Deborah Emmanuel

Being successful is one thing but having a life story to go with that is another. Deborah Emmanuel has been through so much to get to where she is today. She never felt like she fit into the singaporean culture CMI (Chinese, Malay, Indian) she was an O (Other), She had her ways of reconnecting to her heritage and that was by writing and speaking about it. She never felt she was Indian and never fit into all the traditions. The stereotypes did not fit her and she make this clear when growing up, However over time she has come to claim that she now knows she is Singaporean and belongs here.

Deborah Emmanuel had a very rough childhood with violence and insecurities, Her words were never valid so by conveying herself she did this by poetry. When she was 19 she dealt with all her problems by smoking weed, later on she was caught and was given a 1 year jail sentence in Singapore. She quoted “I have to figure out what love meant” when she was released from jail, confused, unstable and not knowing where to start was the position that she was dumped in. She knew that she had to make use of her life and when she found out that her mum had breast cancer she wrote a poem called I Love You. “Saying I love you has no direction”, She said this at the end of her poem however as time went on and she found love again she realised that love does have a direction as long as you guide it to the receiver.

Her poetry is filled with violence, passion and argument. All the things that went wrong in her life were coming to life by speaking it. I could see how passionate she was when she read her poems. When she is talking to people she is a socially awkward person however when her poems come alive I gain respect and confidence in her. What she has been through in her life has made her who she is today. Once I had listened to her talk I took away the impression that she lives life by the day and that the path that she is taking is being created by the minute.

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