Unease by Teo You Yenn | Seekers Book Club + Post-Discussion Author Q&A
About this Event
📖: Unease: Life in Singapore Families by Teo You Yenn
📅: 25 Oct 2026, Sunday
🕛: 10.30am - 11.30am (Book Discussion), 11.30am - 12.30pm (Q&A with Prof Teo You Yenn)
📍: Wardah Books
🎟️: $5*
*Can be used as credit for book purchases made at Wardah Books on the event day. All ticket sale proceeds will go to Wardah Books
About the book
Unease is about the quiet dissonance between Singapore’s idealised image of family and the lived reality of raising one today.
Through in-depth interviews with parents, it unravels why anxiety and exhaustion have become the everyday language of family life in Singapore, despite the nation’s polished, world-class exterior.
The book explores how unease emerges from three interlocking forces: ‘kiasu-ness’, inequality and meritocracy. These forces quietly shapes the strategies and choices that families undertake. It leaves readers to sit with a nagging question: why does life in a world-class city still feel so uneasy?
You may purchase the book from Wardah Books or borrow it from the local library.
Themes and topics for discussion
- How does Singapore’s ‘pro-family’ image create new experiences of unease in our lives?
- The making of ‘kiasu’ culture as a rational response to structural pressure and competition.
- How inequality and meritocracy impact the different strategies families take to adapt to Singapore culture.
- How can we as individuals and a society imagine a life without unease?
and more!
About the author
Teo You Yenn is a Singaporean sociologist and director of the Centre for the Study of Social Inequality (CSSI) at NTU, Singapore.
She is best known for her bestselling book This Is What Inequality Looks Like, published in 2018. Her work focuses on class and gender inequality, poverty, social policy and family life in Singapore through the years of interviews and interactions with various Singaporeans.
She actively contributes to public discourse by writing media commentaries and delivering public lectures. She also volunteers with Aware Singapore and is a founding co-editor of AcademiaSG, a joint effort with other Singaporean scholars to promote Singapore studies and encourage critical debate about the state of intellectual life in Singapore.
About Ethos Books
Established in 1997, Ethos Books, an imprint of Pagesetters Services Pte Ltd, creates fresh, different and enduring books that reflect the ethos of our changing times. It is an independent Singapore publisher of literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Giving voice to emerging and exciting writers from diverse backgrounds, Ethos Books help foster an environment in which literature and the arts not only survive, but thrive.
About Seekers Book Club
The Seekers Book Club by Maktaba Books brings people together to read various books through an Islamic, Singaporean, and/or Southeast Asian lens. Whether the text is secular or set in an unfamiliar culture, there is always something within a book that can resonate with our faith and identities.
We are happy to run the book club in collaboration with Wardah Books, and we look forward to seeing you there.
About Maktaba Books
Maktaba Books is a peer-to-peer community library, where we allow people to list
Our mission is to illuminate the path of knowledge within our community and to ensure that everyone has access to books and discussions on them.
Visit maktababooks.com to learn more.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
SGD 6.34 to SGD 16.82
