Scorpion Orchid by Lloyd Fernando

Scorpion Orchid appeared on every iteration of my lists. This means that since last August, I’ve read the title, or descriptions of the book, or discussions of its literary significance nigh daily. When I started this novel, I therefore expected it to be akin to a Malayan version of Dead Poets Society sans Robin Williams and that whole desk bit: four friends from disparate backgrounds are about to graduate from University and must deal with their own personal struggles while retaining the bonds of their friendship in the face of a rocky social landscape (1950s Singapore, so after the Japanese occupation but before Independence). 

I’m still not sure if my expectations were fairly inaccurate, but I still think there’s a significance between these two narrative styles that’s worth considering. I’ll somewhat shamefully admit that I wasn’t especially enamoured with the text when I started it. The texts on my lists from the 60s and 70s (_very_ broadly speaking, here) thus far deal commonly with a heavy-handed masculinity as boys/men come into their own alongside the Independence of their nation. Reading a handful of these novels in close succession can be a bit much, even if they are of great literary significance or are spectacularly well-written. 

But I think that Scorpion Orchid does a rather careful and considerate job of narrating the four boys’ stories and showing how they’re attempting to write their own (fractured) personal narratives, while juxtaposing this against their country’s fragmented national story. Singapore is caught in this type of liminal zone, at once recovering from Japanese occupation while trying to manifest its own national identity and seek independence from Britain. Yet as the boys’ language and general education suggests, identity construction — both national and individual — seems to be thought of as a type of grab-bag at times, where one has to choose which facets of their history they’ll keep (British education) even as they eschew others (dominance of British culture). 

In short, I think that Scorpion Orchid will end up serving as the crux of my discussion of the earlier SEA texts in English, and how a hyper-masculine bildungsroman becomes entwined with national identity. The texts even lends itself to this reading as the boys’ stories are interspersed with italicized sections that relate the myths and stories that underpin the cultural backgrounds of each of the boys. Because, importantly, the four boys (men?) in the story represent the four predominate races in Singapore at the time: Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Eurasian. 

I’m excited to do a multicultural and cosmopolitanism reading of this novel, but more excited to add it to the tally of SEA bildungsromans, so I can (hopefully) soon start generating ideas about why they are absolutely splattered across this list*