In the past few years, I’ve written about my journey with labels: Living and Thriving with Labels and Don’t call me Migrant or Asian but who do you say I am? In a generous reading of a label like ‘migrant’, you could say it is a convenient shorthand that points people to specific information and services, and allows people to quickly adjust how they engage with the subject matter or people who identify as migrant. You might even say ‘migrant’ encourages feelings of empathy and curiosity. In a less sanguine light, ‘migrant’ perpetuates the tropes in our public consciousness – the yellow/brown/black skinned person who is struggling in a white world, who overcomes the odds to be one of them, overachieves but stays humble and grateful.
Identities and cultures get lost and found as people traverse land and sea. This a collection of ten poems written by an immigrant in New Zealand, a woman of colour with multiple identities. In some poems, she unpacks the social cues and cultural nuances of the situations she finds herself in. In others, she simply wants to be herself – at least one of the multiple identities she holds.
For best results, perform the poems like a song, a rap or spoken word.
I celebrate the year of 2022 with my first self-published book How To Be Different, How To Be Me: Poems about identity and culture lost and found.
I started writing poetry when I was 15, published poems in local anthologies in Singapore in my early twenties and once entrenched in adulthood and soon after, motherhood, poetry became a distant memory. I started to write again when my children could walk and and run on their own, and as I saw my thirties start to move very quickly into another decade. Where did all that time go? And what did I have to show for it?
Words. I had words to capture the moments when something in me stirred: reacting to an incident, realising some dormant thought, or ranting in style.
By 2022, I had plenty of words for capturing scenes from motherhood, family holidays, coffee conversations, imagined lives of my alter egos, and pointy social commentary dressed up in verse. In 2022, the thirties were well over, and I found myself turning 45 – feeling restless about what I was going to do with my accumulated words, and tired of not having a birthday gift that I really wanted.
The antidote to that was buying myself a New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) membership and attending their Wellington Roadshow in July. I was going to be a writer, a poet, a someone who had words worth reading (and performing). I was inspired by the keynote address given by Witi Ihimaera who imparted these lessons: write to impossible deadlines, use writing structures like seasons, and decide what kind of writer you want to be. I re-connected with my element in a poetry masterclass by Siobhan Harvey. And I found like-minded people and discovered networks and events in the amazing literary capital of Wellington I call home.
Open mic poetry reading at Unity Books Wellington on National Poetry Day 26 Aug 2022
I took part in an open mic poetry reading organised by the Wellington branch of the NZSA as part of National Poetry Day. I started to write poetry to submit to anthologies, literary journals and any occasion that called for poetry that resonated with my personal and life themes. When my poems were not accepted, I wasn’t disheartened, but was actually motivated to find alternative ways to express myself to the public.
Self-publishing in the age of ‘self’
In the age of the ‘self’, I was starting to think I was missing out on something by merely wishing that someday someone would somehow discover my talent and sign me up as their publisher. I concluded one Sunday afternoon that I could do that for myself – look at the countless other individuals who have released their own music, published their own books, and produced their own apps!
I’ve had already been routinely putting together collections of poetry to share with friends and family, designing book covers and layout using Canva and promoting them on my Facebook page and LinkedIn account. So I was just taking another a few additional steps to getting my work into a more concrete and legitimised format.
With a collection of recent poems already forming in my head, I quickly went into entrepreneurial mode, googling my way through how-to-guides, YouTube videos and learning through trial and error. The result of this self-learnt journey into self-publishing are two products: A Kindle product and a softcover book.
Where to find my book
You can purchase the Kindle book here from anywhere in the world (almost) and you don’t need a Kindle reader – just download the Kindle app on your device. And if you’re in New Zealand, you can place an order for the softcover book here (free shipping). If you’ve read my book, please consider leaving a review on Goodreads.
I also did a poetry reading on Facebook live and this being my first experience hosting a FB live event, I thought it went pretty well!
Facebook live poetry reading from How To Be Different, How To Be Me
My next goals are to get it to local bookstores, events and do more live poetry readings, in-person and online. I also hope to use the book as a springboard for small group discussions, workshops and any kind of event that promotes self-reflection and discovery as it relates to individuals or communities who identify as being ‘different’.
So I bid you adieu 2022, with all the words I’ve written here, and look forward to resting, recovering and re-connecting to prepare for 2023.
I have been, and continue to be, troubled by how (im)migrants are portrayed by the media, and by extension, viewed by readers of media, and one could argue, on the basis of how society has made up its mind on the topic. To put it crudely, migrants are valued more for their economic contributions than the multiple cultures and histories they bring with them. All other nuances are lost in the need for quick conclusions in a busy and distracted world.
The economic migrant is a fairly recent construct, spurred by the bigger constructs of globalisation and international trade (see edited book by Trlin, Spoonley, and Bedford (2005) for articles on immigration policy in the 2000s). No doubt migrants and the receiving country are strongly attracted to each other on the potential and promise of financial reward. For migrants, however, the reward is not simply and purely economic. From my own experiences and insider observations, reward can be construed as short-term gains (better jobs, higher pay), longer-term returns (better opportunities for their children), and are often intermingled with other motivations ranging from lifestyle upgrades to escaping political uncertainty. (See Castelli (2008) for an insightful overview of different types of migrants.)
How does one measure ‘contribution’ of migrants and multiculturalism if not by the sure and firm way of dollars and cents?
For the receiving country, one could also argue that the reward is not simply and purely economic. Migrants contribute to the cultural diversity of the nation and enrich the social lives of locals and all residents in the country. The statement I’ve just made is unfortunately more rhetoric than real (something grandiose and admirable enough to be valid), a description, perhaps, of an ideal world that exists in policy and organisational statements signalling inclusion. How does one measure ‘contribution’ of migrants and multiculturalism if not by the sure and firm way of dollars and cents?
In the wake of post-covid rationalisation of immigration, the economic argument still holds strong, if not stronger than before. In a Newsroom article, Professor Steven Poelhekke re-hashes the classic argument for migrants in New Zealand – they do the jobs locals shun (while locals learn how to be more productive), and bring in innovation and patent worthy ideas. The article highlights two extreme values of immigration: low unskilled labour versus high-calibre talent – and appears to welcome them in equal measure.
Another article from the Financial Times reiterates the economic argument but favours one group over the other. It builds its case around Foriegn Minister Winston Peters’ claims that the pandemic has “exposed the problems of building an economy on consumption driven by immigration.” Peters is of the view that relying on high immigration rates to contribute to GDP is ‘unsustainable’ because of the pressure it places on infrastructure, health and education. Instead, New Zealand should focus on a select group of highly skilled immigrants essential to wealth creation.
Interestingly, the FT article contrasts Peters’ worldview with that of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, supposedly “a great advocate of a multicultural New Zealand” by demonstrating hospitality towards migrants. However, apart from the one mention of ‘multicultural’, nothing else is said about multiculturalism. Thus nothing much is known about so-called advocacy for multicultural New Zealand, if indeed there is a specific rationalisation of immigration on the basis of creating a multicultural nation. (Or if my suspicions are right, it’s just too tricky to define and measure.)
… the predominant rationalisation for migrants is that they serve the receiving country’s economic purposes. And in a post-covid recovery state of mind, that surely must be the most important reason.
So putting the two articles side by side, immigration or migration, whether you stick strictly to the definitions of immigration as permanent, and migration as temporary or more mobile, the predominant rationalisation for migrants is that they serve the receiving country’s economic purposes. And in a post-covid recovery state of mind, that surely must be the most important reason.
The case for multiculturalism, while elusive, is suggested in Professor Paul Spoonly’s article for HR practitioners titled ‘Why ethnicity diversity is essential in a post-Covid world’. Spoonley argues that there is an ongoing need for a migrant workforce by providing both economic and cultural perspectives on immigration, but highlights that the cultural perspective is of greater significance.
The economic case for migrants can be summed up as: migration numbers will go down and there is an understandable shift to up/re-skill local workers, but there will still be a need for migrant workers as we can’t fill the gap quickly and efficiently enough.
The cultural perspective that comes after, however, is not strictly a case for ‘multicultural’ New Zealand through immigration, but rather, alludes to the fact that immigration in the past has contributed to a multicultural New Zealand and therefore “ethnic diversity is a major consideration in terms of the current and future economy and labour force of this country.”
Unfortunately, the way ethnic diversity is framed is nebulous – as a ‘consideration’ to promote the ‘viability’ of businesses. What conclusion is one to draw from these words? Reading Spoonley’s argument more closely and inferring the ‘unspoken’, I conclude that companies should hire on the basis of ethnic diversity as opposed to hiring based on the predominant Euro/Anglo culture, and going beyond the existing ethnic diversity policies regarding Māori and Pacific employees. ‘Asian’ is mentioned once as a characteristic of diversity and so if one were to pick that up, that’s one specific group of people you should consider hiring. And the reason for choosing ‘ethnic diversity’? It makes better business sense!
So once again we come back to the tiresome argument, however true and trite, of ‘money makes the world go round’.
So once again we come back to the tiresome argument, however true and trite, of ‘money makes the world go round’. Migrants are good for the economy, whether high or low value migrants, and if migrants have made us more diverse, then we want to make sure we serve our migrant populations and earn their money.
I hope this provokes us into thinking more about (im)migration and (im)igrants; what the big nebulous words of ‘globalisation’, ‘ethnic diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’ (to name a few) actually mean to us in our daily lives; and be challenged to think ‘multiculturally’ when it’s easier not to.
