Bit Of Earth Research Articles

Water, water everywhere: Every bit of Earth's H2O was delivered by space rocks, but which ones?

Science NewsVolume 187, Issue 10 p. 18-21 Feature Water, water everywhere: Every bit of Earth's H2O was delivered by space rocks, but which ones? Christopher Crockett, Christopher CrockettSearch for more papers by this author Christopher Crockett, Christopher CrockettSearch for more papers by this author First published: 05 May 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/scin.2015.187010019Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume187, Issue1016 May 2015Pages 18-21 RelatedInformation

Mining the Archive: Historical Fiction, Counter-modernities, and Suchen Christine Lim's A Bit of Earth

Historical fiction often serves to provide us with an opportunity to question the past as well as the identities that have crystallized around the archive. As an example of historical fiction, Suchen Christine Lim's A Bit of Earth depicts the emergence of anti-imperialist feeling, self-realization, and national consciousness in nineteenth-century Malaya, celebrating nationalist feeling as a commendable gesture beyond the self towards a larger sociality. The text invokes these sentiments to look for alternatives within a cultural and political space that continues to be strongly influenced by postcolonial state-sanctioned histories and masculinist versions of the past. Its attempt to loosen our received ways of knowing about history, modernity, Chineseness, and inter-racial relations is not an unqualified success, however. For in foregrounding gender and race as crucial components of modern subjectivity, A Bit of Earth ultimately shows itself to be more certain of its stand on women and its vision of modern Chinese identity than of its position vis-à-vis multiracial possibilities.

Keeper of the Creative Flame: Suchen Christine Lim interviewed by Mohammad A. Quayum

In this interview, the distinguished Singaporean novelist Suchen Christine Lim discusses her formative years as a writer, her process of writing and how she came to write her four novels– Ricebowl (1984), Gift from the Gods (1990), Fistful of Colours (1993) and A Bit of Earth(2001)–in an overwrought state, feeling “infected with the writer's virus”. She also explains why and how she came to write in the English language, how she divides her allegiance between Malaysia, the country where she was born and spent her childhood, and Singapore, the country she later chose to make her home; and why place, memory and history are such important, recurring themes in her fiction. Finally, she talks about the position of the writer in Singapore and how its “good life” poses a threat to his/her creativity; the state of women in the region and in her own fiction; and how regional critics could invigorate the literary scene with more originality and “informed criticism” rather than merely dwelling in the shadow of their Western counterparts.

A Bit of Earth

A Bit of Earth

Clash of the Clans: An Extract from a Bit of Earth

Street near the docks was the meeting place of the gainfully employed and the desperately unemployed. Hundreds of miners, who had fled from the troubles in Bandong Valley, Larut and elsewhere, had converged on the area. The backlanes and sidelanes were choked with idle men. They squatted beside the open drains, shoved their way along the five-foot paths, overflowed onto the roads and blocked the progress of the pushcarts, rickshaws, buggies, gharries and bullock carts inching their way through the heart of the trading district. All were hoping to earn a few cents, which would buy the day's bowl of rice. But jobs were scarce. Traders and merchants were jittery about their investments in the turbulent Malay States. The town was full of rumours of impending war. To the few policemen patrolling the area, mainly Sikhs and Amboynese employed in the Colonial Police Department, the babble of Chinese tongues was incomprehensible. They walked through the throng, unseeing and unhearing. They did not see the knots of coolies swelling. Neither did they hear talk of murder and slaughter nor rumours of impending war between the Hakka and Cantonese miners. Tai-kor Wong was killed in bed! His head chopped off and flung out of the window ! 'The gods have eyes, lor Let the White Cranes taste our sword of vengeance! Kill those daughter-fuckers, mother-fuckers and sons of pigs! As the morning wore on, the talk grew more virulent and strident. Tales of past battles were recalled and relived. Venom and rage spread among the coolies, smiting the knots of men huddled in the shadows. The sun rose higher in the cloudless sky, and soon not many patches of shade were left. More coolies squeezed into the covered walkways of the shops. Tempers ran short. A word here, a word there, a few words overheard and repeated, an imagined insult, a stare, a push and before anyone knew it, something had ignited the tinderbox. A scuffle broke out just as Baba Wee's gharry swung into view. A young coolie was pushed into its path. The two horses neighed and reared up on their hind legs. The Indian driver was nearly knocked off his seat. Whoa!

World Events

Human beings do not like to be disturbed. From infancy to old age they prefer to continue in the state of rest or motion to which they have become accustomed. The herdsman tends his animals and moves only when grass runs short. The farmer grubs a meager living from his traditional bit of earth. Craftsmen shape materials as their fathers have done before them. Merchants sit and wait patiently or impatiently for customers. Professionals continue practicing their vocations.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Mundus Patet. 24th August, 5th October, 8th November

The mundus of Rome was believed to be a hole or underground pit or vault on the Palatine. It was said to be closed by a stone called the lapis manalis, which same name, oddly enough, is also given to an entirely different kind of stone, with which the pontifices occasionally worked some sort of magic in a drought. Plutarch, in the chapter in which he describes the foundation of Rome, says that the mundus, like the process of marking out a city, was of Etruscan origin; that firstfruits of all kinds were thrown into the pit, and that each new settler brought a bit of earth from his own country and cast it into the pit; he places the pit in the Comitium instead of the Palatine, but notes the word mundus as applied to it there, and the identity of this word with that for the heaven or universe.