How We Disappeared: LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020

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A beautifully controlled novel that tells an utterly compelling and important story. Jing-Jing Lee's prose is crystal clear, the narrative scope is sweeping and devastating, and the story is as deeply felt and well observed as it is captivating."-- Caoilinn Hughes, author of Orchid & the Wasp Most people are unaware of the occupation’s death toll. The conservative estimate lies around 40,000 (not a small number as the total population was around 800,000 in 1942). The dead were mostly made up of Chinese men who were executed during the Sook Ching (or ‘purge,’ a targeted ethnic cleansing).

It depends on how you define ‘openly discussed,’” she says. “The general population is very much aware of the issue; ask any Singaporean if they think that local women were taken during the Japanese occupation and, young or old, they would likely say ‘yes.’ In the 90s, there was even a Chinese TV drama serial set during the Occupation and one of the strands showed how young local girls were taken by the Japanese troops to be used as sex slaves. The government, however, is reluctant to touch upon this issue. In the 1960s, Singapore received 25 million Singapore dollars from Japan as a loan. The Singaporean government tried to have the amount officially named as a ‘blood debt,’ but Japan refused. In the end, the two countries called it a ‘bilateral agreement’ instead.The author brings across the horror of Wang Di’s wartime plight without having to resort to gratuitous description and the passages are all the stronger for that. Straddling two timelines and told from the perspective of two narrators, How We Disappeared is an evocative glimpse into Japanese-occupied Singapore during World War II and the calamitous consequences of wartime. This part of the novel is brutal, and life for these women was nothing short of a living nightmare. Then for the ones who survived, they returned home to be disowned, shamed, and labelled traitors. Wang Di’s parents can barely stand to look at her and only talk to her if it’s necessary. Overall, while I had some issues with this book, it is an evocative read about survival, female endurance and the long road to healing. In 1942 Wang Di is seized by the Japanese and forced to be a “comfort woman” for the duration of the war.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

Bullied, nerdish Singaporean Chinese schoolboy Kevin starts a personal research project to try to make sense of the mutterings of his dying grandmother. His chain of discoveries leads him to revelations that he would never have imagined, and to facts about his family that even his parents did not know. In a parallel narrative, starting in 1942, a teenaged girl called Wang Di is carried off by Japanese soldiers from her home village and put to work as a “comfort woman” in an official military brothel.

Era un’adolescente quando fu strappata alla sua famiglia per diventare una “comfort woman”, una delle tante donne che soddisfacevano i bisogni dei militari giapponesi. Jing-Jing Lee was inspired by her family’s experiences to write this story. How We Disappeared is a tribute to strong women displaying resilience of spirit even in the most dire of times. It’s about family and seeking the truth. While this was occasionally difficult to read due to the subject matter, the inspiration I drew from these characters and their courage kept it from being overwhelmingly dark. As with most Singaporeans, I learned what civilians went through during the Japanese Occupation as I was growing up, some of it from stories that my relatives told in hushed, yet bitter voices, some of it from programmes, fictional and otherwise, on TV. The “accepted narrative” is openly discussed in textbooks and in the national newspaper. Every year, there is a day of remembrance for people who died during the occupation, especially for those who were captured and tortured for being part of the resistance. These were heroes and victims of a sort that people recognised and could contend with. Yet it remains largely unspoken that the Japanese raped local women and abducted them during the occupation – this has to do with the dreadful stigma attached to sexual violence in most of Asia, even today. The fact that Singapore is a tiny country only magnifies this. Everyone on the island is connected in one way or another, with one or two degrees of separation. In the 40s and 50s, to let anyone know that you’re a rape victim was to expose yourself to shame and condemnation for the rest of your life. For research, I trawled through hours of audio interviews; whenever rape or abduction was mentioned, the interviewee always made a point to emphasise that it happened to someone else, someone outside of the immediate family – a neighbour, the friend of a sister-in-law, a stranger. More than 50 years later, a 12-year-old boy records a confession by his grandmother on her death bed. He begins a journey that will unravel the secrets of his family’s past.Too much of the book is dedicated to following a secondary character, Kevin, whose connection to Wang Di is too insignificant to warrant dedicating half the book to his uninspired attempts to solve an emotionally detached mystery. In fact, Kevin's narrative could have been removed altogether in favor of showcasing another comfort woman's experiences during the war. Lee first won praise for her portrayal of the rich inner lives of Singapore’s social outcasts in her 2013 novella, If I Could Tell You, but with How We Disappeared, she has created that rare novel that speaks to hope as much as to grief; to resilience as much as to erasure. The notion of erasure is a potent undercurrent in How We Disappeared, where Singapore itself – an island whose shape Lee likens to “the meat of an oyster” – is another character in the story. And it is a character so vividly evoked that the novel serves not only as a powerful homage to the women who were shamed into silence, but also to the spirit of this island; a hymn to its lost lanes, kampongs, markets and disappeared lives. Also in 2000, a 12-year-old boy named Kevin has just lost his grandmother, with whom he was very close. Just before she died, she discloses a long-held secret, one that will change his family’s life. The reader knows that the two stories will come together, but they do so in an unpredictable way. I timed my reading to co-incide with what should (but for the coronavirus) have been a business trip to Singapore – a country I visit around twice a year for a few days, my visits confined to the business district, luxury hotels and ex-pat haunts; far removed in time and place from the world portrayed here.

How We Disappeared was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize, and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the HWA Debut Crown (a prize for historical writing). [6] [7] Despite this one flaw, I found Lee’s novel a searing, heartbreaking, yet important rendering of the lives of comfort women and the citizens of Singapore before, during and after WWII, as well as an enlightening account of Singapore’s geo-political and strategic importance to several world powers throughout history (including the United States). I gave this book 5 stars and will certainly recommend it to fellow readers interested in historical fiction, Asian history and stories that demonstrate the depth and strength of the human spirit. In the year 2000, twelve-year-old Kevin is sitting beside his ailing grandmother when he overhears a mumbled confession. He sets out to discover the truth, wherever it might lead, setting in motion a chain of events he never could have foreseen. These are the two major characters of this novel and they are connected. Kevin tries to solve the puzzle that his grandmother has left him with unintentionally in the present. While Wang Di spends most of her time in the early years of World War 2.Le donne sono le protagoniste di questo libro. Corpi abusati, maltrattati, come bambole rotte. Vuoti. Lee, an accomplished poet, has dedicated her narrative to “the grandmas (halmonies, Lolas and amas) who told their stories, so that I could tell this one”. So it is fitting that it begins with an elderly woman’s early morning musings about the circumstances of her birth, her too-short child­hood and the significance of her name, Wang Di, which means “to hope for a brother”. Before rising to the quotidian chores of her solitary existence in the year 2000, in her new Red Hill studio flat – the closest offered by the Singaporean housing board to the apartment she and her husband had shared for 40 years – she wonders how different her life would have been had she gone to live with her aunt. Or had she been approached by a matchmaker at another time and war hadn’t torn through the island. Then there’s the story of her husband. They have both suffered in different ways but find it hard to talk about it. He’s affectionately known as ‘Old One’, and Wang Di needs to know what he experienced during the war. She’s never admitted to him what happened to her – the shame is too great. And that’s what got me. despite everything this poor woman has endured, she’s the one to feel shame. I found this to be an occasionally frustrating and messy yet ultimately satisfying read. Its main strength was Jing-Jing Lee's skill at immersing the reader, and the chapters set during WWII really came to life. I do think a bit too much of the narrative focused on Kevin - not to the detriment of Wang Di's narrative, as I felt that her sections were properly fleshed out - it's more that Kevin himself added very little as a character. I tend to prefer historical fiction that doesn't have a past/present framing, and this was no exception; I kept wishing it would stay in the 1940s. That said, I do feel that Jing-Jing Lee ultimately justified this narrative decision with the way the story wrapped up, even if it wouldn't have been my first choice of how to tell it. In the year 2000, twelve-year-old Kevin is determined to find out the truth – wherever it might lead – after his grandmother makes a surprising confession on her deathbed, one she never meant Kevin to hear, setting in motion a chain of events he could never have foreseen.