The Pandemic Cookbook
When COVID-19 started to spread around the world in early 2020, Singapore’s readiness to deal with a global pandemic was put to the test. There were both wise decisions and missteps along the way, while questions about scientific consensus, trade-offs and vaccines swirled about in our hyperconnected age of social media. The Pandemic Cookbook revisits those early days of unprecedented global disruption, including social distancing rules, Circuit Breakers, migrant worker dormitory lockdowns, elections and TraceTogether controversies. Based on interviews with front-line workers, journalists, policymakers, academics, migrant workers and more, infectious diseases expert Dr Hsu Li Yang and Eisner-winning graphic novelist Sonny Liew present a unique recollection of Singapore’s pandemic experience.
Excerpt
Epigram Books, 2022
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR
Hsu Li Yang
Dr Hsu Li Yang is the Vice Dean of Global Health at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore. Over the past two years, he has been heavily involved in COVID-19 research and education, although his primary academic focus remains in the area of drug-resistant infections.
Sonny Liew
Sonny Liew is the creator of The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, a New York Times and Amazon bestseller. It is the first graphic novel to win the Singapore Literature Prize, and has been translated into eight languages.
Short Notes with Hsu Li Yang & Sonny Liew
What does "Mata Hati | 心眼 | Eye of the Heart | மனக்கண் வழியே" mean to you in writing?
Hsu Li Yang: A more intuitive and spiritual expression, distinct from the more analytical and logic-based writing that is de rigeur in my professional work.
What does your writing process look like? Do you type or write? Are there multiple drafts, long pauses, or sudden bursts of activity?
Hsu Li Yang: I almost always type rather than write. But since the bulk of the book - the graphic novel - was done by Sonny, I will leave this part to Sonny Liew.
Sonny Liew: At some level there are continuities; the drawing/writing of thumbnails, pencilling, inking, colouring and lettering the final artwork; but each project presents its own challenges and processes - for the Pandemic Cookbook, the primary material had were interviews with various folks, so a large part of the process involved transcribing, extracting and welding together all the thoughts and ideas expressed. I hope we were able to include a diverse range of voices, in particular that of migrant workers and frontline healthcare workers.
What does your working space look like?
Hsu Li Yang: Typical work-desk.
Sonny Liew: Messy desk with aspirations of order, or maybe the other way around.
Make an elevator pitch for your shortlisted work in 30 words or less.
Hsu Li Yang: A whimsical multi-perspective graphical depiction of one of the greatest crises Singapore and the rest of the world have experienced, complete with recipes that have nourished people through the pandemic.
Could you share a pivotal moment as you were writing this work?
Hsu Li Yang: In April 2021 as the Delta wave really hit Singapore, recognizing that despite the increasing availability of COVID-19 vaccines, the pandemic was not going to end abruptly. Sonny and I took some time out to explain this in a comic in ST (also reproduced in the Pandemic Cookbook https://www.straitstimes.
If you could give one advice to yourself when you were writing this book, what would it be?
Hsu Li Yang: Don't start until the end of the pandemic?
Sonny Liew: Maybe listen to Li Yang's advice on having a different title. The idea was that a 'cookbook' would indicate both recipes for dishes, but also recipes for dealing with public health care issues, but I think many readers just assumed it was only the former.
