Written by Lastrina
Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene is a collection of essays written by students from Yale-NUS College and NUS, edited by Assistant Professor Matthew Schneider Mayerson. The book can purchased at Ethos Books here.
👉 What: A collection of 12 essays written by authors born between 1993 and 1998. The publisher Ethos Books says “This book is the first to examine contemporary Singapore from an ecocultural lens, looking at the ways that Singaporean life and culture is deeply entangled with the nonhuman lives that flourish all around us.”
There is a foreword, introduction note, and then 12 essays. If you are reading the e-book on a phone or tablet, the amount of words and themes/ issues that are brought up might be slightly overwhelming. I read it on a laptop, and am looking forward to my hardcopy!
👉Overall feeling after the first read: It was refreshing to read the various essays which vividly describes the various animal-human issues. Briefly, in the book, we get to see crabs-mangroves-overexploitation, otters-migration, tigers-urbanisation, monkeys-misunderstanding-mismanagement, mynah-invasive species-citizenship issues being brought up.
There are several fossil fuel and aviation related essays as well, and one that talks about climate change education.
👉 Special mention: It is incredible how Yogesh Tulsi in An Oily Mirror: 1950s Orang Minyak Films as Singaporean Petrohorror found an interesting angle to talk about the Orang Minyak popular in 1950s Malay films and connect that with our oil industry. Entertaining and yet reminds us how pressing the climate crisis is.
👉 What I appreciated about the book: At the end of each essay, there is an Endnotes section. Should you be interested to find out more about certain things in the book, this would be helpful.
👉 The essays that resonated with me the most: To Build a City-State and Erode History: Sand and the Construction of Singapore by Sarah Novak as well as Dumpster Diving in Semakau: Retrieving Indigienous Histories from Singapore’s Waste Island by Fu Xiyao. For various reasons, if you have been following my Facebook posts about Singapore and Indonesia and my family history, you might have a sense where I am coming from. I really appreciate Xiyao’s research into the Orang Laut and attempt to bring this across to more English readers.
👉The essay that I thought was the most straightforward to read: Singapore on Fire: From Fossil History to Climate Activism by Aidan Mock. In it, he shows us how Singapore built and supported the fossil fuel industry here, questions our policies, and reminds us there is still hope for us to change things.
👉 Final thoughts: You can check out a preview of the book here https://cdn.shopify.com/…/Sample_Pages_from_Eating_Chilli_C…
I’ll be frank and say I think with the topics the various authors talk about and the language it uses, I feel like this book will attract a specific group of readers. That said, if you do choose to pick up the book, I suggest having a quick read the first time, and then read it another time, digest and appreciate it slowly.
Then consider going through some of the reflective questions curated here https://www.ethosbooks.com.sg/blogs/news/chillicrabbookclub
The things that are talked about are important given the climate emergency we are in. If you are new to the issues, hopefully you find the additional materials helpful and motivates you to talk about the issues with more people.
This review can also be found here.
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