An article detailing the abuse and harassment present at BooksActually, a veteran independent bookstore in Singapore, was published this past weekend. The exposé is an important read, especially for anybody who’s come to see BooksActually as a central part of the Singapore literary scene.
I think there are two separate strands at play here: there is the systemic undervaluing of labour in the publishing industry and the grooming and exploitation of young women and people at the hands of an employer who took advantage of them. I’ve seen people suggest that the entire issue is a systemic one. I’m unwilling to let Kenny Leck off the hook so easily. He withheld pay and days off from Renée, his then-wife who worked at the bookstore. The description of their relationship in the article sounds to me like emotional abuse. He also regularly crossed boundaries and made romantic advances on the the (much younger) female staff who worked for him. I can’t see these actions are mere “mistakes”. If anything, they seem like a pattern of predatory behaviour. I’m not in a hurry to rehabilitate Kenny’s image. I’ve seen people cover and forgive my abuser (on my behalf!) because he has “so much to offer to the scene”. I’m sure there will be people who will do that for Kenny too.
The latest update from the bookstore is that its directorship will be transferred to the 5 employees (“book elves”) who currently work there. I hope these workers have been adequately equipped with the skills and resources to captain a sinking ship. If not, I’d say they’re taking on the responsibilities of somebody who’s left them in the lurch. If the survivors make any requests for assistance or restitution, I’ll update the newsletter accordingly. That’s the driving force behind how I’m thinking about this entire issue. What’s helping the survivors? I stand in solidarity with the brave women who came forward and that I hope they heal from this chapter in their lives.
Now that these incidents have been brought to light, how do we sit with our discomfort and with the pain of the survivors? Let’s not be in a rush to move on and build plans for the bookstore’s return to glory or wax lyrical about restorative justice that centres Kenny. When we focus the trauma, we must acknowledge some inconvenient truths. One of the store’s ex-staff members, Cheryl Charli, shared this statement:
In it, they ask about “the ones in the SingLit scene who did know, [and] laughed”. They ask why people stood by and watched while the workers at the store were being mistreated. Are there members in the Singaporean literary community who are complicit? If so, was it because Kenny loomed large as an intimidating figure or because people learned how to compartmentalise abuse in pursuit of their own careers? Kenny is not the first arts industry figure to have committed abuse of this nature and he won’t be the first one to face a public reckoning. How do we ensure that nobody else has to endure this kind of abuse in silence again? How do we ensure that nobody has to face this kind of abuse again?
The publishing and book industry runs on the passion of its workers. That’s not a compliment. I suspect that a majority of workers in the industry would report underpayment and/or overwork if asked. When I worked at a bookstore, there were months where I made less than $1000 despite essentially working full-time hours. I explained it away because I was just happy to be in my dream job. I was grateful to my boss for giving me the position and accepted her explanations for late pay: the bookstore was either too tight on cash or she hadn’t yet decided how much my labour was worth. I told myself that I was relatively privileged — I lived with my family so I didn’t pay rent, I didn’t have any real expenses like insurance or childcare fees, I received a staff discount for books — so I could swallow my losses. The small-scale nature of independent bookstores means that human resources staff and policies are often absent and abuses of power are easier to sweep under the carpet. When I spoke to other professionals in the publishing industry, I heard similar stories: full-time interns being paid less than a living wage, full-time staff scraping by on insulting salaries, writers and editors accepting “token sums” in lieu of payment for work completed.
This is why I think the post listing “19+ Other Bookstores To Get Your SingLit Fix (and More)” that I’ve seen floating around Instagram is misguided. It’s in poor taste, first of all, to suggest that our immediate duty as consumers is to find ethical alternatives. The survivors do not benefit if we spend our money at different bookstores. We are not helping anybody but our guilt. Secondly, I suspect several book businesses in Singapore are a few steps away from an exposé like this. The sins might not be as flagrant as BooksActually (or The Moon) but low wages and long hours are par for the course in this industry.
We tell ourselves that there’s no money in publishing and that our sacrifices are necessary for the sake of literature. I suspect that the first statement is true. The industry simply might not be set up, at the moment, to pay us all fairly. From what I’ve heard, authors who publish books with Singaporean presses barely get advances or royalties. Publishing and bookstore workers don’t make money.
What is the solution? It's vital to ask a range of complex questions. Should we all go on strike? Do readers boycott all businesses with murky labour practices? It would be incredibly difficult to function under capitalism that way. Books are just like any other industry. They run more efficiently when they run on exploitation. We cannot just weakly call for accountability without trying to articulate what that looks like. There is no point in invoking a “literary community” when some people in that community clearly have more power than others — gatekeepers, publishers, grantmakers.
My friend Justin shared this interview with the now-defunct parody account Publishers Weakly that raises important points:
PW: The easiest way for a business to be both ethical and profitable is to educate the employees on what they deserve.
There’s an elitism to publishing that stems from the product it produces. Books are “art,” books can “change the world,” and therefore publishing is necessarily good and just, that we’re all doing noble work, when that’s not exactly the case. Publishing is a business like any other, and so that comes with the trappings of many other industries, i.e. wealth inequality, mistreatment of workers, and racially segregated workforce, often determined by the disparity in wages.
In the interview, Publishers Weakly is a strong advocate for unions within the workplace. That isn’t exactly an option for Singaporean workers so we might have to think around the problem. We can only arrive at answers collectively. But is there the will to do that? Should businesses and workers share rates and internal policies openly? Are we ready for transparency?
I don’t want to celebrate a scene that is built on the sacrifices (exploitation) of vulnerable workers. It is precisely this expectation that might have facilitated the history of abuse that took place at the store. People felt that they had to uphold an institution, that Kenny was a struggling businessman, so they kept quiet. There are no ethical capitalist labour arrangements but "noble" industries like the arts are seemingly given a pass.
I’ve seen writers suggest that a boycott is not the right move or that they hope the bookstore will become one worthy of support again one day. But if it turns out that BooksActually cannot be run without the underpayment or exploitation of labour, I will not consider its demise a loss. Already, it is the site of abuse for multiple women who deserved much better. The Singapore literary scene is bigger than one man and bigger than one institution. I recognise that it has supported and published many members of the scene. I’ve attended readings in that space. I’ve stocked my magazine in that store. I still think we can move on.
This issue of the newsletter was initially going to be a joint review of three books on feminist thought — Revolting Prostitutes, Full Surrogacy Now, and The Right to Sex — but I cut it short in order to give space to the conversation about BooksActually. I’m still including a review of one of the books here so there’s something to read for those of you who aren’t in Singapore. I’ll put the reviews of the other two books in the next newsletter.
Revolting Prostitutes by Juno Mac and Molly Smith
I was first recommended this book by Vanessa Ho, the Executive Director of Project X which is an organisation aimed at the eradication of violence in the Singapore sex industry. Written by two sex workers, Juno Mac and Molly Smith, Revolting Prostitutes is a look at what it means to recognise sex work as legitimate work and what protecting the rights of workers can look like. The book does not indulge voyeurism; there are no seedy details or sob stories from trafficked women. Instead, it’s a clear-eyed look at the sex work industry. I read this book around the time that coronavirus cases in Singapore were on the up due to cases from KTV lounges. The clusters from these lounges reportedly grew because of the “butterfly” effect —
[Patrons] are then ushered into one of the rooms, where they choose and are serviced by hostesses. Groping and fondling are purportedly more common than not.
After about half an hour, the hostesses would then excuse themselves, heading to another room to service other patrons.
This is known colloquially as "butterfly", and involves a hostess splitting her time among multiple patrons, who each pay about $100 for her services at the end of the night.
Revolting Prostitutes does not look to defend or moralise prostitution. It recognises that in our current economic system, sex work is just a given. Women (the book recognises that people of various genders engage in sex work but focuses primarily on women) may choose to undertake sex work because it allows for flexible work arrangements or because it pays better than other low wage work. In the chapter about borders, the writers argue that women who are insecurely documented often turn to sex work because it’s the highest waged work they can get on their immigration statuses. It’s not uncommon for KTV hostesses in Singapore to be women on short-term visas. In the rush to condemn the sector for sparking another surge of Covid cases, these women became the butt of the joke. What would a border regime that didn’t incentivise undocumented sex work look like for Singapore?
The entire book is excellent but I especially appreciated how the writers broke down the different policy regimes that currently govern sex work worldwide. From partial criminalisation (the UK) to full decriminalisation (Aotearoa/New Zealand), they explain the legal systems and the externalities that arise from it. It critiques policymaking that rests on ideology and “morality” rather than focusing on evidence-based practice. It should be required reading for all policymakers and not just those who oversee the sex work industry.
The biggest takeaway from the book, for me, is the permission to not aspire towards loving our jobs.
Work may be mostly positive for those who can largely set the parameters of the conversation, like high-profile journalists. However, that does not describe reality for most women workers or workers in general (or even many journalists). Most workers suffer some unfair conditions in the workplace and would not, as a rule, do their jobs for free. Work is often pretty awful, especially when it’s low-paid and unprestigious. This is not to say that this state of affairs is good, or that we should accept it because it is normal, but nor is it useful to pretend that work is generally wonderful and exclude from our analysis the demands of workers whose experience does not meet this standard.
Sex workers are workers who are “largely motivated by familiar, mundane needs” — the need for money. They are also amongst some of the least empowered workers in our society. The writers write in a liberating way that allows all kinds of workers to recognise that their rights should be the centre of any discussion around labour. Not morality, not passion, not a calling. Workers’ rights.