10. What's the inspiration for writing We Rose Up Slowly? Where did the ideas for these stories come from?

Many of the events and ideas in We Rose Up Slowly were inspired by topical events found in Singaporean newspapers, online blogs and forums. For example, inspiration is drawn from the tragic car crash when a Ferrari collided with a taxi at the intersection of Rochor & Victoria Roads, the problems caused by deer, boars, monkeys and other wild creatures leaving the jungle and encroaching on the urban areas of Singapore, the controversy over the road development at Bukit Brown cemetery, the last years of patriarchs, the lives of domestic workers, and the imagined regret of writers who have left their home country in search of a better life elsewhere.
Other sources of inspiration were incidents and memories gleaned from the author’s life including failed romances, missed connections, and growing up lost, always plagued by the delusion that better things were happening to inferior people everywhere else.