What was it like when you were a child? What were your favourite games and food? Where were your favourite haunts? What do you remember most of your childhood?

The History Workroom is working on a book on the history of children and childhood in Singapore. If you like to share your stories with us, please contact us. We’d love to hear from you!

I’ve always admired those who work on their family history, and laboriously trace them back centuries. It’s hard work indeed.

I’ve been wanting to do mine for the longest time but never got around to it, not systematically at least. But in the last few months, I’ve been soliciting stories and details, which many of us would not think about asking in “normal conversations”. Every conversation with my parents or my relatives are turning into interrogation sessions!

A professor once told me that the longing for family history or roots is an index of loss. Then, I didn’t agree with her. I had not issues with my identity, felt no dissatisfaction or the need to know “who I really am”. I still don’t. But I am beginning to see her point, though not as she meant it probably. As I see it now, the loss is one of the links with the people whom I’m closest to and who mattered most to me. I’m missing my maternal grandparents especially even though they’ve been gone a long time. Perhaps it is Qing Ming, or perhaps it’s age. I miss them terribly.

That is probably the fuel for me to want to find out more about their lives, their stories. They’ve had intriguing stories I heard. There’s the Second World War, a mad mother (a la Bertha Mason), a loss grave, missing siblings, an opera troupe and family betrayal involved. On the other side, there’s also the Cultural Revolution in the mix, somehow.

But because they were poor and uneducated, they didn’t leave much written legacies, if at all. In a time when documentation is not the norm, this makes it even harder. But try I will, nevertheless, to piece together the stories.

For those who like memoirs, this list may provide a good starting point.

For those who prefer a more Asian slant, this list may be a good start.

Last night, we attended the book launch of Many Roads Home. The publication marks the 20th anniversary of the Muhammadiyah Welfare Home, a children’s home for children in crisis.

Stephanie and myself are privileged to have had the opportunity to be involved in this project as editors. The book, featuring the stories of former residents, volunteers and the history of the Home took more than a year to complete. Some  300 volunteers from various walks of life lent a hand.

It was a challenging task, conceptualising, coordinating and bringing the project to realisation. We wanted to keep the stories real – not everything is rosy. We wanted to keep the voices of the people – residents, volunteers, staff – clear.

We hope this book will give hope to all who read it.

The book is available in both soft cover (S$18) and hard cover (S$25).

The books can be purchased from participating outlets (http://www.book4youth.blogspot.com), major bookstores in Singapore and parts of Malaysia wef January 2010.
You can also order the book directly from MWH by at +65 6344 7551.

All proceeds from the sale of the books will be chanelled directly to the children in need.

Where have all the people in history gone? This is the question Malaysian book reviewer Daphne Lee wonders in her latest column in The Star newspaper.

She wrote:

in most history books, historical figures are reduced to names linked to significant events and dates. There is no sense of what made them tick, their likes and dislikes, their hopes and dreams. Was Parameswara a serious or cheerful man? Did Frank Swettenham like durians and other local delicacies or was he a fussy eater? Did Yap Ah Loy ever put his feet up with a good book?

How true that is!

For the sake of “objectivity”, “credibility” and “academic-ness”, all the stories have been edited out of history. Anything remotely personal or less-than-epic seems, well, just un-history-like. There is more to history than dates, wars, treaties, great men and women. Let’s bring the stories back.

PS: The History Workroom’s Wayang Girl and Samsui Girl get an honourable mention in Lee’s column.