I grew up in Singapore, a former British colony. English is a colonial language, but it is also the language I am most fluent and expressive in. It’s heartbreaking and alienating and fascinating to think of English as a force of infiltration because I write copiously for myself. I write in English about the moments and people who I cherish the most. I write descriptive details of what my loved ones were wearing, or I write down lines from conversations from years ago that I still think about, all in English.
English is the language of a colonizers but it is also me. Speaking and continuing to learn Chinese now is an act of reclamation, but a reclamation of a personal history that I didn’t grow up with.
I do speak Chinese when I’m bargaining for vegetables or ask my grandmother what she ate for lunch. But it’s in English, that I really say “you’re important to me” or “I’m thinking of you” or “look at this tree”.
What personal and collective histories haunt our words? Have I reclaimed these words for myself by using them so intimately, by using them as placeholders of love?
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what does your voice sound like? and how does it feel when you can speak in that way? (Juliane Okot-Bitek)
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A light year is the distance that light travels in a year. It’s both time and distance.
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Flatlands, A Romance of Many Dimensions (E. Abbott)