Memoir
I’ve wanted to write a book since 2017, but only got the time to do so since I was retrenched in Jan 2024 (hurray!). Marks of My Fathers is a coming-of-age story about the marks I inherited, the ones I inflicted, and the imprints of God which shaped me anew.
I am currently seeking a literary agent to represent the project in the US market.
Here’s a blurb that might pique your interest :
How do the marks we inherit from our fathers shape us? And can we rewrite the narratives they etch onto our souls?
As a child, Barry cherished moments with his father—meals at his favorite Hokkien restaurant and nights reliving the Bee Gees’ concerts on repeat. But his father’s absence turned these treasured memories into bitter ones, and by his teenage years, the sound of his father’s footsteps brought unease, then dread.
Adolescence deepened his struggles—seething bitterness towards his father, compounded by the consuming shame of sexual lust. Trapped in the suffocating despair of mandatory military service, Barry turned to God, desperate for a way out. And as the cracks in his spirit laid bare what he could no longer deny, he discovered another set of marks—gentler, redemptive ones that lined his path, quietly set in place by his heavenly father.
A measure of acceptance and reconciliation followed. But beneath the ordinary rhythms of life lay buried fragments of the past—family narratives tucked into the shadows of history, waiting to be unearthed. These revelations would rip through Barry’s beliefs about his father, and reshape his understanding of what it takes to truly know someone, even when it’s too late to love them in time.
Profound in its exploration of abandonment, forgiveness, and the struggle to know and be known, Marks of My Father is a reckoning with the marks that we inherit, the ones we leave behind, and the divine imprint that can make us whole.