SWF 2013 festival report (1)

The wonderful thing about the Singapore Writers Festival is how wonderfully cross-cultural it is. And the best events -- the most interesting, exciting, fascinating -- are the ones that feature writers from different cultures talking about writing across cultures.
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An example -- i don't think i'll ever stop talking about last year's panel on literature as an instrument for peacemaking (yes... i know... what hope!) which featured a Palestinian doctor whose daughters had been killed by the Israeli army, an Israeli novelist whose grandfather was Israel's 3rd prime minister, and an Algerian graphic artist who had migrated to the US (specifically, Berkeley -- and now that i've actually BEEN to Berkeley i can better appreciate what a jump that must have been for him...) and now does political cartoons and graphic novels. Ended up talking with a friend today about that panel, and she agreed that it was the most ... electrifying (okok, the word she used was 'tense'...) talk she'd ever attended.
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Today's panel-of-the-day -- a Pakistani novelist who moved to England at the age of 14 because his father was running away from political persecution; a Malaysian Muslim woman who's lived in Russia, the UK, and many other places thanks to her (i think) diplomat father, and who's chosen to stay in and write about Malaysia because she wants to help change things for the better; a China-Chinese novelist who has lived in London for 10 years but refuses to speak or write English... Fascinating stuff. Hearing about the faultlines that cut across their sense of who they are, learning about their divided allegiances -- somehow, all this helps me understand my own life a bit better. How narcissistic, i know...
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In other news. One of our poets apparently said today something along the lines of:
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The SWF is basically the Singlit community's annual reunion dinner.
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And this bit from Neil Gaiman's last Sandman installment came to mind:
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Jed: "Families rock."
Rosie: "Aren't YOU the one that told me that 'families suck'?"
Jed: "They do both. They rock AND they suck."
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(The Wake, Neil Gaiman)
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