Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
Right of the Soil - cover

Right of the Soil

Yong Shu Hoong

Publisher: Ethos Books

  • 0
  • 1
  • 0

Summary

The Latin phrase, jus soli (“right of the soil”), is an unconditional right of a person born within the territory of a country to be conferred citizenship. Singapore’s nationality law is based on jus sanguinis (“right of blood”, in which citizenship is determined by that of one or both parents) and a modified form of jus soli (with at least one Singaporean parent). 
 
A two-time Singapore Literature Prize winner, Yong Shu Hoong contemplates how a person is invariably bound to the land on which he first sets foot. These poems address topics like belongingness and birthright by exploring the intermingling of the four fundamental elements of air, water, fire and earth. 
 
Expanded from a 2016 chapbook published a year after the 50th anniversary of Singapore’s independence, this book also attempts to sharpen Yong’s understanding of his relationship with his homeland. A new sequence of poems then plunges readers into Hell, reimagined as Singapore’s third integrated resort that opens underground in the centennial year of 2065, with its concepts inspired by Haw Par Villa’s main attraction, the 10 Courts of Hell. 
 
Beyond our earthly lives, is it soil – or another element or dimension – that will assert its right to claim us? 
 
Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize for Poetry 2020
Available since: 08/03/2023.
Print length: 96 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • Love Italian Style - The Secrets of My Hot and Happy Marriage - cover

    Love Italian Style - The Secrets...

    Melissa Gorga

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    What you see is what you get with Melissa Gorga. On The Real Housewives of New Jersey, she’s that beautiful, ambitious woman with a successful career who puts her family first. In fact, her stable yet sexy marriage to lovable Joe is a welcome antidote to the constant fighting and backbiting on the show. Despite the pressure of life in the spotlight, she makes marriage look easy. How does she do it? Melissa's overriding principle: Treat your husband like a king! And in return, you'll be treated like a queen! 
     
    In Love Italian Style, Melissa shares her (and his) secrets to relationship success—generations-tested old-fashioned values served up with a modern, sexy twist. To her, the four tenets to a happy marriage are respect, honesty, loyalty, and passion (underscore passion). By sharing her and Joe's life together—from the story of their first date to how they still keep it hot in the bedroom a decade later—Melissa admits that, yes, marriage has been a lot of work, but the rewards are ten-fold. With her time-tested strategies, you can "Gorganize" your own relationship, strengthen your bond, and amp up the passion for lifelong bliss. Some of Melissa's how-to's: 
     
    Dress to impress your man. 
    Flirt with your hubby. 
    Cook Italian style. 
    Fight right. 
    Keep the romance alive and the home fires burning. 
    Raise little princes and princesses. 
     
    This playful guidebook promises to make any marriage better—the Gorga way!
    Show book
  • Ivan Turgenev - A Short Story Collection - The hugely popular author that helped connect Russian literature to the West - cover

    Ivan Turgenev - A Short Story...

    Ivan Turgenev

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born on 9th November 1818 in Oryol, Russia to parents from the nobility.  He and his two brothers were raised by their mother on the family estate.  Surrounded by foreign governesses he became fluent in French, German, and English.  Their father spent little time with them and this undoubtedly had an effect on him and his brothers.  When he was nine the family moved to Moscow to give their children a proper education. 
     
    Turgenev studied for a year at the University of Moscow and then at the University of St Petersburg to study Classics, Russian literature, and philology.  During that time his father died from kidney stone disease.  In 1838 Turgenev studied philosophy and history at the University of Berlin for 3 years before returning to St Petersburg for his master's. 
     
    He started his career with the Russian Civil Service and it was only in 1852 that he made his name with his short story collection, ‘A Sportsman's Sketches’, based on his observations of peasant life and nature. 
     
    That same year he wrote an obituary for Nikolai Gogol: "Gogol is dead!... What Russian heart is not shaken by those three words?... He is gone, that man whom we now have the right (the bitter right, given to us by death) to call great."  The St Petersburg censor banned publication but the Moscow censor allowed it.  He was dismissed but Turgenev was held responsible and imprisoned for a month, and then exiled to his country estate. 
     
    Along with many other Russian intellectuals Turgenev left and settled in Paris in 1854.  During this period he wrote his finest stories and four novels. 
     
    Alexander II ascended the Russian throne in 1855, and the political climate became more relaxed, Turgenev returned home. 
     
    ‘Fathers and Sons’, Turgenev's most famous and enduring novel, appeared in 1862. Its leading character is considered the first ‘Bolshevik’ in Russian literature. But the hostile reaction prompted Turgenev's decision to again leave Russia. 
     
    His health declined during his later years. In January 1883, an aggressive malignant tumor was removed but by then it had metastasized in his upper spinal cord, causing him intense pain in his final few months of life. 
     
    Ivan Turgenev died on 3rd September 1883 of a spinal abscess, a complication of the metastatic liposarcoma, in his house near Paris.  He was buried in St Petersburg. 
     
    1 - Ivan Turgenev - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
    2 - A Strange Story by Ivan Turgenev 
    3 - Mumu by Ivan Turgenev 
    4 - The District Doctor by Ivan Turgenev 
    5 - The Jew by Ivan Turgenev 
    6 - The Rendezvous by Ivan Turgenev 
     -  
     -  
     -  
    1 - Leonid Andreyev - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
    2 - Silence by Leonid Nikolaevich Andreyev 
    3 - Lazarus by Leonid Andreyev 
    4 - The City by Leonid Andreyev 
    5 - The Friend by Leonoid Andreyev 
    6 - The Lie by Leonid Andreyev 
    7 - The Marseillaise by Leonid Andreyev
    Show book
  • Disinherited Generations - Our Struggle to Reclaim Treaty Rights for First Nations Women and their Descendants - cover

    Disinherited Generations - Our...

    Nellie Carlson, Kathleen Steinhauer

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Two Cree women tell the story of how they took on the Canadian government and helped change the lives of thousands. This oral autobiography of two remarkable Cree women tells their life stories against a backdrop of government discrimination, First Nations activism, and the resurgence of First Nations communities. Nellie Carlson and Kathleen Steinhauer, who helped to organize the Indian Rights for Indian Women movement in western Canada in the 1960s, fought the Canadian government’s interpretation of treaty and Aboriginal rights, the Indian Act, and the male power structure in their own communities in pursuit of equal rights for Aboriginal women and children. After decades of activism and court battles, First Nations women succeeded in changing these oppressive regulations, thus benefitting thousands of their descendants. Those interested in human rights, activism, history, and Native Studies will find that these personal stories, enriched by detailed notes and photographs, form a passionate record of an important, continuing struggle.
    Show book
  • Under Pressure - Living Life and Avoiding Death on a Nuclear Submarine - cover

    Under Pressure - Living Life and...

    Richard Humphreys

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    This is the world of the submariner. This is life under pressure.What’s it like to spend three months without sunlight, sharing what little space you have with over a hundred fellow crewmen and more firepower than all the bombs dropped in World War II combined? This is the world of the submariner. This is life under pressure.As a restless and adventurous eighteen-year-old, Richard Humphreys joined the Royal Navy submarine service. For five years during the Cold War, he served on the nuclear sub HMS Resolution. Nothing could have prepared him for life beneath the waves. He existed in a world without natural light, surrounded by 140 other men, all eating the same food, breathing the same air, smelling the same putrid smells and surviving together in some of the most forbidding conditions imaginable.Based on Humphreys’ firsthand experience, Under Pressure is the candid, visceral and incredibly entertaining account of what it’s like to live, work, sleep and eat—and stay sane—in one of the most extreme man-made environments on the planet.
    Show book
  • Walking Tall - cover

    Walking Tall

    Rob Heffernan

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Deemed too small for his school Gaelic football team at the age of fourteen, Rob Heffernan took up race walking on a whim. Driven by a fiercely competitive nature and a dogged desire to be the best, he strode his way to the pinnacle of the sport, winning bronze in the London 2012 Olympics and becoming world champion in Moscow in 2013. In 2016, he became the first athlete to represent Ireland at the Olympic Games for a fifth time. In this no-holds-barred account, Rob describes his battles with injury, depression and poverty on his way to the top. Even when at his best, he found himself cheated out of medals by those who crossed the dark line into doping. He candidly tells of the confrontations with Athletics Ireland and the Irish Sports Council that raged in the background to his struggle for that prestigious Olympic medal. This is the inside story of how one boy's dream led him from the council flats of his tough upbringing to the winners' podium. It is also a heartfelt chronicle of the sometimes nightmare-ridden journey to become a top athlete in this gruelling sport.
    Show book
  • Tom Paine - A Political Life - cover

    Tom Paine - A Political Life

    John Keane

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    “It is hard to imagine this magnificent biography ever being superseded . . . It is a stylish, splendidly erudite work.” —Terry Eagleton, The Guardian   “More than any other public figure of the eighteenth century, Tom Paine strikes our times like a trumpet blast from a distant world.” So begins John Keane’s magnificent and award-winning (the Fraunces Tavern Book Award) biography of one of democracy’s greatest champions.   Among friends and enemies alike, Paine earned a reputation as a notorious pamphleteer, one of the greatest political figures of his day, and the author of three bestselling books, Common Sense, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason. Setting his compelling narrative against a vivid social backdrop of prerevolutionary America and the French Revolution, John Keane melds together the public and the shadowy private sides of Paine’s life in a remarkable piece of scholarship. This is the definitive biography of a man whose life and work profoundly shaped the modern age.   “[A] richly detailed . . . disciplined labor of scholarship and love, an exemplar of the rewards of a gargantuan effort at historical research. . . . In short, buy it; it’s definitive.” —Library Journal
    Show book