Dinner on Monster Island

Starred review from December 11, 2023
In this poignant memoir-in-essays, De Rozario (And the Walls Come Crumbling Down) intertwines stories about growing up queer and brown in Singapore with her analysis of her favorite horror films. “It took me years to realize that perhaps the reason I love horror is the fact that when I was twelve years old, I was subjected to it,” she writes, recounting how her mother, who viewed De Rozario’s boyish behavior as deviant, enlisted church friends to “gay-exorcise” her daughter. The author endured 7 hours of rough treatment in a religious ceremony purportedly meant to free her from the devil. Later on, De Rozario saw herself in The Exorcist’s demon-filled protagonist and the title character of Carrie; she especially related to Sadako, the spectral protagonist of Japanese horror film Ringu, whom De Rozario interprets as an avatar of feminist justice (“women refusing to die”). Throughout, De Rozario weaves these pop culture ruminations into reflections on her youth in Singapore, a prosperous but highly economically stratified island where the government micromanages the lives of its citizens—including their bodies, De Rozario notes. In addition to suppressing her queer identity, De Rozario describes how this body-centered surveillance stifled her in other ways (as an overweight kid, she endured the government’s strenuous weight loss program). De Rozario transfixes with her idiosyncratic blend of film criticism, social critique, and autobiography. It’s a unique and touching account. (Feb.)Correction: An earlier version of this review misspelled the name of a character in Ringu and misstated the length of the religious ceremony the author underwent.

December 15, 2023
A penetrating series of personal essays from a writer and visual artist. Growing up as a multiracial, fat, and queer person in Singapore, De Rozario, author of And the Walls Come Tumbling Down and Tender Delirium, has long experience with exclusion. In school, she was enrolled in a mandatory weight-loss program; at home, her mother staged an exorcism to drive the queerness out of her tween body. "Everything in which she staunchly believed--thinness, heterosexuality, god--I wholeheartedly rejected," writes the author. Readers will be impressed by her stoicism and hard-won wisdom. Though De Rozario tempers her rejection by mainstream society and her family with an irrepressible spirit and resilience, she doesn't sugarcoat her challenges. A memorable thread throughout is her adult reckoning with her birth country and family as an expat. Her deceased mother, in particular, is a poignant point of examination, with the author revisiting in intimate detail her mother's difficult parenting, formative memories that still inform who she is today. "Obviously, we cannot take our pasts with us," she writes. "Somehow, this is both gain and loss." The dual tones of heartbreak and relief provide ample backdrop for her investigation of her past self. Interwoven with this personal material are focused, incisive cultural analyses of women in the horror genre. De Rozario discusses classic films such as Ringu, The Exorcist, and Carrie, alongside explorations of the horrors of being a young girl rejected by society. The weight of the author's cultural criticism works to deepen the personal narrative, and the author ties those aspects together in a way that feels both natural and compelling. This simultaneously lucid and experimental text will appeal to those seeking a memoir that scratches a layer deeper than expected. Thematically and stylistically, this is a book with resonance. An engaging blend of personal narrative and the meaning of "monsters" within the horror genre.

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