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Tania De Rozario, Dinner on Monster Island: Essays, HarperCollins, 2024. 192 pgs.
Tania De Rozario’s Dinner on Monster Island is a lyrical and multi-faceted speech act. The fourteen essays are woven with complex narratives, where events are recounted within personal as well as political contexts, with a view to testifying to one’s lived truths and to inspiring readers. The frequent citations and explorations of horror cinema remind us that much of life is as terrifying or more so, than in film.
De Rozario is a queer writer of colour and visual artist. She is the author of Tender Delirium, which was short-listed for the Singapore Literature Prize, as well as And the Walls Come Crumbling Down, a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Born in Singapore, De Rozario lives and works on the traditional unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, colonially known as Vancouver.
In Martin Luther King Jr’s 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam”, he condemns the Vietnam War and points out that a radical revolution of values is needed to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. His speech emphasises love and justice as critical values instead of economic nationalism. The spirit of that speech echoes through De Rozario’s Dinner on Monster Island. Infused with a candid, intimate tone, the book exposes problematic practices and values in her family and school while growing up in Singapore (e.g. “Salvation” and “One Size Fits Small”) and also examines the disturbing consequences of various institutional actions and government policies (e.g. “Looks Like the Real Thing”, “Black Boxes and Penguin Pulp”, “Thin Line”, and “Dinner on Monster Island”).
Dinner on Monster Island is both personal and political—De Rozario’s essays employ an intersectional feminist lens on her lived experiences as well as those of others, and advocate for the protection and care of those discriminated against. These essays are rooted in the real, and give voice particularly to the plights of queers, women and girls, Brown people, and migrant workers in Singapore.
“Salvation”, the first essay, is a searing account of what De Rozario experienced as a twelve-year-old. Her mother decided her twelve-year-old child was possessed by a demon, because she showed signs of being gay. The attempted exorcism reads like the script of a horror movie and indeed, De Rozario interweaves the exposition of 1973 film The Exorcist with her personal story. Who or what owns the body of a female child? Is salvation what others have the power to provide? In De Rozario’s case, it is a hard-won inner realisation of her authentic self that liberates her.
In “One Size Fits Small”, De Rozario cogently describes the various kinds of fat shaming and alienation she suffered in school. De Rozario also talks about the deep-seated racism that intersects with queer-phobia. The effort to control or reduce size of bodies is all about power, and how power manifests as a set of standards or strictures governing what is “right” and, conversely, what is “too much” or “wrong”. The use of power to legislate rightness or wrongness extends to other areas, such as the control of birth rates, through incentives or punitive consequences in the 1970s, and to a later about-turn in the 1980s with initiatives to encourage “better-educated women” to marry and have more children, through financial incentives.
Interwoven with essays foregrounding the oppressive consequences from certain systems and values, readers are also treated to reminders of the transformative power of friendships, alternative culture, music and films (e.g. “I Had a Dream I Was Your Hero”, “Conflict Circle”, and “My Year of Magic”).
In “How to Forget,” De Rozario tackles the sensitive complex position she was in, as a teenager infatuated with her teacher. She does not simply point an accusing finger at the teacher but challenges us to look at the power dynamics that existed.
“I Hope We Shine On” details struggles with suicide, suicidal feelings and intergenerational trauma. As an essay, it covers a wide palette of topics ranging from De Rozario’s personal and family history, to questions of how trauma manifests itself in ways such as self-harm and across generations. Is suicide ever an individual issue? Or does it point to problems within society itself? De Rozario also draws a connection between her father’s suicide and his membership of a cult. She says this cult had communes throughout the world and was notorious for the sexual abuse of children. A high proportion of those who left the cult were prone to suicide and addiction. As De Rozario points out:
…it is not your personality that makes you vulnerable, but a combination of social and environmental factors. Are you marginalised by the larger society? Is there a deep-seated reason you are searching for community? Do you feel betrayed by previous religious beliefs? Have your circumstances left you so alone and lonely that the only way you are able to find comfort and connection is to give yourself away entirely? (44)
De Rozario expands the scope of this examination of suicide, violence and trauma re-enactment, by citing parallels in horror films and literature. She engages readers with a fascinating and detailed comparison of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Shining with its 2019 film sequel Doctor Sleep, directed by Mike Flanagan. De Rozario’s in-depth exploration of cinematic themes, metaphors and narratives in both films highlight the psychological themes of intergenerational trauma, traumatic re-enactment, and the battle with literal and metaphorical ghosts.
The essay “Becoming Monsters” foregrounds De Rozario’s long-time interest in Sadako, the monster/ghost in the 1998 Japanese film Ringu. Sadako as a character harkens to a much earlier myth, Oiwa and her representation in an 1825 kabuki play. Various myths of the female monster abound in Asian cultures. For example, the Pontianak in Malaysian folklore and her equivalent, the Kuntilanak, in Indonesia, and the Churel in Indian myths. De Rozario also mentions other examples of female monsters in Asian horror cinema: Takashi Shimuzu’s Ju-On (Japan, 2000), Ahn Byeong-ki’s Phone (South Korea, 2002), Kelvin Tong’s The Maid (Singapore, 2005), and Banjong Pisanthanakun’s and Parkpoom Wongpoom’s Shutter (Thailand, 2004). As De Rozario writes, “Women being killed. Women refusing to die.” (72). Elaborating on the power of the female monster Sadako’s deadly gaze: “There is always so much talk about the male gaze. Imagine if this is what happened every time the rest of us gazed back.” (75).
De Rozario contrasts the artificiality of appearances with the historically valued cultural sites and memories in “Looks Like the Real Thing”. What compels a town to try to get rid of itself, paraphrasing the lyrics from Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees”?Important historical and cultural sites and memories (e.g. Sungei Road Market and Bukit Brown Cemetery) have been erased, alongside a concomitant campaign to prettify geographical sites with architectural “wonders” (e.g. Marina Bay Sands and Gardens by the Bay). These latter-day behemoths are somewhat reminiscent of ancient creations built by emperors and pharaohs as tribute to their power and aspirations toward immortality.
In “Where Are You From?”, De Rozario focuses on the issues of race and racism in Singapore. She also includes a discussion of the 2018 Hollywood movie Crazy Rich Asians. Although some East Asians in the United States and Canada might be thrilled to see signs of “representation” in mainstream media, De Rozario makes a strong argument against the simplification and erasure of what is a complex set of power and race issues in Singapore. For example, she cites the reality of how migrant workers have been treated, and specifically how they suffered from horrific overcrowding and lack of protection during the early days of Covid. Embedded within the notion of representation itself is an unsaid presumption of power and privilege: who gets to be represented, and who ends up being erased?
“Thin Line” points to disturbing aspects in Singaporean society, where many citizens approve of the severe caning of drug-dealers. The essay begins with De Rozario discovering that a former student of hers has been charged with selling drugs to friends; he has been given a twenty-year prison sentence and faces twenty-four strokes of the cane. De Rozario asks whether cruelty or insensitivity to others’ suffering can be likened to zombification, to losing the capacity to be fully human and hence empathetic. What is the investment for those who choose to align with the horde mentality? Coming at this question in a slightly different way, “Dinner on Monster Island” explores “Disneyland With the Death Penalty”, a term coined by the North American writer William Gibson. The facade of cheerful ease exists, but De Rozario peels off that outer layer to expose some of what lies beneath the appearance. For example, she details incidents of political protest where activists suffer severe consequences, psychologically, socially and financially for speaking up. There is also the painful existence of members of the public who snitch on activists. As De Rozario writes: “How do you avoid the police, when the police are everyone?” (144).
We come full circle in the third and last section of the book. In “Letter to My Mother”, De Rozario is able to return to the flat where she had been severely traumatised, as outlined in the first essay “Salvation”. Her mother now dead, De Rozario returns, empowered and transformed. Hers is the voice of someone who has managed to exorcise the ghost of her mother’s oppression.
I am reminded of Lou Reed’s song “Magic and Loss” (1992): “As you pass through fire as you pass through fire/trying to remember its name/When you pass through fire licking at your lips/you cannot remain the same”.De Rozario’s collection of essays describes an excruciating yet necessary rite of passage through loss and transformation, a passage that is eloquently, vividly and often painfully recounted. Despite loss, there still is magic. The magic of being vitally aware and humane.
How to cite: Kwa, Lydia. “Despite Loss, Magic Persists: Tania De Rozario’s Dinner on Monster Island.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 20 Jan. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/01/20/monster-island.
Lydia Kwa has published two books of poetry (The Colours of Heroines, 1992; sinuous, 2013) and four novels (This Place Called Absence, 2000; The Walking Boy, 2005 and 2019; Pulse, 2010 and 2014; Oracle Bone, 2017). Her fifth novel A Dream Wants Waking will be published by Buckrider Books, an imprint of Wolsak & Wynn, in Fall 2023. A third book of poetry, from time to new, will be published by Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2024. She won the Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2018; and her novels have been nominated for several awards, including the Lambda Literary Award for Fiction. [All contributions by Lydia Kwa.]