Miniatures: Small Kindnesses across Poisonous Knowledges
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Published:August 2023
This chapter focuses on accounts of mended and patched lives, exploring them for threads of kindnesses and poisonous knowledges. The forms of writing analyzed—novellas, short stories, and crafted memoirs—occupy a betwixt and between world of fiction and real lives. Jing-Jing Lee's two short novels sketch in emotional features of Singapore during three important periods: the years following World War II, in which children are lost and replaced; the 1980s, when children move from villages to high-rise apartments as part of planned urban renewal; and the 2000s, as elders move into small senior studio apartments. Danielle Lim's novel and memoir present complicating emotional features of public health crises over the same period involving leprosy, SARS, and nervous breakdown and schizophrenia. A tape recorder once again features, allowing an old woman to tell her tale.