November 20, 2020

The Straits Times’ “Singapore Shelf” featured Professor Wang Gungwu’s (NUS History) Home is Where We Are (NUS Press, 2020) as the best pick among recently published local books. Each month, “Singapore Shelf” selects its top five picks from “hot-off-the-press home-grown books” to recommend to its readers in genres ranging from fiction to non-fiction and even instructional books.

Prof Wang, a celebrated historian and the winner of the 2020 Tang Prize in Sinology, wrote this book with his wife, the late Mrs Margaret Wang, as a second volume to his memoir Home is Not Here (NUS Press, 2018). In an interview with The Straits Times, Prof Wang recounts the story of his family that inspired this second memoir. Through his family’s frequent relocation from city to city, Prof Wang learnt that home is not defined by a space, but “[can] be found wherever we [are]”.

Home is Where We Are accounts for twenty years of Prof Wang’s life, beginning from his enrolment in the University of Malaya during the tail-end of Singapore’s colonial era. Recognised as a promising poet in 1950, his poems featured in Singapore’s first book of poetry, Pulse.

Reminiscing about his time with Mrs Wang, Prof Wang recalls her lamenting over the limited knowledge she had of her parents’ history. This realisation led to Mrs Wang’s decision to immortalise their history for their three children by writing this memoir with him. Composed of Prof Wang’s narrative with excerpts from Mrs Wang, Home is Where We Are beautifully encapsulates their lifelong conversations.

Get the book here.

Read the article here.