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Writing home: Alfian Sa’at and the politics of Malay Muslim belonging in global multiracial Singapore
Citation
Poon, A. (2016). Writing home: Alfian Sa’at and the politics of Malay Muslim belonging in global multiracial Singapore. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 18(4), 498-511. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2015.1126191
Abstract
This essay focuses on Malay Sketches, a collection of flash fiction written by Alfian Sa'at, the only Malay writer in Singapore who has produced a substantial body of work in English. Alfian represents the specific dynamics of Malay identity and inter-race relations in Singapore, where contemporary pressures of globality complicate the colonial legacies entrenched in everyday cross-cultural interactions. In his writing he attempts to prise a gap in the seal between race, religion and language that the state's multiracial orthodoxy insists on enforcing, and to offer instead other permutations. By choosing deliberately to historicize structures of affect and sentiment, Alfian shows how the Singaporean state's official ideology and wide-ranging policies have played a significant role in constructing Malay subjectivities and informing their sense of being at home in Singapore.
Date Issued
2016
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Journal
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
DOI
10.1080/1369801X.2015.1126191