PY's reading biography.

Here are three of my earliest book-related memories that came to mind while thinking about how to start my reading biography.

1) My mom reading a book about kittens and me reading after her.
2) Reading The Wizard of Oz and being struck by the realization the pictures were made more entertaining and meaningful by the words.
3) Crying when Beast 'died' while reading the Disney picture book of Beauty and the Beast.

My parents are middle/lower-middle class so they really value education. They did the best they can buying me books. My mom bought me Enid Blyton and my dad encouraged me to read more Chinese books. Enid Blyton brought me to magical far-off places that didn't exist in reality and encouraged me to read more beyond Enid Blyton.

When I moved on to secondary school, I discovered this thing called "Literature." Like most girls, I was naturally good at English. Unfortunately, literature didn't come naturally initially. I had no idea what was going on until I read a friend's essay and some things about the subject finally clicked. My understanding of it then was that it was about "knowing people" and "trying to understand why they do the things they do." After that revelation, I enjoyed reading and understanding my lower secondary school texts (all except Anita Desai's incredible sleep-inducing Village by the Sea which I think contributed if not led to my eventual dislike and steering clear of diaspora and South Asian studies and what not) and learnt how to empathize with the characters and their plights; understand their motivations as well as reflect on and understand different social and cultural milieus and its relation to the one I find myself in.

I did 'O' level Literature elective and from this time of my life gleaned one life lesson. Life and experience will make you.. hopefully wiser. When I was in Secondary 3 and 4, I always puzzled over this line from Philip Jeyaratnam's Abraham's Promise: "Only in something that is wholly useless, utterly irrelevant, can we glimpse true beauty, the beauty of the divine." Till this day, I occasionally find myself thinking about and in a way, understanding how true this line is in random, odd moments. Outside of school, like most my age, I grew up with Harry Potter, watching him slowly turn into an angst-ridden teen like me and fall in love and and so on.

My decision to continue with literature in junior college was thanks to my secondary school teacher's belief in my ability despite not doing so well for 'O's. Junior college exposed to me a wider range of text types and more controversial subject matters. I was taught by a certain Mrs Teo to love texts that are so easy to hate i.e. Jane Austen's Persuasion and will forever remember texts such as Thom Gunn's "Carnal Knowledge" and Stoppard's "The Real Inspector Hound" and Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues that opened my eyes a little wider.

After I was done with 'A' levels, I read tonnes of plays because I decided I really liked plays and also because I had a job in City Hall (i.e. near Esplanade). I read Chekhov, Pinter, Beckett, Mamet, Neil Simon, Stoppard, indie scripts, prize-winning scripts, anything that sounded remotely interesting. I laughed, came close to tears, furrowed my brow intensely, gritted my teeth in frustration as I read them all. In between, I was watching lots of Woody Allen films and probably only read a handful of novels, a number by Neil Gaiman. I also took the time to read T.S. Eliot's Wasteland but couldn't go beyond superficial appreciation.

University exploded what I understood of literature. It was the genius of lecturers that awed me more than anything else - maybe more specifically the genius with which they unpacked, exposed and illuminated the genius of the text/author. During this time, I read a wide range of texts and enjoyed learning very much. However, can't say I was as hardworking as my peers so it's all half-past-six. During this time, I was very into American Literature, film and postmodernism and had a hard time liking, or even studying, anything written before 1850.

Today, I try to read as much as my self-discipline allows me to. However, I try to watch, read or go for good or great works of literature to maximise whatever free time I have. My reading style has also changed a little since uni. Instead of simply reading the text for enjoyment, I make an effort to be a critical and careful reader and seek clarity (enduring understandings???) in the reading of a text.