Addison's Reading Biography

As a child, the Goosebumps collection and Wee Tian Beng’s comic series, The Return of the Condor Heroes, filled my reading shelf. I read mostly for the thrill of suspense and an escape to a world of the supernatural and martial arts. 

It wasn’t until I did Secondary 2 Literature that I experienced the joy of being moved by words. Mingfong Ho’s The Clay Marble marked the first time I teared while reading a novel. Set in war-torn Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in the early 1980s, The Clay Marble illustrates the struggles faced by a 12-year-old girl named Dara, her family and her friend, Jantu. Through this, I began to appreciate the penning down of human experiences to create works of art. I read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and The Hours by Michael Cunningham almost 10 years ago and they remain as two of my favourite novels. The classic story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mister Darcy in Austen’s novel of manners made for a delightful read. 

Cunningham’s intelligent weaving of 3 stories about 3 women set in 3 different times but connected by one novel – Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway – kept me hooked for days. The plot focuses on three women of different generations whose lives are interconnected by the novel Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. These are Clarissa Vaughan, a New Yorker preparing an award party for her AIDS-stricken long-time friend and poet, Richard in 2001; Laura Brown, a pregnant 1950s California housewife with a young boy and an unhappy marriage; and Virginia Woolf herself in 1920s England, who is struggling with depression and mental illness whilst trying to write her novel. Stephen Daldry’s beautiful film adaptation, starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore, is also my all-time favourite film. 

In my late teenage years, I developed a love for reading biographies or memoirs and the notion of people inspiring people. These ranged from prominent figures like Mother Teresa and Nelson Mendela, political figures like Harvey Milk, Nobel prize-winning mathematician John Nash, to artists like Nicole Kidman.

One of the most significant biographies I’ve read is that of Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, who was known to have internally shared in the spiritual suffering of Christ and was constantly attacked by the devil, as Jesus was in his darkest hour. Through his diary and the testimonies of his spiritual sons and daughters, we've come to know that Padre Pio was in constant communication with God. They were always conversing with each other. 

There are also a few short stories that have had an effect on me. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood, Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx and Alfian Sa’at’s collection, Corridors are included in this list.