About this item
In this unusual, engaging, and intimate collection of personal essays, Lambda Literary Award finalist Tania De Rozario recalls growing up as a queer, brown, fat girl in Singapore, blending memoir with elements of history, pop culture, horror films, and current events to explore the nature of monsters and what it means to be different.Tania De Rozario was just twelve years old when she was gay-exorcised. Convinced that her boyish style and demeanor were a sign of something wicked, her mother and a pair of her church friends tried to "banish the evil" from Tania. That day, the young girl realized that monsters weren't just found in horror tales. They could lurk anywhere - including your own family and community - and look just like you. Dinner on Monster Island is Tania's memoir of her life and childhood in Singapore - where she discovered how difference is often perceived as deviant, damaged, disobedient, and sometimes, demonic.
About the Author
Tania De Rozario is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of Tender Delirium (2013, Math Paper Press) , And The Walls Come Crumbling Down (2016, Math Paper Press / 2020, Gaudy Boy) , and Somewhere Else, Another You (2018, Math Paper Press) . She was the 2020 winner of the New Ohio Review Nonfiction Contest, the 2021 winner of the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Poetry Contest and the 2011 winner of Singapore's Golden Point Award for English Poetry. In addition, And The Walls Come Crumbling Down was s a 2021 Lambda Literary Award finalist, and Tender Delirium was on the shortlist for the 2014 Singapore Literature Prize. Her essay collection, Dinner on Monster Island, is forthcoming with Harper Perennial. Tania's writing has been cited in journals such as The Routledge Companion on Architecture and The City (Routledge, 2019) , Singapore Literature & Culture: Current Directions in a Global Context (Routledge, 2017) , and Static (Stanford, 2014) . She has undertaken residencies at Hedgebrook (USA) , Toji Cultural Centre (South Korea) , Sangam House (India) , The Substation (Singapore) , the National University of Singapore's Centre for Quantum Technologies (Singapore) , The Substation (Singapore) and The Unifiedfield (Spain) . Her poetry, prose and comics have been published in journals and anthologies including The Laurel Review, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner Online Journal, carte blanche, The Malahat Review, subTerrain Blue Lyra Review, The Margin - The Asian American Writers Workshop Journal, Softblow, and Punch Drunk Press, among others. Tania's visual art has been showcased in galleries and art spaces in Singapore, Moscow, Amsterdam, London, Spain and San Francisco. She has written extensively about art for both institutions and commercial publications, with a focus on art from Singapore and Southeast Asia. For 12 years, Tania worked as an adjunct at Lasalle College of the Arts, where she taught a variety of classes across the McNally School of Fine Arts, and the Faculty For the Creative Industries. Her most recent work there involved creating and facilitating a 12-week lecture/workshop that focused on Feminine Monstrosities in Contemporary Cinema. She was also the director and co-founder of EtiquetteSG, a platform that develops and showcases art, writing and film by women from and in Singapore. Founded in 2010, its most recent work included the development and facilitation of art and writing workshops focused on issues of gender-based violence.
