Angelia Poon

Esther Vincent

Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore contemplates and re-centres Singapore women in the overlapping discourses of family, home, ecology and nation. For the first time, this collection of ecofeminist essays focuses on the crafts, minds, bodies and subjectivities of a diverse group of women making kin with the human and non-human world as they navigate their lives. From ruminations on caregiving, to surreal interspecies encounters, to indigenous ways of knowing, these women writers chart a new path on the map of Singapore’s literary scene, writing urgently about gender, nature, climate change, reciprocity and other critical environmental issues. In a climate-changed world where vital connections are lost, Making Kin is an essential collection that blurs boundaries between the personal and the political. It is a revolutionary approach towards intersectional environmentalism.

Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore

Loved, loved, loved this. A new favourite. Reading this was like a meditative exercise in regrounding in body, self, and the earth. With threads exploring decolonial sentiments, land reclamation, and cis/het/patriarchal norms, this is a book that insists on kindness and empathy--as Tim Min Jie puts it, "Centering joy and care... is a revolutionary act." 

Standouts for me included:
- Tania de Rozario's "There Will Be Salvation Yet", which, throught the lens of horror movies, distills the exact intersectional discourses of madness, femininity, and queerness (with a good splash of religious trauma) that has lived in my brain rent free for years. 

"Between broken belongings and a broken heart, you learn quickly: when they say something inside you needs casting out, it is you they are referring to. 
And that is fine. Because you will cast yourself from this place. You will conquer the wilderness and become it. You will revel in your rage, be consumed by the jaws of your own wild hunger. And it will be delicious. And there will be salvation yet." 

- Andrea Yew's "Grappling", about grounding the self through understanding the body, knowing limits and embracing strength, particularly those at odds with patriarchal constructs

"But are women really empowered or have we just raised the bar of what it means to be a successful woman without taking anything off her plate? (...) When there is no one explicitly pinning you down, how do you know when to tap out?" 

- Ann Ang's "The Bird Without a Name", about birdwatching, reframing the way we/Singaporeans see nature as appendage to urbanity, and taking the time to know the names of the things in the ecosystem around us 

"Perhaps the name of a bird attains its full, winged life only in the presence of the bird itself, and in the secret, ineffable rush of wonder that belongs to no one else but those who set eyes upon it. And so, a bird takes you out of yourself, only to return you to an enlarged perspective of where you sit in the wider ecology of our green earth." 

- Tim Min Jie's "Care is Revolutionary", about centering care in activist work and its necessity for the sustainability of movements, as well as disability access 

"We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors before us and so will future generations on us. We are not the start or end point. (...) Centring joy and care in our movements is a revolutionary act." 

- nor's "Semangat in Practice", queering and exploring Nusantara and innate femininity from a trans perspective, and challenging the borders of nation-states in an interconnected archipelago 

"Are the fishermen not our people too? Oftentimes, I wonder how differently Singapore and our neighbouring nations would be if we moved beyond the interests of our self-imposed borders. What if we looked at the sea as a connector and a living continuous flow of energy and resource instead of seeing ourselves as isolated islands? (...) To know one's self is to know one's history. To know one's history is to know one's land. To know one's land is also to know one's sea." 

- Diana Rahim's "Liquid Emerald", which touches on traditional medicine and indigenous knowledge 

"I understand that paracetamol works, that Xanax works, that Benazepril works, but I am not connected to these pharmaceutical drugs. They were not made with plants native to the land I come from. They are manufactured by experts in drug companies, not with the loving hands of women through generations, passed from one elder to the next."

Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore

Reviews