Writers from China's diaspora
Nudging 40, Dawn Tan fears that the mid-life blues may be just around the corner. 'I'm so tired,' she says.
But she's not about to quit her career as an investigative reporter. The Singaporean is driven by a fascination with how people 'express courage' - a quality apparent in Awakenings, her second book of interview-based true stories about drug abuse.
Each story sucks you in at the start because Tan evokes atmosphere with panache. A tale called Letting Go opens: 'In one of her earliest memories, Violet might have been a ballerina, flying through the air, light as a feather, drifting, floating on white light. Her leotard clings to her like a warm cocoon.'
Tan can also be gritty. Dark Poems begins: 'Outside, while the rest of the island sleeps, the alleys crawl; a hooker watches the street without interest and sucks at a cigarette, waiting for the crunch and hiss of slowing car tires that disturb black puddles pooling by the side of the road. Steam billows from the cramped kitchen of an all night coffee shop offering dim sum and murky bowls of soup laced with aged XO cognac to hungry clubbers looking for an elixir to clear alcohol-soaked heads.'
Tan exposes the seamy side of the island state, showing that its image of chewing-gum-free pavements and purity is an illusion. Despite the efforts of the government (which she accuses of using an M16 against a mosquito), drug abuse is widespread, Tan says. She knows many professionals who are hooked. Does Tan, a descendant of Fujian opium traders, ever indulge?
'Me? No! Oh no, honestly, no, no,' she says, shrieking and giggling. She says she encountered drugs at university - Middlesex, in London - but never took any. Nor was she tempted. Tracking down Singaporeans who did succumb was just 'a process of deduction - some of them were friends of friends of friends'. Other leads came from drug counselling bodies such as the Singapore Corporation of Rehabilitative Enterprises