A Singapore communist subaltern writes back: He Jin’s life stories as historical testimony

Abstract

ABSTRACT He Jin, a lifelong member of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) who was born in Singapore, produced two volumes of short stories which documented the subaltern lives he lived through. They were written thirty years apart but were published in the same year. He penned the earlier stories as a Chinese middle school student in 1950s Singapore and was a CPM soldier in the Thai-Malaysian jungle when he wrote the ones in the 1980s. He Jin also authored two retrospective “autobiographical novels.” The first provides the historical context of the 13 May 1954 protests he participated in against the colonial imposition of compulsory conscription while the second covers his long exile as a CPM member in Indonesia before being sent to fight in the jungle. His works, in particular the novels, have been deemed by a leading literary and academic critic as lacking literary merit and relevance. He Jin’s writings however falls into place as an oeuvre formed from plausible life experiences which are credible on a personal, human level, and which endow the author with a personality, world view and agency. His life as he tells it embodies his understanding of Singapore’s anti-colonial history and historiography and offers a testimony which challenges the dominant narratives of both the Singapore state and CPM.