FROM HARDSHIP TO HOPE
Migrant workers in Singapore find their voices through poetry. By Beh Lih Yi in Singapore
In dormitories on Singapore’s fringes or employers’ backrooms, a growing number of migrant workers are using poetry to shed light on their hidden struggles and reconnect with their roots.
The city-state of 5.6 million counts on a about 1 million migrant workers from countries including Bangladesh, Indonesia, China and Myanmar to fuel its powerhouse economy, working in sectors from construction to services and home help.
Although horrific labour abuse cases are rare in the rich city-state, campaigners say migrants grapple with unpaid salaries, having their travel documents withheld and massive debts racked up in fees they pay agents to get work.
Often tucked away in dormitories for foreign workers and only seen in public on Sundays, their day off, scores of migrants are writing poetry and short stories offering a rare insight into their little known worlds.
“When I write, I am happy. When people read our work and accept us as human beings, we are happy,” Indonesian domestic worker Deni Apriyani told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Hailing from a sleepy village in Indonesia, 29-year-old Apriyani moved to Singapore in 2013 to become a domestic worker as she wanted to buy land for her father, a farmer, back home.
Working from dawn to dusk looking after an expatriate family, she started writing poetry on her mobile phone at the end of her 14-hour work day as an outlet for her frustration as she struggled to adjust to life in the new city.
Soft-spoken Apriyani won a poetry writing competition for migrants in 2017 and one of her poems was published in a book last year that brought together more than 60 works by Singaporean writers and migrant workers.
“You call them sluts, you call them useless, you call them shameful, but did you know the stories behind them?” she asked in the poem “Murderers”, which highlighted the stigma facing migrant workers who try to find love in the city.
The growing focus on writing by migrant workers began about five years ago with poetry contests organised by advocates that aimed to use literature to break down barriers between foreign workers and Singaporean society.
These competitions have now branched out to other parts of Asia which also rely heavily on migrant workers, including Malaysia and Taiwan.
In Singapore, their poems are found in bookshops and public libraries, with
Stranger to Myself, by the Bangladeshi construction worker Md Sharif Uddin, winning best non-fiction title at the prestigious Singapore Books Awards last year.
Singaporean author and poet Jamal Ismail said migrants’ unique experiences and work have enriched the island’s literary scene.
“They might not write beautifully but there is an abundance of humanity in them,” he said, during a workshop where he offered guidance to a group of migrant poets.
He recounted how he was struck by a poem by a migrant domestic worker who likened her life in the city to that of a cockroach, and another who told him she had not been paid for six months.
“They are marginalised and they feel lonely. When you’re lonely, that is when you reflect on what is the meaning of life? That is something they have that is so powerful,” he said.
Sales of migrant workers’ books are low compared to more mainstream writers, but local publishers said their potential is enormous.
“They really struck a chord and there was empathy,” said Ng Kah Gay from Ethos Books, which in 2016 published
Me Migrant, the city-state’s first book by a migrant labourer, Md Mukul Hossine of Bangladesh, with 3,000 copies sold to date.
“Migrant workers are someone whom we’re so familiar with but sometimes we don’t see them, they are invisible,” said Ng. “These books flesh out their lives for us to experience, their emotions.
“It’s so important for them to be seen not just as an economic machine but that they have their own voice.”
Goh Eck Kheng from Landmark Books, which has sold 700 copies of Uddin’s award-winning Stranger to
Myself in two print runs so far, said literature gave migrant and local writers a platform to embrace each others’ work.
“In that way, literature is a social leveller,” Goh said.
Translation is the main hurdle for the work of migrant poets to flourish, according to Shivaji Das, an Indian-born writer who works in Singapore and has been organising the annual migrant poetry writing competitions since 2014.
Scribbling on cement bags or tapping on their mobile phones after nightfall, workers usually write in native languages including Bengali, Bahasa Indonesia or Chinese before their work is translated.
For many, writing is a way to ease their homesickness and document their lives in a different city — as well as a form of empowerment.
Fazley Elahi, a Bangladeshi worker who writes poems and set up the Migrant Library Singapore a year ago, said reading and writing in his native language reconnects him to his roots after living away from home for a decade.
Manned by volunteers, the library has a collection of about 800 books in different languages that are common among migrant workers such as Bengali, Indonesian, Tagalog and Chinese. It also holds writing workshops for aspiring writers and runs a mobile library project that goes to workers’ dorms.
In poetry, says Elahi, there are no limits to what he can say which gives him a sense of liberation.
“It is the freedom of thought that we treasure,” said the 30-year-old.
When I write, I am happy. When people read our work and accept us as human beings, we are happy DENI APRIYANI Indonesian domestic worker