Opinion

Oh how I love being a woman: Celebrating Female Friendships

Reading Time: 4 minutes

By Shannen Lim (24A01A)
(Written in light of National Women’s Friendship Day)

“Are you okay?” “Yeah, I’ve got my girls.” 

This is the opening to one of the many Tik Tok audios under the trend of celebrating girlhood and female friendships. These Tik Tok videos feature many across the world sharing pictures of their gal pals and fun activities they engage in together. 

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Raffles Reads: Year On Fire

Reading Time: 3 minutes

By Claire Jow (23A01B)

Raffles Reads is a collaboration between Raffles Press and Times Reads which aims to promote a reading culture among Singaporean students.

Rating: 3.5/5

It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this?

Year On Fire opens with sixteen-year-old Immie wondering about the kiss that “blew up” her life: a kiss with her best friend’s boyfriend that she did not have, but had claimed responsibility for. The novel follows Immie, her brother Arch, and her best friend Paige as they navigate the messy ups and downs of their junior year in high school—all while there’s a mystery arsonist on the loose.

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Raffles Reads: We Are Not Free

Reading Time: 3 minutes

By Noh Sangeun (23S06Q)

Raffles Reads is a collaboration between Raffles Press and Times Reads which aims to promote a reading culture among Singaporean students.

Rating: 4/5

It’s official (or maybe it’s old news): the world population broke eight billion. Eight billion people have as many stories to tell, as this award-winning novel by Traci Chee about the displacement of Japanese-Americans during WWII makes abundantly clear.

We Are Not Free isn’t about the people on either side of the war. The plot follows a large group of friends who are forcibly removed from their Californian homes by government mandates and incarcerated in prison-like camps, on suspicion that they present danger to society.

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Raffles Reads: This Place Is Still Beautiful

Reading Time: 4 minutes

By Venkatesan Ranjana (23A01D)

Raffles Reads is a collaboration between Raffles Press and Times Reads which aims to promote a reading culture among Singaporean students.

Rating: 3/5

A story about two sisters who struggle to understand each other is not  new; neither is a story about growing up in a place you love but do not belong in. The beauty of This Place Is Still Beautiful lies not in telling these age-old stories in yet another recycled form—it’s in the way XiXi Tian condenses these two archetypes, along with the central characters’ personal struggles, into a bittersweet narrative that moves the reader with its painful realism and hopeful undertones.

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