Stories of migrant workers have been printed out in newspapers and magazine. They also have been reviewed on blogs and television. No wonder the society is fully aware of their stories both good and bad. Actually people have read the information mainly from the journalists’ point of view which captured the migrant workers’ stories in their own way. Whether the stories reveal the true story of the migrant workers life or not is still one big question for all of us, the reader. Therefore, another challenge dealing with migrant workers’ stories comes up when an anthology of migrant workers’ short stories is published.
This article will discuss an anthology of migrant workers’ short stories entitled ‘Kisah Inspirasi TKW Singapura: Dari Hati dan Cintaku’ which is written by the migrant workers who work in Singapore. The writers who have contributed in the anthology are those who are living at Singapore at the moment and also the returnee. They are the member of a virtual community, named BMI Singapura. This community or group is the one which unify and accommodates them to publish their stories.
The anthology is interesting since it offers a different taste of migrant workers’ stories. This new taste, then, will be further discussed in order to find out the identity, expectation and reality of the migrant workers’ life as recognized in the anthology. It will surely expose the other side of migrant workers’ life which is not captured yet by the journalists since the stories are written by the migrant workers themselves. Yet, stories are stories. They are infected by imagination. However, they also show the true virtue of the author, the migrant workers themselves. How do the migrant workers in Singapore deal with themselves and their masters are the focus which will be discussed the most. How do they identify themselves in their new environment is another thing to be considered. Brought by the migrant workers themselves, their stories surely offer another atmosphere of the true feeling revealed in the anthology.
Keywords: expectation, identity, migrant workers, reality
This article has been presented in International Conference on Literature XXII, Yogyakarta, November 2012
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