Lim - A Bit of Earth: an exciting Saga from the First Singapore Literature Prize Winner

A Bit of Earth is an imaginatively rich and aesthetically accomplished novel. Lims clever fusion of fiction and history, and her use of simple, supple, and controlled diction, enriched with occasional humour and a spattering of sparkling imagery, make the novel brilliant, stimulating, and a compelling read.

Mohammad A. Quayum

Professor & Head Department of English Language and Literature
International Islamic University, Malaysia

A Bit of Earth is important both as a literary masterwork as well as a historical document telling in fictional terms the social history of Peraks Kinta Valley. It also has the virtue of being un-put-downablea sure sign of a master storyteller, but over and above this, the novel affirms Suchen as one of the most important writers to have come out of Malaysia.

Wong Phui Nam

Poet, Malaysia

A Bit of Earth chronicles the visceral and cultural struggle of a young Chinese immigrant to survive in an equally struggling Malayan nation. His experience reminds us of the significance of origins, how it defines us as individuals and as members of our community. Likewise, this experience confirms how difficult and confusing it is to locate a liminal ethnicity within the diasporic and postcolonial contexts. The immigrant earns his bit of earth only by continuously re-inventing himself and by negotiating with the forces of history.

The novel makes history personal. It is a joy to teach and a riveting read.

Lily Rose Tope, Ph D

Professor, Department of English & Comparative Literature
University of the Philippines

Astonishing tour de force. You have created a physical and social landscape and peopled it with characters with real human feelings on issues of political import as well as on the everyday strains of personal and social survival.

Martin Marroni

Poet, Scotland

I was very impressed by the range and scope of the novelhow you pack in so much very fascinating history. Also how you deal with the conflict within families as it relates to a political situation. Tuck Heng is a wonderful character and I was totally hooked on his particular story. And you bring the whole thing to a splendid climax. I enjoyed learning so much about other cultures and was sorry to get to the end of the book!

Diana Hendry

Poet & Writer
United Kingdom

Her novel brings into sharp relief conflicts over colonization, nationalism, and community. The central question explored by A Bit of Earthhow individuals transform and yet maintain feelings of belonging in a rapidly changing worldis as relevant in Singapore and Malaysia today as it was during the time in which the novel is set.

Philip Holden

Associate Professor
Department of English Language and Literature
National University of Singapore

Suchen Christine Lims A Bit of Earth depicts the emergence of national consciousness in nineteenth-century Malaya amid the engrossing, complex relations between multi-ethnic characters and their families. A compelling and dramatic novel that draws the reader easily into the life of its main protagonist Tuck Heng, the immigrant from China made good, A Bit of Earth deserves to be read for giving us a sense of a past not usually experienced in contemporary Singapore fiction and for provocatively getting us to question the way we make sense of history, what we remember and what we forget.

Angelia Poon

Assistant Professor
English Language and Literature
National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University

SUCHEN CHRISTINE LIM

2001 Suchen Christine Lim
First published in 2001 by Times Books International. Reprinted 2002.

This edition with new cover published 2009 by
Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd
1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196

Extracts from A Bit of Earth were previously published in More than Half the Sky:
Creative Writings by Thirty Singaporean Women, Times Media (Bandong); Virtual
Lotus: Modern Fiction of Southeast Asia, University of Michigan Press (Two Brothers);
WLT World Literature Today, University of Oklahoma (Clash of the Clans)

Cover art by Opal Works Co. Limited

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National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
Lim, Suchen Christine.
A bit of earth / Suchen Christine Lim. Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2009.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978 981 4484 40 4

1. Malaya Fiction. I. Title.

PR9570.S53

S823 -- dc22 OCN318556798

Printed in Singapore by KWF Printing Pte Ltd

To my grandparents who came from Tangshan, the land beyond the mountains of Perak, and to my farsighted mother, who made sure that I was sent to school.

And lest we forget where we came from, this novel is also dedicated to the descendants of Chinese immigrantsTay Kok Leong, Tay Kok Kiong, Lim Chi Minh, Lim Chi Sharn, and Shannan Wong, and to the descendants of Straits-born ChineseOphelia Ooi, Ngiam Gek Kim, Juliana Lim, and the late Aileen Lau.

I thank the Fulbright Foundation for giving me the time, space and solitude to rework A Bit of Earth. Special thanks to Professor Peter Nazareth and his wife Mary from the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, and Professor Shirley Geok-lin Lim, University of California, Santa Barbara, for being such wonderful supportive hosts during my 1997 sojourn in the United States.

On the Singapore home front, my special thanks to our poets and prose writers Lee Tzu Pheng, Leong Liew Geok, Rasiah Halil, Catherine Lim, Edwin Thumboo, Robert Yeo, Kirpal Singh and many others whose public readings and conversations on writing and literature kept the little creative fire in me burning bright.

I also thank my friends Chen Chong and Liang-yue, who translated the two fragments on into Chinese.