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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...
Jay Prosser
Jan 27, 20246 min read
180 views
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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...
Jay Prosser
Dec 29, 20223 min read
249 views
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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...
Jay Prosser
Jan 3, 20235 min read
108 views
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Shema
Honorable Mention for the 2021 Curt Johnson Prose Award (Nonfiction). Excerpt. Please visit december for full essay. All rights reserved...
Jay Prosser
May 10, 20224 min read
334 views
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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...
Jay Prosser
Apr 18, 20216 min read
549 views
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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...

Jay Prosser
Oct 12, 20203 min read
952 views
4 comments


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...

Jay Prosser
Oct 8, 20203 min read
383 views
8 comments


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...

Jay Prosser
Sep 21, 20202 min read
103 views
1 comment


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...

Jay Prosser
Sep 19, 20201 min read
58 views
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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,...

Jay Prosser
Sep 19, 20201 min read
350 views
0 comments


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...

Jay Prosser
Jul 27, 20201 min read
42 views
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