If you want to read this letter in Spanish, you’ll find it here.
In this tangled world, sometimes I believe we take for granted many things upon which our fragile and fleeting condition depends: oxygen, a pleasant temperature, a roof, water, food, and companionship. During these last few days, I can't help but think about what it must be like to have to leave everything behind, decide what to take with me, and go to some other place to start from scratch simply because where I was born is no longer safe. I deeply hope all displaced people find peace and shelter through food.
This is also what Sheere Ng's editorial practice is about. Sheere is a writer and researcher specializing in the intersections between food, immigration, and identity. After studying journalism, her career began at Makansutra, where she wrote about street food in Singapore. In 2013, she traveled to Boston to pursue a Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy, and after graduating, she wanted to explore different sectors related to food. She worked as a researcher at the Museum of Food and Drink, she spent three months as an apprentice at the butcher shop Dickson's Farmstand, and a couple more months at Fung Tu, a Chinese-American restaurant in Manhattan.
Back in Singapore, Sheere and her partner Justin run In Plain Words, a writing and design studio.
Andrés stumbled upon When Cooking Was a Crime while browsing on are.na. A few days later, I received a couple of recommendations from Alan, from Inga Books and filmfront in Chicago, which coincidentally included the title. By then, I had already exchanged emails with Sheere, and we were eagerly awaiting a package from Singapore containing five books.
When Cooking Was a Crime: Masak in the Singapore Prisons, 1970s - 80s is a pure exercise in empathy and editorially, an experimental, artistic, and documentary work that manages to delve into the depths of a subject generally unfamiliar to most: eating within privative institutions such as prisons.
No one should be able to take away anyone's freedom to cook. But in prisons, it's usually not the case. Between the 1970s and 1980s, in the prisons and drug rehabilitation centers in Singapore (DRCs), this activity was illegal for inmates; nevertheless, they managed to do it within their cells, at perfectly calculated hours when they knew no guard would come to supervise. They called this clandestine operation masak, which means 'to cook' in Malay.
First and foremost, it was a collective act because it required a certain coordination and strategy to obtain the necessary resources: someone stealing cotton balls from the clinic, someone saving leftovers from breakfast, someone procuring a can, someone contributing an illicit tool. I imagine that this social aspect is what made masak a nostalgic memory for many former inmates; they ended up establishing a brotherhood only with those they shared their food with.
Masak was the highlight of their life behind bars. It offered hot food in contrast to their cold, insipid and repetitive meals, and a chance to recreate familiar tastes that reminded them of home. Confined in a place where deprivation was the way of life, cooking and eating to the inmates were not only means to the past, but the keys to escaping a dreadful present.
Speaking with Sheere about the things that most caught her attention during research, she concluded that the food, which inmates could barely prepare, was the least of it; in fact, it was far from spectacular; on the contrary, they explained that it was really bad. However, the ability to make small decisions under their own will and escape from the imposed regime helped them regain their autonomy, preserve their dignity, and nurture a minimal creative space. Once again, as basic aspects as meeting any physiological need.
This is the message that the book ultimately conveys. Food itself, while still being a topic of great interest in this situation, becomes a secondary matter (as is often the case), being everything it generates—psychologically and emotionally, the truly important matter.
Once, I made this for my family and even jazzed it up with a canned abalone. My mother and siblings did not want to eat [after tasting it]. They said it was too salty. I thought it was terrible too. But in prison, it tasted wonderful. Maybe because we rarely had something hot or savoury to eat.
—Buffalo
The stories included are based on the experiences of eight former inmates: six Chinese, one Indian, and one Eurasian: Benny Se Teo, Black, Buffalo, Jeffrey, Kim Whye Kee, Kingsley Morrando "zup zeng," Nehru, and Tan Cheng Huat "Toothless Huat." Some preferred to use their real names, while others signed with their nicknames. Sheere met half of them in 2011 when she first wrote about masak for Yahoo!, and the rest between 2018 and 2019, specifically for the research of the book. Almost all of them have closed the chapter of their delinquent youth; they have stable jobs or run their own businesses, some have married, and others have found faith.
Lunch is punishment.
Masak is freedom.
Cooking is control.
Food is play.
It is fascinating to observe how in limited situations, we are capable of reimagining and repurposing our environment. Where do you get fuel to start a fire? This was an extensive operation that required at least five different elements. For Sheere, the inmates' most ingenious ideas stemmed from the need for fuel. Toilet paper spreaded with margarine. Broken plastic trays from the dining hall melted into candle wax. Matches rationed and covered with toothpaste to be reused. And if there were no matches, a flint and a razor blade would do the job of igniting a piece of sheet or some plastic bag.
This activity had a greater boom in rehabilitation centers than in prisons because the facilities in the centers were not optimal for surveillance, and there was shortage of staff, which even allowed for the hunting of small animals, if they were lucky.
The toilet bowl in cells or dormitories was used to drink water as it was not provided in the facilities. They would seal the hole with a water-filled plastic bag and flush the toilet to collect water. The “water ballon” also served as a plunger to drain the toilet bowl, allowing inmates in different cells to communicate through the drain pipe. Of course, there was a jailhouse etiquette to keep the latrine spotless.
Another notable and ironic point is that the same food, however, simultaneously became a divisive and power tool when the opportunity arose. Inmates assigned as cooks for the regular services—lunch at 10 in the morning and dinner at 3 in the afternoon, didn't make the situation any easier because having access to the kitchen, they took advantage by stealing ingredients (for masak) and taking the larger portions. The position had its demand, rightly so. Masadi Masdawi, a superintendent overseeing several centers between 1982 and 1999, would visit the kitchens regularly and even taste the food, mainly to ensure that no one got poisoned.
Of course, sexual innuendoes were also made about inmates who exchanged apples or oranges, which became a taboo, a kind of internal language in which everything had its meaning: eggs symbolized power, candies a means of exchange, leftovers resistance.
«Masak became a way for inmates to turn food into a source of comfort, as it normally is in the outside world»
In addition to saving leftovers and taking food from the kitchen, inmates also obtained ingredients legally: they could purchase packaged foods and condiments at the canteen, paying with their wages earned within the facilities. Many of the preparations that they made were inspired by the region’s traditional cuisine. Bubur cha cha [a dessert made with sweet potato, yam, and coconut milk] was made with kaya [coconut jam], sugar, and diluted green bean soup served at the canteen. Ban mian [noodle soup with meatballs, vegetables, and fried anchovies] combined canned hae bee hiam [dried shrimp in spicy sambal sauce], noodles from lunch, ikan bilis [dried and fried anchovies], and dinner vegetables. The final creation rarely resembled what they longed to eat, but that wasn't the point.
The book even mentions that a prisoner in California made orange chicken with strawberry jam, sugar, and Kool-Aid to reminisce about the meals he shared with his daughter in Chinese restaurants. Food has been the common solace in any prison, more accessible unlike music or alcohol.
The most important thing is pat lang (“to be acquainted with people” in Hokkien), your connection with the inmates.
—Benny
The behavior of a human group within established physical, political, and economic limits arouses my curiosity. It's like peering into a scale model and observing that what happens there is a perfect mirror of reality. The distribution of resources was facilitated by gang networks operating within the facilities. For better or for worse, it was precisely due to this social system that masak thrived with so much complicity. Those who contributed were benefited.
Surprisingly, it was common to see unfinished dishes in the dining halls because gluttony was considered a character weakness; furthermore, rejecting the food provided by the facilities was also a sign of masculinity, possibly because it was a way to express anger towards the institutions trying to control them. However, cooking outside of prison was primarily the domain of women. Masak, on the other hand, was a game for the inmates. It involved much more than cooking: breaking the rules, stealing, devising, and rebelling. Sometimes, inmates even bet their lunch on the winning team in a soccer game or in poker matches.
The predominance of fluorescent orange and uncut folds between the pages creates unique gestures when handling the book, inviting to gently uncover what is hidden. The photographs used also contribute significantly. Without visual records—which Sheere did not have, it is difficult to imagine such precarious scenarios. We also talked about this special collaboration with Don Wong, a former photojournalist and friend of Sheere, willing to experiment.
It was during the lockdown that Don worked, attempting to get inside an inmate’s mind to achieve an authentic and faithful result; he wanted to feel the frustration and later satisfaction of opening a can without any tools, for example. This exercise offered them insight into the extent of boredom and depravity among inmates, as well as their level of patience and tenacity, and helped them validate the authenticity of their inventions. After much trial and error, and multiple sessions, Sheere and Don found a visual language that goes beyond mere literal documentation. The goal was to produce images that appease curiosity rather than evoke appetite.
I am certain that masak helped the inmates retained a mental mirage of a society they once belonged.
—Don Wong
Because food is more often a symbol of love in times of peace and abundance, we tend to believe that it only speaks the language of unity. However, it also paints a much broader and complex picture of reality, filled with nuanced perspectives. That's where the potential of food lies: it will never cease to be a means to communicate, to feel represented, to reveal a host of human and non-human issues that need to be questioned and reconsidered.
Last time we were in Madrid, we met Ale at Arrebato bookstore, and she told us about Mancebía Postigo (we will dedicate a full newsletter to Mar and Oliver), and we bought two of their publications: Comer en Marte [Eating on Mars] and Culebrón gastro-carcelario [Gastro-carcerary soap opera], the latter with many shared aspects with When Cooking Was a Crime. Two completely different publications that converge in a particular critique of a system that fails when it comes to a fundamental right like dignified food, which I believe should remain independent of sentences and penalties, regardless of the cause.
TTS-001
When Cooking was a Crime
ed. Sheere Ng
In Plain Words
2020
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More about In Plain Words, Sheere, and her projects coming soon.