn’t see the moon.
The Korean festival of Chuseok, typically referred to as Korea’s Thanksgiving Day, dates back to the nation’s past as an agrarian society. Chuseok is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, when a full harvest moon would appear and families would congregate to give thanks for the bountiful harvest (asiasociety.org, n.d.).
As with all other festivities, the poet views Chuseok as an occasion for reunion and familial bliss, and this is reflected in the underlying emotion of contentment in his childhood recollections: “round […] moon” —as opposed to “half” or “crescent”, symbolising incompleteness—and “delicious”. The homesickness of the present is a far cry from the happy picture of his childhood, with the negative form “nothing more […] couldn’t see” underscoring the poet’s deprivation at Cambridge, despite a “feast with friends”. In essence, Chan’s concurrent longing for home and unease at belonging in Singapore appear to be reconciled in the final lines of “dad stands at the gates of wolfson college”:
for the sake of those you
love: here, there, and everywhere.
Here, the poet seems to find acceptance and comfort in the seemingly permanent rootlessness that comes with having multiple heritages, a phenomenon that is portrayed as a natural coping mechanism for third culture individuals who face identity struggles. The term “global nomad”, coined by academic Barbara Schaetti, applies well here. Chan as a third culture individual appears to embrace the constancy of movement in his life and his family’s history, expressing a broader concept of home than a single physical location (Halme, 2019).
Solace, Memories (from all over the world)
A significant portion of going home also reveals Jonathan Chan as his family’s own historian. Besides recounting deeply personal feelings of angst and discombobulation as a third culture individual in Singapore, the other thread running through the collection shows Chan as a tender (and sometimes reverent) observer of his family’s many emigrations. In a world where he has yet to find a home in which to settle, Chan’s attachment to familial history vaguely resembles his own Noah’s Ark—a safe haven amidst the turbulence of a multinational childhood.
Chan’s formative experiences are rendered all the more complex by his personal intertwinement with both his maternal and paternal grandparents’ emigrations. “another life” reads almost like a travelogue, as he meticulously recreates his paternal grandparents’ shift to New York and Houston. He illustrates the former with broad yet precise strokes, painting New York as “the haven of low-tax suburbia, the ballast of private equity”. Beneath the materialistic veneer of New York lies the poet’s tender musings about his grandparents’ struggles as immigrants, “would melancholia have crept into knowingness on the trains to the city?” The subtle, gradual quality implied by “crept” also speaks to Chan’s acute observational skills: he surmises from personal experience that the emotional weight of “melancholia” seeps in quietly. In Houston, the immigrant couple’s difficulties at assimilating are rendered through the juxtaposition between the clamour of the “road rage and southern baptism, tomahawk steaks and oil money and strip-mall Chinatowns” and “the quiet forbearance of Mah Mah”. The use of “forbearance” evokes the image of his grandmother silently enduring the discomfort of her “every winter’s transit”. In a way, Chan’s identification with his grandparents’ suffering is a source of comfort for his rootless wandering in search of home.
In a similar fashion (also employing the tripartite form), “farewells” explores emigration through the perspective of his maternal grandparents. In Seoul, Chan recollects a heartfelt moment of grandmotherly affection upon his departure: “Halmoni gives us firm pats on the back (and slyly on the rear)”. The strength of his grandmother’s “firm” touch mirrors the intensity of her affection, while the somewhat cheeky “on the rear”, rendered in parentheses, encapsulates another aspect of his grandmother’s love: its tenderness. Yet, Chan’s poetic eye never fails to notice the suffering engendered by departure; through his Halmoni’s “pale, emaciated hands”, the reader is offered a glimpse into her underlying sorrow and pain at sending her grandchildren off. His grandmother’s frailty and vulnerability in these lines contains echoes of Chan’s own struggles at assimilation in Singapore, as well as homesickness at Cambridge. This longing is once again evoked as Chan recounts his departure from Singapore at the end of the summer break as he “hold[s] the few, stymied chapters of summer in [his] hands”. The metaphor of Chan “hold[ing]” his truncated summer speaks to an unwillingness to leave; the longing for home has already begun before his actual departure.
Reconciliation, through his Christian faith
The final sequence of Chan’s collection shifts his sights to the ultimate expression of his identity and self, through the love and tolerance espoused by his Christian faith. Chan’s Christian poems read like a creative synthesis of all his prior works, thematically unifying his central poetic concerns of identity, belonging and love. In “patience”, we see the poet seeking refuge in his faith, abiding by his God’s commands to exhibit the titular virtue, rather than constantly agonise over unresolved questions surrounding his identity, home and belonging:
i tried to tame
the errant flickers of a wandering mind,
to quell the fidgeting of anxious flesh […]
i learned that waiting was in the becoming
and held the words that were never my own.
Here, Chan’s rootlessness as a globalist is characterised as a state of being that plagues him instead of empowering him. The dominant image here is one of restlessness: “flicke[r]”, “wande[r]”, “fidge[t]”, “anxious”. Chan’s status as a third culture individual is a source of doubt and insecurity, something duly explored in Chan’s Singapore poems. This constant feeling of not belonging compels the poet to “wande[r]”, both in body and in spirit. Yet, the penultimate line of the poem seems to subvert his earlier struggles; he “learn[s]” and grows wiser with the help of his Christian faith. The religious exhortation to patience is promising for Chan—it engenders a “becoming”, allowing him to find himself amidst the disorienting chaos of emigration and relocation. The “words that were never [his] own”, presumably uttered by God or Jesus Christ, become a cherished refuge for him, compelling him to “h[old]” onto them.
In “geylang garden”, the poet also seems to be truly at peace with his return to Singapore after returning from Cambridge amidst the pandemic. In the locale of Geylang, Singapore, Chan discovers an uncommon wonder and spirituality amidst the seemingly inconsequential activity of gardening. Viewed through the lens of his ardent Christian faith, Chan finds the beauty in the ordinary as his Master’s creations:
Jesus has a green thumb.
i have felt it knead this loamy soil […]
Yet, no other poem expresses the notion of completeness more than the final “epistle”, carrying with it a beautiful and exquisite message of self-love that reads like a doxology:
i write a letter to myself.
i write a letter to my future self.
i write a letter to the self i thought i knew.
[…]
i write a letter to cosmic love.
i write a letter because cosmic love loves me.
Here, Christianity truly allows Chan to embrace all aspects of his multifaceted identity as they are, without judgement. The collection ends on a note of synthesis and completion, as Chan’s memories and struggles, as well as his family’s, are set aside for the poet’s communion with his God, from which he derives self-compassion and strength.
References
Brons, L. (2015, January). Othering, an analysis. ResearchGate. Retrieved
April 23, 2023, from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lajos-Brons/publication/273450968_Othering_An_Analysis/links/550234690cf2d60c0e62b678/Othering-An-Analysis.pdf
Chan, J. (2023, April 21). My time in the military. Varsity Online. Retrieved
April 23, 2023, from https://www.varsity.co.uk/features/18503
Chuseok: Korean Thanksgiving Day. Asia Society. (n.d.). Retrieved April 24,
2023, from https://asiasociety.org/korea/chuseok-korean-thanksgiving-day
Halme, K. R. (2019, May). Belonging everywhere and nowhere: The struggle of Third Culture Kids and their need for support in early childhood education and care. Laurea University of Applied Sciences. Retrieved April 24, 2023, from https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/172220/Halme_KirsiRebekka.pdf
Brian Lee is a (mostly) breaktime writer and poet from Singapore, who loves to tell people’s stories but hates being stuck in a crowd. He writes in an attempt to distill joy from the ordinary.