Edwin Thumboo - Early Years

Early Years

Edwin Thumboo, born in Singapore on 22 November 1933, was the eldest of eight children of a Tamil schoolteacher and a Teochew Chinese-Peranakan housewife from a Singaporean merchant family. He and his siblings grew up speaking English and Teochew. The family was financially comfortable; their home in Mandai was the only one in the neighbourhood with electricity. Because of his mixed parentage, as a child he was sometimes called names and marginalized. This was said to have fostered determination and self-respect in him. He completed his primary education at Pasir Panjang Primary School in 1940. During the Japanese occupation of Singapore (1942–1945), he helped his family by selling cakes, tending goats, and working as a salesboy. Following the war, he studied at Monk's Hill Secondary School (finishing there in 1946) and Victoria School (1948). It was at the latter place that he began writing poetry at the age of 17 years, encouraged by the senior English master Shamus Frazer. Thumboo considers Frazer his spiritual father, and later dedicated Rib of Earth (1956), his first collection of poetry published while an undergraduate, to him. At this time, Thumboo was also a member of the Youth Poetry Circle, which counted among its members other early literary pioneers of Singapore such as Goh Sin Tub and Lim Thean Soo.