Jay Prosser
A treasure chest of loving strangers
For as long as I can remember, the camphorwood chest has been the family archive. Its contents are scattered across individuals, history,...
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Jay Prosser
- Mar 10
- 6 min
Water Migrant
My grandmother had a lifelong association with water. She was also twice a refugee, or what would now be called an illegal immigrant. My...
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Jay Prosser
- Jan 3
- 5 min
Remembrance of curry puffs past
Can we eat our way back to our childhoods? There’s a reason why Marcel Proust’s seven-volume memoir-novel kicks off its epic journey down...
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Jay Prosser
- Dec 29, 2022
- 3 min
The music of memory
Chanukah in the Maghain Aboth, Singapore I just spent Shabbat Chanukah – the Saturday over the Jewish Festival of Lights – in the...
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Jay Prosser
- May 10, 2022
- 4 min
Shema
Honorable Mention for the 2021 Curt Johnson Prose Award (Nonfiction). Excerpt. Please visit december for full essay. All rights reserved...
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Jay Prosser
- Apr 18, 2021
- 6 min
Not the Malayan brown bear: How my father won the Military Cross
The camphorwood chest is indubitably my mother’s archive. It is dominated by her objects, as our growing-up was overwhelmed by her family...
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Jay Prosser
- Oct 12, 2020
- 3 min
The last ship to escape Singapore
Last night’s episode of The Singapore Grip showed the luckier protagonists boarding the Felix Roussel, Bombay-bound, in a bid to escape...
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Jay Prosser
- Oct 8, 2020
- 3 min
My mother the model
Only when I opened the camphorwood chest and really started to delve into my mother's past did I discover that she had been a model in...
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Jay Prosser
- Sep 21, 2020
- 2 min
The Singapore Grip -- why the Worlds?
Why did last night’s episode of The Singapore Grip (Christopher Hampton, ITV) spend so long – as does the eponymous novel by JG Farrell...
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Jay Prosser
- Sep 19, 2020
- 1 min
The scent of camphor
Whenever the chest is opened, the scent of camphor pulls me into another world. This is the past of my grandfather: a spice-trading...
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Jay Prosser
- Jul 27, 2020
- 1 min
Rosh Hashannah Chutney
(A recipe-poem. I really did make this.) Gather windfall fruit from unloved park Detach red chillies from absent girlfriend’s plant...
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