Liz - Reading Biography

I come from a family that thought reading "storybooks" us a waste of time. That meant an early years reading history that is probably quite different from the rest of you. I spent most of my younger days "reading" Lao Fu Zi comics and the occasional Archie or Beano. I don't remember being read to at kindergarten but I'm sure I was taught how to read. Books were not a part of my life in any way. My parents didn't read and were not interested in wasting money on books for me or my sister. That was the way things were in my world and I did not know to contest it.

That suited me just fine until I started Primary school and was introduced to the school library. I still remember walking into the small, dark and musty room and seeing shelves filled with books. I thought I had walked into some kind of forbidden world. I had never seen so many books and so many words in my life. I picked up the first book, which was (funnily enough) a Sweet Valley Twins book. That embarked me, albeit very belatedly, on my reading journey.

I tried to catch up with my "lost childhood" by picking up some Enid Blyton, Judy Blume, Diary of Anne Frank and Nancy Drew. I then moved on to The Hardy Boys and then tragically, discovered the world of The Singapore Ghost Stories series. I was completely hooked on it and managed to convince my grandparents to get me books from the series for my birthdays. When my parents found me reading, it will be met with great disappointment and chastising. I persisted though, I found my first true love and was not ready to break up with it just yet.

During my Secondary school years, I developed a mad obsession with myth and fairy tales. Reading every single one I could find from every culture ravenously. This lasted to this present day when I now relate these stories to my children. (My son's favourite is the one about Icarus flying towards the sun.) When I was in Sec 2, a new teacher from Canada arrived at my school. Miss Patrizia Micelli was young, glamorous, exotic and she taught us Ngugi's The River Between. She taught it in such a way that we had never known before. Reading not just the story and its themes but more importantly she brought us into the heart of the story and we felt the pain of every character. She felt magical to me and I'm sure that in some ways, she was the one who planted the seed of my decision to be a teacher in my heart. At this time, I also began to read Shakespeare, Sylvia Plath, Raymond Carver, Kurt Vonnegut, Orwell, Conrad (who I named my son after) and most significantly, the Beat Poets. After which I was unstoppable.

At JC, I read more Shakespeare, Milton, Pinter, (my drama phase) and then Joyce Carol Oates, Christina Rosetti, Poe, MORE Plath, Jeanette Winterson, Germaine Greer, Simone de Beauvoir, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Colette... It seemed like I wasn't doing anything else.

Then I left Singapore and although I read plenty, the only real significant milestone at this point was my realization that I was going into academia and I wanted to dedicate it to reading and thinking about the Gothic and more significantly, the Gothic of the American South. I obsessed over Flannery O'Connor and to this day, I still cite her as my favourite writer. When I returned and began my MA, I tried continuing on this path but ended up reading Literature from China instead. I didn't finish my MA but making that move was something I still regret.

Now, my reading trajectory still follows the same path. I'm a gothic and terror fan. I read quite randomly these days but I find myself still drawn to American literature. My recent favourite is Junot Diaz. I also find myself these days moving away from the "Canon" and eager to find new authors with fresh voices and perspectives. I'm not one of those people who read obscure writers in any real way but I suppose I never really got much into the canon and always skirted around its edges in my reading history. I guess I always will.