issaid, should totally efface themselves in order to write objectively, impersonally,or dramatically. Abrams, 1999: 34
B. Kinds of
Singapore’s Society that Suwen Encounters.
Suwen lived within the diversity Singapore‟s society. According to the multicultural feminists, the society‟s diversity caused some problems or conflicts
since each race tried to live their lives with personal ideological thinking. The main problem is the practice of oppression among the races.The writer decided
thatthere weretwo main or basic possible oppressions, the oppression from men and the oppression from women.
1. Men’s Oppression as Attached in Suwen’s Experience in Fistful of
Colours
Patriarchal practice was delivered as the situation where men had the full authority to govern the society without considering the essence of human rights, it
was found inFistful of Colours. In Fistful of Colours the writer also found out that there was the situation where women oppressed another women as direct spin-off
from the patriarchy system. Suwen, Nica, and Janice‟s family tried to survive
according to their ancestral culture that was built through their veins and flesh, therefore there was a gap that caused the conflict among races and cultures, as
emphasized by the Multicultural feminist that patriarchal practice was the product of diversity in the conflict of multi ethnic in Singapore.
a. Men’s Oppression in Suwen’s Family
In Fistful of Colours, Suwen lived within the authority of figure of her step father and grandfather,OngTay Luck and Ong Ah Buck, both of them were
depicted as the representation of patriarchal practices within the household. Trace back to the old time, Ong Ah Buck once had a name, Lim Ah Buck. Ah Buck
came from China after being sold by his neighbor, since his family was broken. Then he lived in Pagoda lane where TowkayOng found him and raised him as his
own son and the only son. He was sinkeh living in Pagoda Lane. You would find him hidden among
the numbers and digits in the record books of the colonial immigration ofice, a dot among thousands of other dots: young chinese male, aged
seventeen or thereabouts. Lim, 2003: 39
Suwen‟s step grandfather, Ong Ah Buck was picked from the dark side of the corner of Pagoda lane and adopted by TowkayOng since Towkay‟s mistresses
and concubines didn‟t give him a single son but worthless girls to bear the surname. In the Chinese household, surname became one of the parts of family
future which determined how the luck or family‟s destiny would move, whether
good or bad. As emphasized by Bell Hooks about patriarchy system, the adoption of Ong Ah Buck to Towkay Ong was the process of education to prepare and
ensure the fortune of the Ong family. The education itself was considered as a violance toward its subject, Ah Buck was forced to obey the Towkay Ong
patriarch, the repressed feeling and desire had lost with his own masculinity and intergrity as free man and Pagoda Lane became the representation of the system of
education where it was harsh and brutal. The Pagoda lane itself was considered to be one of the most brutal places
in Singapore, harsh and brutal. The lane itself was dominated by men‟s full
