by Felix Cheong How small can greatness get? If you’re Margaret Leng Tan, a toy piano will do very nicely, thank you very much. Tan is Singapore’s most unusual musical export, a Juilliard-trained musician who made the toy piano her calling card. For turning child’s play into serious art, she received Singapore’s National Arts Council Cultural Medallion, the Lion City’s highest arts accolade, in 2015. Now she’s the subject of a children’s picture book, Becoming Margaret Leng Tan, written by Low Lai Chow and illustrated by Dan Kuah. And here’s the twist: much of the book is not really about… Read More
Golden Boy – Beethoven’s Youth
awaiting review
Kusama – The Graphic Novel
awaiting review
Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo & Me
Reviewed by Michelle N. Huang, The Pennsylvania State University Ellen Forney poetically describes the manic episodes of her bipolar disorder as electrifying: “the sensation that my mind was spinning and overheating would sometimes build to a sensation like an electrical short—a burst of light, a melting or dissipating—.” Reading Forney’s graphic memoir, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me, produces a similarly charged encounter. The reader experiences not only Ellen’s exhilarating highs—the extravagant book launch parties, the professional success—but also her devastatingly dark lows—the blank periods of time where she is unable to move herself from the couch. Marbles captures Forney’s… Read More