Today we heard out last speaker for Writer’s Fortnight, Seema Punwani from Transient Workers Count Too. TWC2 works towards educating migrant workers on their rights and helping them to come forward about any issues they face. Prior to the speech I already had a basic understanding about the issue, however my knowledge grew further, and I learnt much more about how these men are treated and how unaware some people are about it. However, what I did realise afterwards was that the speaker was taking a very slight bias approach to the whole topic. I mean she was not taking into account both sides, like how sometimes migrant workers might try to cheat the system into getting what they want. I am not generalising these workers but I would not be surprised if a case like this did come up and it turned into a bunch of excuses why someone would try to cheat their insurance to get money (for example), even if it was to send back home. I feel like both sides need to be considered to empathise with the workers but also to maintain order and structure in the system. I feel like to get an angle from this, I would need to research more into this topic and look at if the entire system is unfair, and letting migrants being treated this way, or if it is fair, and just wanting to maintain order.
Tag Archives: Writers Fortnight
Writer’s Fortnight: Deborah Emmanuel
Yesterday’s guest speaker for Writer’s Fortnight was Deborah Emmanuel, a Singaporean poet and performer. Throughout the course of the speech, Emmanuel read 3 of her poems that she felt most deeply to. I thought that all the poems she read to us were greatly expressing her thoughts and feelings that she had once experienced and felt, and I felt a connection to her and her life through the power and emotion of her poetry. What I found quite striking was that close to the beginning of her speech, she recited a poem about heritage and culture, and how she never felt like she belonged to a culture. This arose thoughts about how culture doesn’t really identify us and we can never really know if we are completely apart of one – almost like the cultural norms mentioned in Robyne Hayes speech. Emmanuel went on to talk about the CMI system and how it is so unnecessary to categorise individuals into three broad groups. This system also creates a weight for one to follow the norms and lifestyle of the culture. She was categorised into ‘I’ (Indian) – however, she never felt like she was one as the culture was not passed onto her.
Emmanuel later talked about her struggles as a 19 year-old through the violence of her family and the loneliness that was created. However what I took back from this was that the idea of not feeling like she belonged to a culture or society is what caused the trauma she faced. She never felt accepted anywhere and that left with long-lasting emotions. Deborah Emmanuel turned to meditation and spiritual practices to overcome her trauma and the constant fear of never thinking that she will find love – or the right love, after experiencing the difficulty that her parents had.
Writer’s Fortnight: Robyne Hayes – The Impact of Culture
Today we heard the third guest speaker for Writer’s Fortnight, Robyne Hayes. Robyne Hayes is a researcher and photographer. Hayes talked to us about women’s rights and mainly, child marriage, and the lack of control that young girls had over themselves, and worryingly, their own body. However, the strength of her argument was determined by the balance of the issues that both men and women face – and how it ultimately depends on what their over-powering culture teaches them. Men have their own “expectations” like working in the field for long hours, whilst women were doing household chores and water collection. Photography is used to engage people about issues and to show them visual affects and changes.
One of the main reasons why child marriage was so common in places like Bangladesh, Nepal, and Ethiopia, was because of the lack of opportunities and most importantly, lack of education. This meant that young girls would have to stay at home, risking the chance of one day being sent off to marry someone around nine years older.
Imagine. Imagine a life where you wake up in the middle of the night contemplating what the next day holds for you, or if it will be the last day you see your family – you can’t right? Because we, individuals part of Generation Z would never even think, yet imagine such a daunting lifestyle.
The norms of cultures in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Ethiopia, were so traditional and structurally placed in, that everyone was oblivious to what they were actually doing. They simply did not have resources and opportunities to make change happen.
So to conclude, what I found quite striking was what you could say as the possible dangers of culture and the implications it can have. I am not saying that culture is bad, but in a way in needs to keep evolving for everyone to be more content with themselves and their lifestyle. What I noticed was that, young girls were married off not because of their parents, or the men they were being married to but by their culture and its intertwining, complicated relationship to opportunities – or the lack of them. This is where organisations came to help to provide chances to families, to stop this continuing loop.
Culture defines people or a community advocating a specific culture, and changes in the culture immediately changes how people behave and portray their lives. In a way, culture holds much more power than we think it does and sometimes nuances need to be made to satisfy the people following the culture – and to evolve it for the better.
Writer’s Fortnight: Chetan Bhagat
Today we heard the second guest speaker for Writer’s Fortnight, Chetan Bhagat. From the moment he walked onto the stage till the time he left, the audience was fully engaged. Chetan initially started off with a little information about himself and his previous professions and then later went on to talk about his goal and how it is demonstrated in his writing, and ultimately, in his life. His goal is to change, and to make change happen in India and to influence a progressive society. Chetan wanted to be able to connect with Indians, and he did it the best way he could, through entertainment. This is how he captivated the audience from the start, with humour, then with passion and inspiration. Chetan connected to Indians through his books and movies, and his strategy was to reinvent; he wanted to change the game. He started writing in newspapers, however it was all in English, and he knew he would not be able to create a connection, so he started writing in a local newspaper, in Hindi. In 2004, Chetan wrote his first book whilst working in banking, called, “Five Point Someone”. Since then, all his books have had an aspect of a social issue, with the means to educate his readers but also to entertain. He was writing stories for them.
I found this segment of the speech very insightful and interesting. I got an idea of what it is like to be a writer, which was fascinating. Chetan writes books because he has a goal he wants to achieve and he wants to use his expertise to achieve them. Stories have a purpose, much more than just to entertain, but to educate, and to show meaning and to bring out empathy, and he used entertainment for get his reader’s to be able to be interested and to think deeply about the issues presented in the story.
Chetan later went on to talk about success and what actually is it. Personally, I believe that success is when you are content with yourself and where you are in life. He believes that success is when you have reached “true accomplishment”, which is kind of the umbrella to all sorts of personal definitions of what success is. Chetan believes that motivation is what pushes you to achieve long-effort goals. He also believes that winners are the ones who “change the game.” Chetan quoted Charles Darwin to represent what is means to change the game, “It is not the strongest species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the most adaptive.” Winners are people who can adapt and change to fit comfortably in their current situation.
Overall, I really enjoyed listening to Chetan Bhagat, and I found it extremely meaningful and engaging and my ears were wide open the whole time. I got an insight into the minds of writers and how they captivate their readers to acknowledge their work and most importantly, to understand it and to be interested and invested in it. Not only did I got the writer’s perspective, but I also got a great picture of his story and why he does what he does.
Writer’s Fortnight: Steve Dawson
Today we heard our first speaker for Writer’s Fortnight, Steve Dawson. Prior to his speech, I anticipated that he would talk more about his journey to where he is and the incredible experiences that we had all heard about briefly in class. Though apart from the questions, it was pretty much about how to interview your interviewee. Being honest, at first I was a little unsure about how I was going to write a summary of his “story” with ‘How to interview’ steps. However, afterwards I realised that this is his story. These 5 steps is what brought him to where he is now. Those 5 steps were:
- Ask open-ended questions
- Set the answer free
- Don’t interrupt
- Be a single shooter
- Listen to the answer
These are not just 5 steps on how to have a meaningful interview, they are how to communicate, how to entertain, and how to create relationships – and that was his story. From being a tax account, to working for The Straits Times, and then one of his biggest achievements of getting spotted by ESPN, along the way he was communicating and entertaining all at the same time. Whether that was through his writing or his financial documents, or through speaking on live television. Dawson even mentioned it himself, “Connection is a big thing in journalism.” What I noticed from the basis of his three main jobs, is that they all had some aspect of media. Though his journalism didn’t start till after his tax accountant job, he learnt these steps throughout his entire life working. Dawson didn’t regret spending 10 years being a tax account, because that is what made him the journalist he is, an ethical one.
Dawson also went on to talk about how we should not “fangirl” about someone who inspires us. We should have already started thinking of ways to be at that level, if not higher. What I enjoyed about this talk was that the core of it was slightly buried and as we asked more questions and analysed and listened, we started to dig up his story.