Home is Where We Are
By Prof Wang Gungwu (Arts and Social Sciences ’53) and the late Mrs Margaret Wang (Arts and Social Sciences ’54)
“Does home have to be a country or a city?... Or is home this house or that? We have been fortunate.... We seemed always to have been home.”
Professor Wang Gungwu’s account of his university education in Singapore and the United Kingdom, and the early years of his career as an academic in Malaysia, capture the excitement, the ambition, and the choices of a generation that saw it their responsibility to build the new nations of Southeast Asia.
The exploration of the emotional and intellectual journey towards the formation of an identity, treasured by readers of Prof Wang’s Home is Not Here, extends in this volume into an appreciation of love, family life, and the life of the mind. We also see these years from Margaret’s perspective, her own fascinating family story, and her early impressions of this young bearded poet. Wise and moving, this is a fascinating reflection on identity and belonging, and on the ability of the individual to find a place amidst the historical currents that have shaped Asia.