Description
About the Authors

‘You shouldn’t be with a Chinese girl…that should be my girl,’ a man in Singapore allegedly said this to a Chinese-Indian couple as he spat towards them. In a world brimming with such prejudice and cultural tensions, a remarkable phenomenon emerges: nearly one in five marriages in the USA and Singapore are now interracial. “Rebels, Traitors, Peacemakers,” explores this phenomenon through real stories of Indian-Chinese relationships, delving into the love and turmoil in such lives, where cultural boundaries are shattered and hearts are forged against all odds.

Spanning across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, these heartfelt accounts transcend borders, age, and sexual orientation to illuminate the unfiltered reality of cross-cultural unions. Families disown their own flesh and blood, individuals get locked and beaten up, and online trolls attack relentlessly. Married life offers no respite – cultural expectations breed misunderstandings, life seems hopeless in front of the unfamiliar letters on the washing machine, and differing parenting styles fuel frequent arguments over raising kids. The couples often ask themselves – why did I make my life so complicated?

And yet, the featured stories reveal the couple’s deep admiration for each other and a steely commitment to sustain their syncretic relationship. The Chinese father-in-law now dances Indian style. Strict vegetarians start cooking meat. While their love first appeared as treacherous rebellion, its endurance transforms lives and communities, forging a path towards unity in our fragmented world.

Journey alongside these bold protagonists, who through their triumphs and struggles, illuminate the intricacies of human nature and our universal yearning for connection.
Shivaji Das is the author of four critically acclaimed travel, art and business books. He was the first prize winner for Time Magazine‘s Sub-Continental Drift Essay contest and shortlisted for Fair Australia Prize for Short Stories.

Shivaji has been actively involved in migrant issues and is the conceptualizer and organizer for the acclaimed Migrant Worker and Refugee Poetry Contests in Singapore, Malaysia and Kenya and is the founder and director of the Global Migrant Festival.

Shivaji's work and his interviews have been featured on BBC, CNBC, The Economist, Travel Radio Australia, Around the World TV, etc. Shivaji‘s writings have been published in magazines such as TIME, South China Morning Post, Think China, Asian Geographic, Jakarta Post, Conscious Magazine, PanaJournal, Freethinker, etc.

Shivaji Das was born and brought up in the north-eastern province of Assam in India. Shivaji is a graduate from IIT Delhi and has an MBA from IIM Calcutta. He works as the Managing Director-APAC for Frost & Sullivan, a research and consulting company. Shivaji is currently a Singapore citizen.

Yolanda Yu is a multi-time winner of the Golden Point Award. Her book Neighbor's Luck, a collection of short stories was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Award 2020. Yolanda's work has been featured on LianHeZaoBao, Cha Journal, New York Times Travel, Zuopin Magazine, and Guangxi Literature Magazine. Her story 'The Twelfth Man' has been adapted for a film, while her story 'The Missing Clock' is a recommended read for O-Level students by Singapore's Ministry of Education, collected in the anthology How We Live Now.

Yolanda is a co-organizer of the Singapore Migrant Worker Poetry Contest and Global Migrant Festival, also an event host and coordinator for outreach for the Chinese migrant worker community. Born in North-Eastern China, Yolanda came to Singapore on scholarship in 1998 and has been living there since then. She holds a Computer Science degree from the National University of Singapore and an MBA from INSEAD Business School. After her twenty years of corporate career, Yolanda is now an Executive Coach for career and leadership development.

Authors

Rebels, Traitors, Peacemakers: True Stories of Love and Conflict in Indian-Chinese Relationships