![]() ![]() There are so many things that we cannot say in public, as if saying such things would invite chaos into our society. “In fact, we’re regularly encouraged to keep our demons hidden. “Amir, we all live in a country where so many things get bottled up inside ourselves,” Mrs de Souza remembers telling Amir, the student she tells the boys about. ![]() Yet she does at least examine the problematic nature of Singaporean conservatism. Through Mrs de Souza’s reminiscences about her life, Wong not only critiques draconian Singaporean laws, he explores the question: Can we atone for mistakes? Was being a good teacher after her terrible error of judgement enough? The niggling feeling one has during Mrs de Souza’s account however is that she made a mistake that was obviously dreadful at the time it’s hard to be empathetic towards her. We won’t give anything away here, but it all relates to Singapore’s extreme conservatism. ![]() While she couches it all in very general terms to them, leaving out a lot of what she sees as being salacious detail, she tells the reader the full story. ![]() During her last class, Mrs de Souza decides to eschew her planned lesson and instead primly tells her students about a terrible incident, for which she was directly responsible, involving one of her former students. ![]()
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