Kevin Martens Wong is the author of a speculative novel about Singapore, Altered Straits. Wong is the founder of the internationally recognized grassroots movement to revitalise the critically endangered Kristang language of the Portuguese-Eurasian community in Singapore, Kodrah Kristang, and the volunteer non-profit effort to make linguistics accessible to a general audience, Unravel: The Accessible Linguistics Magazine. Wong’s academic work has been published in the Language Ecology, Journal of Language Documentation & Conservation, and Revitalizing Endangered Languages: A Practical Guide.
Abstract: “The Last Merlionsman of the Republic of Singapore: On how the sequel to Altered Straits (2017) became a lived, real-world experience”
Written in 2015, published by Epigram Books and longlisted for its inaugural Fiction Prize in 2017, nominated for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018, and interrogated as a critical part of a new wave of Singaporean identity and culture by Fischer (2023) and others, Altered Straits has long been identified to the general public as having been written as a means of negotiating the deep psychoemotional and sexual abuse I struggled with during National Service (NS) and in the Singapore education system, as well as the larger collective-level abuse and marginalisation suffered daily by LGBTQ+ Singaporeans. However, the novel ends on a mournful, ambiguous note that leaves the reader (and many reviewers on Goodreads) perplexed and confused: what are we supposed to take away from Altered Straits, and from the journeys of its two protagonists Naufal and Titus? This presentation is founded on the hypothesis that all creative work is applied metacognition, and thus, offers the practitioner insights into themselves that one might never have otherwise been able to reach in daily life. One of these tremendous insights afforded to this author was the role and identity of a Merlionsman, something assumed by Naufal in the novel, and later, in 2022, in real life by this author as well; this paper thus explores not only what it means to be a Merlionsman, but on why we write speculative fiction at all, especially in Southeast Asia, and what that tells us about its power and potential to change our daily reality.