Goodbye on the Seas: Rising Waters, Submerging Lives

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3818

Keywords:

sea level rise, submerged cities, climate change, dystopian imaginary, hybrid memoir, speculative fiction, pandemic, Malaysia, Borneo

Abstract

This hybrid memoir begins and ends with a sea journey. Combining real-life story and dystopian tropical imaginary, the author takes us to the Straits of Malacca off the coast of Peninsular Malaysia, to futures of submerged cities in 2050, and on a final journey into the South China Sea off the coast of Sarawak on the island of Borneo. This is a story of climate change and rising seas entwining vignettes of pandemic lockdown, of a father’s dying, and the author’s future life submerged. It questions human survival in a world of demise, shaped by pandemic and surrounded by waters slowly but inexorably rising.

Author Biography

Christina Yin, Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak

Dr Christina Yin is a former news anchor, journalist, columnist and media executive at an international conservation organisation. Currently, Christina is a writer and senior lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak Campus. Her PhD on “Creative Nonfiction: True Stories of People involved in Fifty years of Orang-utan conservation in Sarawak” was the first in Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. Christina’s fiction and nonfiction writings have appeared in Anak Sastra, eTropic, New Writing and TEXT, among others.

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Published

2021-09-10

How to Cite

Yin, C. (2021). Goodbye on the Seas: Rising Waters, Submerging Lives. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 20(2), 251–263. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3818