"How to Eat a Banana"

"I tried to distance myself from “Chinese culture” by moving towards what I thought was its polar opposite: the West. At the age of five I declared myself English and “Christian”, believing God to be the Western version of Buddha. I became determined to improve my English in primary school; I read like I breathed, and I learned to write. I crammed what I thought was “Western”, watching “grown-up” movies with my parents, burning through Star Wars and reading classics I could barely understand (I attempted to read Crime and Punishment when I was 11, and only got through the first five pages, if that was any indication).

In secondary school I discovered a talent for writing and (after a workshop) a fondness for politically-charged drama, culminating in a series of terrible, anti-Chinese plays where the protagonist’s “Western” cousin comes back from the USA to save him. I distinctly recall one scene where the “Western” cousin upended a bowl of “ginseng soup” and stomped on the fake ginseng (red string, as the old me would’ve staged it) while screaming “ROOTS! ROOTS,” while the protagonist’s father, who represented Chinese culture, cowered under the table. The protagonist was by his cousin’s side, clapping. I wrote this at the age of 14...

I learned, pretty early in secondary school, that heterosexual male attractiveness in Singapore was often beholden to white Western norms. We’d set our standards with the traditionally masculine cis white male body as the “normal”, and everything else as abnormal"