How We Live Now - Further Reading recommended by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow



How We Live Now
is an anthology of ten short stories by Singaporean writers, all written in the last twenty years, that present a multi-faceted, multi-voiced view of contemporary life in Singapore. Published in 2022, the collection was developed as a text for N Level and O Level Literature students. It invites readers to think seriously about the world around them, as they encounter characters grappling with crisis, loss, and what it means to hold each other close in a rapidly changing Singapore.

As a project, beyond its print publication, How We Live Now aims to do what stories and literature have always urged us to do: to prompt questions and to generate discussion and debate, to resist the forces that would stop us from thinking, dreaming and reimagining.

The following short stories are recommended further reading for curious readers who wish to continue exploring social issues relevant to young people in Singapore. The list is alphabetical by author.

  1. “Corridor”, Alfian Sa’at (Corridor: 12 Short Stories, 1999)
  2. “Laundromat”, Amanda Lee Koe (Ministry of Moral Panic, 2013)
  3. “Concert Hall”, Barrie Sherwood (The Angel Tiger and Other Stories, 2019)
  4. “A Minor Kalahari”, Diana Rahim (In This Desert There Were Seeds, edited by Jon Gresham and Elizabeth Tan, 2019)
  5. “Lee Kuan Yew Is Not Always the Answer”, Inez Tan (This Is Where I Won’t Be Alone, 2016)
  6. “National Day”, Jeremy Tiang (It Never Rains on National Day, 2015)
  7. “True Blue”, Jolene Tan, https://rewording.substack.com/p/true-blue-a-short-story 
  8. “Tiger Baby”, Neon Yang (formerly JY Yang) (Lackington’s, 2015), https://lackingtons.com/2015/02/12/tiger-baby-by-jy-yang/
  9. “Lion City”, Ng Yi-Sheng (Lion City, 2018)
  10. “Sin”, Ng Yi-Sheng (Lion City, 2018)
  11. “The Sun, The Moon and Soup at Iftar”, Nuraliah Norasid (A View of Stars: A Stories of Love, edited by Anitha Devi Pillai and Felix Cheong, 2021)
  12. “The Tunnel”, Patrick Sagaram (Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore, 2018), http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=1439
  13. “The Panasonic”, Prasanthi Ram (Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet, edited by Ann Ang, Daryl Lim Wei Jie and Tse Hao Guang, 2020)
  14. “Vegetarian”, Rachel Heng (Prairie Schooner, 2016), https://prairieschooner.unl.edu/excerpt/vegetarian
  15. “The Best of Times”, Samantha Toh (Best New Singaporean Short Stories Volume Five, edited by Balli Kaur Jaswal, 2021)
  16. “In Its Coiling Mass, Conscript Dreams Write” Simon Vincent (unpublished)
  17. “Black Panther”, Wong Koi Tet, translated from the Chinese by Hong Xinyi, Lee Chee Keng and Tina Sim (Words Without Borders, 2016), https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/october-2016-multilingual-singapore-black-panther-wong-koi-tet