This book was available to me as an audiobook and an e-book on Storytel. I opted to listen to it so that I could get some work done at the same time. I didn’t want to pick up this book for the longest time because it’s a memoir, and sometimes, when I delve into individual experiences, it can be too intimate and I don't particularly want to know.
It's Liyana Dhamirah’s ‘Homeless: The Untold Story of a Mother’s Struggle in Crazy Rich Singapore’ (2019). It's her life lived, and her story that she chose to share. So I respect how she did that. It was 2009, and a pregnant (with her third child) 22-year-old Liyana Dhamirah lived in a tent on both West Coast Park and Sembawang Beach for a year. Today at 35 years old with four children and a new gentle husband, she is now a home-owner.
Her life changed at 12 years old when her parents divorced and her mother was unable to earn enough to support the children. She had to live with 11 others in her Aunty Zainab’s three-room flat. She had her first child at 16 years old, secured three credits for the O’level examinations, and then went out to work to support her child and growing family. By the time she had her third child, she was effectively a single mother since her then-husband didn’t contribute anything to the family and neither could he hold down a job.
As much as I wonder why she got pregnant thrice with an unreliable man, and uncertain future/income, that's not in my place to judge. A romantic liaison can make or break us. It's that crazy. People struggle. Not all of us got on the 'right path' to a cushy adult life, by that, I define that as what our parents want us to be — to have the best education we can, secure a job and to have the means to earn an income to support a family, a mortgage and live with stress. I wanted to switch to reading the digital book, but the narrator for the Storytel audiobook, Anita Kapoor is excellent, and I decided to stick with her voice for all 3hr and 11 minutes. I had to stop mid-way though, to go to bed and continue with it the next day.
Fate dealt Liyana Dhamirah a hard hand, and her chosen life partner didn't pull his weight. The children are innocent. What she did have, is family help to care for her elder boys in the form of her mother, and then stepfather. She didn’t crumble. She is strong. She moved out of the beach into rental flats. That went on for the next seven years. She stuck it out, met some helpful people along the way, had the determination to provide for herself and the kids, and began earning an income. She finally got a divorce in 2014, met another (better) man, continued growing her small business.
This book ended when she moved into her own new home in July 2018. But her story continues in real life today. She continues to find meaning in her work, ensure stability at home for herself and her children, and also continuing her quest to help others who're struggling in similar circumstances. It's a short story, and a TLDR version is found in the author's own voice and an excerpt of the book in a Mothership article in August 2020, and in an interview with TODAY in July 2020.
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