By Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Why do you write?

I think of what a school administrator once said to a young Elias Canetti; It is a chance to raise my hand, if a little too much. Don’t most writers suffer from a desire to be heard? And there is the frequent assuredness we give ourselves that our words mean something, which is another way of asking someone else to convince us of a notion we did not initially believe. I also think of the mousedeer in Sang Kancil fables, who speaks because it is what an animal would do to be free from a predator.