A Fistful of Colors

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Literature & Fiction
Author:	Su-Chen Christine Lim

“Once a thing is remembered, it is seldom forgotten. It is remembered and recalled in different ways, and in a way which shapes and reshapes the past; the past as retold in stories shaped by the creative memory…” Christine Suchen Lim, A Fistful of Colors

If Christine Suchen Lim was a painter, I think Singapore would be painted with all hints of hue and color. However, she is a novelist, and it seemed as if a whole country for her would be depicted in a whole lot of colors: Babas, Hokkien Chinese, Hybrids, Indians and even Englishmen. Amidst this diversity lie the diverse problems that are always present in Asia: westernization, discrimination, colonial education and multiculturalism. A Fistful of Colors tells of the story of Suwen and of how her past and present became interwoven into the lives of her friends – all faced with the contradiction of distorted identities of race and culture. Indeed, it is true that at the time the novel was written, people of Singapore and Southeast Asia are faced with vast range of adversities. In this book, we will see how they as a people cope with these, and at the same time, how their characters have been shaped by the conditions that they have been in.

The characters of the story would seem to have been a product of a long process of what one of the characters called as cultural sculpting. Each of them show different facets of the cultural diversity of Singapore. They each have a different story to tell in each chapter that explore the little nation’s multi-faceted depth. Singapore started out as a country of mixed races, who follow sets of different traditions. The colonizers came into the country and gradually transformed their culture through different means – education, politics, even force. The author contextualized the characters based on their backgrounds. She has made the characters as an effective medium to portray socio-cultural history, especially in the case of Suwen and Nica.

The irony of their situation is that education does not liberate a person. In our context, education is seen as freeing ourselves from the clutches of traditions and superstitions. But here in the novel, the old ways still remain and are actually reinforced. Divisions between social strata and between ethnicities still plague “modern” Singapore. It is a conflict that finds expression in a continuing clash between the old traditions and modern ways. Suwen is not comfortable with marrying outside her race and the supposedly educated Mr. Sullivanignam still perpetrates the caste system.

The story opened with the image of the protagonist, the synthesizer of the stories of the novel. Suwen never knew her real father, and only came to live with her mother and step father when her stepfather’s mother died. Her mother fetched her bribed her grandmother and gave her the first mark of colonialism: the western doll. She then used to live with her mother and stepfather at the Ong mansion and had traumatic experiences of molestations from her step father and abuse from her grandmother. She set out to become an artist, wishing to find her identity and express herself through her medium. At the same time, she teaches at the university and maintains an unclear relationship with her Scottish colleague, Mark Campbell. She was only one of those many “like-minded English-educated malcontents,” professionals of Singapore. She and her friends, “swapped stories… grouse about the sanitized politics of Singapore, and dissect the plays they had attended and the paintings they had seen as they drank beer till the wee hours of the morning.”

It was a collection of various stories and various characters. Suwen’s stepfather’s father, the residents of the Ong mansion: Ong Tay Luck who never really had direct blood relations from the Ong family. Ong Tay Luck is the son of the concubine of Ong Ah Buck – who changed his surname to Ong for the sake of keeping the family name. Their family has become a product of the distorted history of the country. Another story is that of Nica’s. She was half-Indian and half-Chinese, and has been filled with issues in her family in terms of preferences in cultural traditions. She escaped the turmoil of her family to build her identity. She can be considered as a typical expat who has broken free from stifling tradition.

The book even touches upon the politics of art. Suwen feels oppressed as an artist. She was criticized by the authorities as painting unworthy pieces because her works were too abstract and westernized. The paintings supposedly betrayed their Singaporean roots. But she wanted to paint for herself, to express her passion and hate. The thing is, the history of their race has been a history of passion and hate. And she can never remove herself from the milieu.

An artist, a human being, is always part of her socio-cultural milieu. She always depicts that milieu’s biases and hopes. Even Suwen is not aware of it, saying that she wanted to paint for herself though she herself could not but help paint what composed her thoughts – the history of her roots, the history of her country. Contrary to this, Nica went as far as sculpting a nude white man to make a political statement. In her letter to Jan: “…It was art as a vengeance. One. The whites have exploited us, Asians; so I, in turn, exploited a white man. Two. The male has exploited the female body since time immemorial. So why was it shocking if a female artist exploits the male body?”

Today, Singapore is seen as calm collected business oasis. But it was forged from the blood, sweat and tears of the common man. Fistful of Colors depicted a particularly horrifying rickshaw strike-riot. While the author had Suwen, the artist, desire to paint for herself, it seems this does not apply to the author herself. She actually takes the authorities viewpoint on the strike; that it was more trouble than it was worth. Though this point-of-view is obscured by a mention at the end of the narrative that the strikers were to be pitied. It might have been obscured but since pity is the only thing that the author can offer to the strikers, she still upholds the talking points of the Singaporean elite.

Singapore is known as the melting pot. In A Fistful of Colors, this melting pot is deconstructed, exposed and painted as a melting pot of different contradictions and struggles, cultures and ideologies through the interwoven stories of the characters.

(With Carlo Pulido's editing powers. Acknowledged. Salamat.)