Malaysian Writing in English is Dead!

Malaysian poet Wong Phui Nam declared Malaysian writing in English dead yesterday at a press conference to publicise the Singapore Writer's Festival, held at MPH Midvalley (about which more later) :

We should be looking at young writers - their absence shows that the tradition of writing in English is dead. ... Why are writers in English dying out in this country? In 10-20 years time Malaysian writers in English will be an adjunct to Singaporean writing.

He also talked about how other writers in English had "run away" from Malaysia, and how the greatest of them was Shirley Lim.

I respect Phui Nam very much (An Acre of the Day's Glass is the Malaysian poetry collection that has most excited me, and I wish that they made more writers in his mould!) but I don't agree with him on the above. I don't just think it is a case of me being unrealistically optimistic - perhaps it is more a question of perspective.

In organising Readings@Seksan, I am constantly coming into contact with Malaysian writers (new and not so new, young and not so young) whose work excites me, and who work confidently and well in English. Writers in English are not even an endangered species, I'd say. (What do you think?)

And as for the overseas writers having "run away" ... well, anyhow, I have already blogged all I have to say on the topic here.

Something else that Phui Nam said that was very interesting :

I am not writing in English. I am writing in EMS : Educated Malaysian English. We speak the language in a different way, a subdialect of the English language.

Malaysian English of the acrolectal variety (linguistic term for standard educated form of a language) is a distinct variety of English and should be every bit as acceptable internationally as any other (UK, American, Australian, Indian etc). I wrote about the issue in this interview for The Star.

Postscript :

Daphne Lee also blogged (very powerfully) about this, and concludes :

Wong spoke about how Malaysian writing (in English) is stillborn, a result of our education system. Having identified this problem, I should think Wong has his own theories about how the deadening effect of our schooling can be countered and/or reversed. Does he and others like him have a part to play in helping aspiring authors produce writing that has a chance to grow in effectiveness and beauty? Perhaps Wong just does not think it is his battle to fight.

BTW there is an interesting comment on the blog about how Readings@Seksan could be perceived as "cliquey". I responded at length and would value your (honest) comments too.

(Someone else did yell at me not so long ago "What does Readings achieve? Nothing at all.")

Postscript 2:

Zedeck Siew at Klue magazine writes about Phui Mam's speech :

Doom and gloom, then. But we're sorry if these dire pronouncements sound bitter to us. Yes, official support for English-language writing is practically non-existent. That said, things seem to be on the mend, actually.

Writers are soldiering on. Brian Gomez's excellent pulp -- but supremely relevant - novel Devil's Place was published last year. This year, Kow Shih-Li's Ripples and Other Stories was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor Award - the most lucrative prize for short fiction. Further back was Kam Raslan's Confessions of an Old Boy.

How about the anthologies: Silverfish Books' regular efforts, or the queer collection Body 2 Body? And non-fiction, such as the excellent (and bilingual) New Malaysian Essays series? Literary readings happen with acceptable regularity: Readings and CeritAku; or Say Goodnight, Twitterverse. Amir Muhammad (of Matahati Books) has hosted organised the KL Alternative Bookfest twice, to much success.

There is a second problem with Phui Nam's complaint. KLue itself is an English-language publication - but even we don't prize the lingua Brittanica's purity that much.

The Malay-language book business is booming, from mainstream romance to the fringe. Its literature is in rather ruddy shape: new small (but significant) ventures like Oxygen Press are springing up all over the place. Sang Freud Press's works deploy an urban form of Malay that doesn't shy from displaying its obvious syncretism.

The language of this region has always been a Creole, mixing Bahasa Melayu, English, the Chinese dialects and Indian languages. Phui Nam appeared aware of this when he said that "we speak [English] in a different way." He, of all people, should know - since his full name is Mohammed Razali Wong Phui Nam, and his latest plays Malay/Cambodian takes on Antigone and Medea. No need to be so precious lah.

Children's Books with a Malaysian Flavour?

Daphne Lee in today's Starmag highlights the dearth of local children's literature that reflects Malaysian society :

... Our children and teenagers are immersed in American and, to a lesser degree, British pop culture. ... This includes the books they read. Currently popular titles (the Twilight series, the Harry Potter books, Eragon, Wicked Lovely) may not be set in this world, and their characters may not even be human, but the cultural traditions used as references in the creation of these worlds and characters are obviously American and European.

She also reckons that writing children's book is somehow:

... looked down upon by Malaysia’s literati ...

who are more interested in trying to win Booker prizes and the like.

this isn't entirely true of course. We had Shirley Lim's Princess Shawl last year, Tinling Choong's Yuyu and the Banyan Tree will be out this year, and Shamini Flint has been writing some really excllent kids books, the latest of which is the highly readable Ten.

But there certainly could be more ... although I think it really can't happen without the active support all the way of the local publishing industry.

Asiatic

Here's a new literary journal to check out and possibly submit your work to. Asiatic is put out by the International Islamic University Malaysia. The editors are Mohamad A. Quayum and Adrian Hare, and the journal offers some interesting new poetry and short fiction, as well as reviews and academic articles. Highlights for me include Professor Quayum's tribute to Lloyd Fernando and Dennis Haskell's The Meanings of Malacca: Identity and Exile in the Writings of Ee Tiang Hong, Shirley Lim and Simone Lazaroo.

Shirley's Shawl

Author Shirley Lim was wonderful fun yesterday, as she launched her new book, Princess Shawl, written for women aged :

... from 9-90!

Looking enviably slim and energetic in a floral dress (don't you just love the irrelevant sartorial details?), Lim explained how this was her first experience of writing for children, and described it as her most joyful book.

She was approached to write a children's book by R. Ramachandran, the director of the Singaporean Book Development Council who realised that most of the children's books available in Singapore are published in the West, and she says that being seen for the first time that someone had seen her as a local writer rather than as a "transplanted writer" (she has lived in the US for 40 years) and that touched her in a way she hadn't felt before.

She set out to write the book without any idea about who would publish her, was turned down by publishers including Marshall Cavendish, but at the no point lost faith in the value of her work. In the end Maya Press took the gamble, except, says Lim laughing, it isn't even a gamble because they will lose money on it.

She said that she was retelling a story that had meant a lot to her as a young girl and it took her back to her earliest memories of Malacca (which she jokingly calls "Blackbird Town" because the Singaporeans turn up there singing "Cheap! Cheap!").

She talked about how she used to go up St. Paul's Hill to study, sitting by the open windows in the ruined church to read and study so that there is a great deal of Malacca in herself :

... malacca air, malacca breezes, malacca particles

Pricess Shawl borrows elements of traditional fairytale writing. There is a quest - the child Mei Li is given the quest of rescuing princess Hang Li Po exiled to the island of pulau tikus and unable to come to Malacca to marry the Sultan. And like many children's books, Princess Shawl involves time travel. Lim actually describes the book as a kueh lapis* story because it goes back and forward between layers of time, visiting the time of the Baba-Nyonya's, the Dutch Colonial war, the Portuguese period and the defeat of the Malacca Sultanate, the botton layer of the cake being the C15th.

The character of Great Aunty Mei Li, Lim says was based on the much admired lawyer, P.J. Lim - one of Lim's childhood heroines. The book itself is layered so that there are references in there that an adult reader would appreciate - as Lim puts it, she's smuggled in plenty about the diaspora Chinese. (The book is in the process of being translated into Chinese in Taiwan.)

To write the love story between Princess Hang Li Po and her Sultan, Lim said that she went back to reread Jane Eyre! She also seems to have had delicious fun making the good women get younger, and the bad women get older!

The question time opened into a nice discussion about local children's books (we agreed - too many have beautiful illustrations but the content is very weak indeed), Singapore's generous support for its children's writers, and the origins of Malay legends.

I was intrigued by her attitude to publication: she said that she never worried about whether her work is published or not as long as it is out in the world, and she had a lovely quote from Indian author Shashi Tharoor to show what she means:

I write, as George Bernard Shaw said, for the same reason a cow gives milk: it is inside me, it has got to come out, and in a real sense I would die if I could not.

She talked about writing "heuristically" and her advice to writers :

You learn what you have to say as you write - if you don't surprise yourself, you won't write anything interesting.

We had a nice social time after that. It was nice to meet John of Maya Press and Mr. Law King Hui, the poor organiser of the KL Bookfair who had to change all his banners and posters because of me! (See here and here.) Aiyoh, I felt so shamefaced that I caused so much trouble, but he was astonishingly sanguine about it.

Also had a nice chat to Prof Kayum - am seriously thinking a writing a thesis of some kind on the Malaysian novel. (How long have I been saying that for? My life is full of unrealised projects.)

Had a giggle with Phek Chin and Raman about an entry in the new The Complete Residents' Guide to Kuala Lumpur which describes in Raman, in it's section on bookshops, as the "charismatic" owner of Silverfish. (Not grouchy, huh???)

Then dinner with Daphne and Priya to think up some nice pieces of literary activism and exchange all our gossip.

* A traditional Malacca rice flour cake which is made in layers and very time consuming to produce.
** Actually Tharoor wrongly attributes this - the original quote is from Henry Louis Mencken : his exact words:

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

But I think there's something wrong with you as a writer if you don't have that feeling so no wonder others since have appropriated it!

Sisterhood!

I've sat on this review of Shirley Lim's Sister Swing for an awful long time, but because Shirley is back and launching her next book Princess Shawl at Silverfish today, it seemed an appropriate time to actually put my notes together. I've also noticed that I get an awful lot of hits from folks - students? - looking for information about the novel so I get very guilty when I spot those visitors on my site meter! Here 'tis then :

Some years ago Shirley Lim wrote a story called Mr. Tan’s Girls which won the Asiaweek short story contest and found its way into several anthologies, including The Merlion and the Hibiscus which is where I first came across it.

In Sister Swing, she picks up the same cast of characters and replays the short story in the first chapter. But this time the father, Ah Kong, meets his end in a rather more shocking manner - he dies after seeing his two elder daughters examining their private parts in a mirror! (It's a terrible secret the elder sisters share and I was surprised Lim didn't make much more of this later in the novel).

The novel is the story of three sisters, Yen, Swee Yin and Paik, and the narration moves between them with Lim inventing a separate voice for each of them.

Swee Yin, nicknamed Sister Swing, is really the character at the centre of the story. She sees the family name wing as “an occult name … conjuring feathers and flight" and the metaphor is a fitting one because she does indeed test her wings and is the first to fly the nest.

The sisters are left a tidy sum of money in their father's will and Swee decides to take up a course in New York State, where she is incredibly lonely. She's also the first sister to discover love, and has an affair with her lecturer, Professor Lopez.

The complex relationship between the sisters and their various rivalries is very well drawn. Yen, whom Swee refers to as "my oldest sister who grew up to become younger than me" grows up a little lazy, more laid back than Swee Yin, and very much dependent on her younger sister.

Lim spoke at a reading at Silverfish some time ago about the problems that writing the voice of this characters in such a way that it retained something of the quality of Malaysian English, yet was intelligible by American readers.

I was interested to see how Lim rises to the challenge she sets herself, particularly as other Malaysian and Singaporean writers will find this an issue that they also need to resolve.

In Yen's case, though, I must confess the voice does not entirely convince. It is somewhat uneven – some complex constructions are perfectly grammatical, yet in other places phrases in broken English are scattered in and seem a little jarring.

The third sister, Peik, is their father’s favourite child, the one who tries hardest to please. After the father dies she feels left out when Yen becomes Swee's closest confidant, and finds consolation in religion, turning to an evangelical church and changes her name to Pearl. Lim convinces rather more with this voice, particularly with the way her speech is peppered with biblical expressions. (One can't help feeling very sorry when she tells Swee later in the novel that her husband “did not want to make me big with child”.)

I must say that I like the colour and humour of the Malaysian chapters better than those set in an America which is quite cold and distancing.

Yen decides that she also would like to study in the States and the sisters take up courses in Long Beach, California where Swee becomes quickly involved with Sandy, ex-military and studying welding part time, while Yen becomes involved with a biker called Wayne. I really felt frustrated that the girls take up with such obvious losers! Sandy turns out to belong to a white supremacist group, although Swee is very slow to pick up on this.

Central to the novel is the theme of Asian identity, which Lim handles very well. Everyone in America seems to have an idea about what Asians are, or what Asians should be, and seem to want to put everyone together in the same box.

Swee finds herself lumped together with all other Asians, regardless of nationality, and subject to all kinds of preconceptions. Her first lover, Lopez, himself only too aware of racism, urges Swee to "find her community".

Mrs. Butler, her lecturer for Race in America, teaches her about slavery and the history of the blacks, but shows her resentment against the upstart Asian immigrants who “aren’t willing to wait their turn”, and in a clever kind of reverse racism, Swee is not given the A for an assignment she so clearly deserves. “I know you fresh immigrants” says Mrs. Butler “you’re pushy”.

Swee is criticised by a driving instructor who says Asians are too timid and cause accidents by going too slowly. And the sisters are called “gook girls” and “sluts” by the child-wife of Keith, Sandy’s welding teacher (but actually the leader of the white supremacist group). Pinny, a Hong Kong student Swee remembers from her first college, adapts to fulfil racial stereotypes perfectly, and plays the part of a Vietnamese “mamma-san” in a bar for Vietnamese veterans .

Swee is forced to lead an uneasy double-life. As she grows more aware of how Asians are perceived in America, and begins to write articles to give a voice to the wider Asian community, with whom she finds herself identifying increasingly. At the same time, she finds herself increasingly pressurised by Sandy to reinvent herself as "Sue" and dye her hair brown, so as to appears almost white.

In her naivety she cannot see Sandy for what he is, or the danger he poses, and this ignorance has tragic consequences.

Paik also ends up in California, running a mission with her husband Robert and his father Pastor Fung to minister to a congregation of mainly Latinos and Asians. She decides that she wants to spend her portion of the inheritance installing a huge cross atop the makeshift church which uses the premises of a disused furniture warehouse - but like Swee she is impossibly naive and good intentions backfire. Both girls really are unequipped to really cope with life in America, and the novel is really a journey for them to find themselves.

While the plot, in the wrong hands, could have been fodder for melodrama, Lim's writing shows just the right of amount of restraint.

If anything I would have liked the novel to be have been longer and to have explored Paik's story rather more. And the tying up of ends in the last couple of chapters seems rather too neat.

It's almost as if the novel it could have developed into something really good but got reigned back abruptly before it could quite get there ... and one wonders why. Sister Swing comes close being the kind of novel that might have found commercial success in an international market, which is no less than Ms. Lim deserves.

Shirley's Back!

Author Shirley Geok-lin Lim will be back in town to read from and talk about her new book, a young-adult* novel called Princess Shawl, launched in April in Hong Kong.

The book launch and reading will take place on Saturday, 14th June 2008 at 5.30 pm at Silverfish Books, 58-1 Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur (Tel: +603-228 448 37).

The book is described as :

... an intriguing story of the legendary Princess Hang Li Poh, who was married off to the Malaccan Sultan Mansur Shah, as a gift from the Chinese Emperor.

*Raman says some of his customers seem confused about this - a young adult novel is one aimed at older teenagers.

Remembering Lloyd

Kee Thuan Chye refers to his friend Lloyd Fernando in today's Starmag as :

... truly a scholar and a gentleman ... a man of grace and polish ... (who) loved literature and imparted his knowledge to his students with such passion that it made an indelible impact on their lives

He describes how Lloyd achieved his own education under difficult circumstances, migrating with his family from Sri Lanka when he was 12, and then during the war years having to work at a succession of menial jobs (including trishaw rider - can you imagine?) before he could continue his studies.

He completed his Senior Cambridge exam, and then worked as a teacher before he was able to enter university at the age of 29 and became an assistant lecturer at Universiti Malaya. He did a PhD with Leeds university and became a full professor in 1967. (Later of course he also became a lawyer and set up in practice.)

His contribution to Malaysian literature was enormous :

He was really the only person at the time visibly promoting new writing in English. He edited the landmark anthology 22 Malaysian Stories (1962) that gave recognition to fiction writers, the most outstanding of whom was Lee Kok Liang. Deservedly, that volume has seen numerous reprints and been adopted as a text in literature classes. It was even reissued more than 40 years later, in 2005.

Lloyd also brought attention to Malaysian playwrights. He edited New Drama One and New Drama Two (both published in 1972), which presented the works of Lee Joo For, Edward Dorall, Syed Alwi, and others. Without these two volumes, some of the plays of our pioneering playwrights might have now been lost.

Chye goes on to talk about how Lloyd:

... often spoke about his vision of a multicultural Malaysia transcending race and religion. That was something we had in common, together with our concern for racial integration and equality.

He dealt with these themes in his novels, Scorpion Orchid (1976) and Green Is the Colour (1993). Some have criticised his style as being too academic in its detachment, but the message shines through nonetheless.

I regard the novels as two of the most important works of Malaysian fiction in any language. They came from a writer who loved his country enough to advocate eschewing narrow tribal concerns in favour of humanism and harmony.

Lloyd once told me that one of the challenges he encountered in his writing was his constant attempt to find ways of expressing himself in English without sounding “English English”. He avoided stock epithets and turns of phrase. He strove for Malaysian inflection. Those who mistook him for a patrician professor of English – no doubt reinforced at one time by his pipe-smoking penchant – never saw the colloquial Malaysian side of Lloyd.

I think Shirley Lim's tribute to him is particularly apt :

If Malaysia had more like him, our history would have been very different, and as a people and a nation we would be in a much better position.

Professor Lim Chee Seng in the New Sunday Times calls Lloyd :

... the man who can be said to have shaped the Department of English at the country’s oldest university. He also calls him a literary activist (a term I really love) and mentions his setting up of the Malaysian Association for Commonwealth literature and Language Studies (MACLALS) which is still active to this day.

He says of Scorpion Orchid and Green is the Colour :

These novels focused on the theme of nation in ways which stimulated thinking on the urgent questions of what it means to be a Malaysian and how significant it is to be thoughtful in approaching the issues of living together in a multicultural society, in which demagogues and propagandists can sometimes usurp and sometimes distort the public discourse about the profoundly important issue of building the nation in prosperity and harmony.

Prof Lim says that he intendeds to celebrate Lloyd's life and work with a

... festschrift* volume with the working title, Essays In Honour Of Lloyd Fernando, which will feature academic essays, poems, reminiscences and even photographic work to honour a deeply influential and much loved professor, novelist, friend, husband and father.

And I reckon the best way for the rest of us to commemorate Lloyd is to read his novels.

(Ignoramus me didn't know what this word meant and had to look it up.)

Celebrating Voices

The second of Saturday's literary events was of course, "Readings" at Seksan's. And for me the event was all about ... what is an authentic Malaysian voice?

Yang-May Ooi read first, and poor thing had to compete a little against the rain. Thank goodness we're amplified now.

She decided to use her slot for an experiment. She had brought along a passage from the novel she is currently working on, Tianming Traviata, and she read the same piece written in two slightly different voices. The first very standard English, the second in identifiably Malaysian English. I enjoyed both versions, though the second sounded more natural to me and all but Eric Forbes seemed to agree when we took a vote afterwards.

I told Yang-May later that Shirley Lim had talked about having the same problem when she wrote Sister Swing, and it really is a big deal for local writers. (I do so badly want to write at length on this but haven't yet got round to it.)

Talking about capturing voice, Datuk Shan does a great job of getting Indian voices down to the page and playing with them for comic effect as in the story about Mrs. Sarjit Singh getting teased for her terrible mispronunciations.

Zhang Su Li read us several appetite-whetting short pieces from her travel book A Backpack and a Bit of Luck. I loved the first piece she read about the time she worked in an opticians in Britain and gave a lecture to an old man about the correct way to put on glasses - only to realise that he only had one hand having lost the other in the war. This being Britain, a cup of tea while he told his story put things right. Su Li managed a very creditable northern accent!

Patricia Low is a very talented young lady. My first encounter with her work was with The Oral Stage's Rojak, last year. Two of my favourite pieces were penned by her and she was one of the directors. I sadly missed TOS second production, 59 Minutes, so it was nice that Pat read us a monologue from it - a wonderfully funny satire about the building of a durian tower in a shopping mall. But as I say, Malaysia constantly satirises itself! The scary thing about the piece was that it all seemed just too possible!

I loved the natural way that the voice in the story moved between English and Malay ... this is the reality of voice in the local context, the constant dipping between languages. For convenience. For emphasis. For humour.

Haris Zalkapli (and now I have his name spelt right!) writes columns on pop culture and politics and the interface between. I knew nothing about him before the reading since I had enlisted Raja Ahmad's help in finding good Malay writers, and I am very happy to have "discovered" Haris. He's clearly a writer who has found his niche - his pieces are entertaining and the arguments nicely developed. He read two columns The Stones and the Great Firewall, about The Rolling Stones tour of China and A Lesson in Coolness about Condoleza Rice and other politicians employing pop culture as a campaigning tool.

This was the second time that Eileen Lui has read at "Readings". Her stories have appeared in Silverfish collections, including the book I edited, Collateral Damage. She read a moving piece about a friendship ... which should have been more than a friendship ... about the best friends who became "better friends", but never quite made the transition to becoming lovers.

Thank goodness not everyone is like this couple, or Eileen would be out of a day-job!

Was very happy to see poet Wong Phui Nam in the audience and I think he was very pleased to see so many people interested in writing. I have invited him to read next time!

Many thanks (and you know the litany by now!) all who read and all who turned up to support them. To Seksan for the space. To La Bodega for the lovely wines. To Reza for help with the sound. To all who helped get set up and to Zedeck for washing glasses. Sorry I was so bossy.

I've decided not to hold "Readings" next month as the KL Litfest is on at the end of March and it's better that everyone supports that. But watch this space for April announcements.

Website Wonderings

After my little rant about author websites the other day, it's nice to see that novelist Tan Twan Eng now has a very nice site up for The Gift of Rain (due out in the UK March 8th).

Do come and meet him, and cheer on his first public appearance (outside law courts, I suppose!) on Wednesday night at Central Market Annex. And cheer on our other Malaysian authors too Kam (no website yet) Raslan and Dina Zaman . (These guys should have no stage fright left after all those readings at Seksan's.) 'Tis as good a time to shout Malaysia Boleh! as any.

But while on the subject of web presence and the lack thereof, would love to ask why local publisher Maya Press does not have a website? There is a website for another company with the same name, ironically.

I picked up a collection of Shirley Lim's poems from Silverfish the other day. Listening the the Singer. The book is beautifully produced - nice layout, good paper, gorgeous cover. The poems I know I'm going to enjoy and I have it by my bedside to dip into.

But when I wanted a pic of the cover so I could enter it into LibraryThing (geeky me!) couldn't find anything about it online. Couldn't, as I say, find anything about the publisher, even.

The picture you see here is only on the internet because I scanned it in.

Now Maya Press have some excellent local books in their range - do check them out when you drop by Raman's place. But it makes me wonder why the company is so slow to promote its efforts? And is this fair on the writers it represents?

Shirley Lim doesn't have a website either, though she is mentioned on plenty of others (including this). When we heard her speak at Silverfish some months back, she talked about how hard it was to sell copies of her novels. A decent author's website might help her reach a wider audience.

Talking about Dina as I was, she was on Al-Jazeera yesterday. She called me to tell me but I was so blur that I went and forgot and now feel very guilty. Her book is going to attract a lot of international attention, I think.

*Pic nicked from author's website. Since he's a lawyer specialising in intellectual property by day, I have to pray that that he doesn't mind too much!

Singapore Summer

Iolanda (many thanks!) sent me news of literary events in Singapore that you might be interested in.

The National Book Council's Centre for Literary Arts and Publishing (CLAP) is organising workshops:

1. Chinese Children’s Literature Workshop for Parents by Dr Chua Chee Lay.

This bilingual workshop helps parents to select and evaluate Chinese children’s books using commendable authors, children's books (fiction and non-fiction) and websites for young readers. 15 July 2006 (Saturday), 9.30 a.m. – 12.30 p.m - Geylang East Community Library - S$50.00 per person or S$80.00 for both parents

2. Romancing Singapore: From Tropic to Global by Dr Shirley Geok-Lin Lim.

This introductory workshop, will focus on Singapore through poems, stories, novels, and plays as a tropical island, exotic locale, romantic East, social struggle, dystopic settlement, as city, home and globe. It offers theoretical frames through which to hear these multiple voices and provide discussion and creative occasions for participants to interact with each other and with the instructor. 16 – 17 August 2006 (Wednesday to Thursday), 9 a.m. – 5 p.m - The Cube, Singapore Arts Museum (SAM) - S$350.00 per person, (S$300.00 for Early bird registration by 4 August 2006.)

Then there's the first Singapore International Storytelling Festival (SISF) which will be held between 30th August and 9th September 2006. The festival features live storytelling by the best of Singapore and international storytellers, and weaves in live performance from Singapore’s classical violinist Min Lee.

Plenty of good reasons to cross the causeway!

Who Do You Write For?

You know how it is, googling around looking for something else (i.e. after Dreamer Idiot mentioned Vyvyanne Loh, I had to go look for information on her) I stumbled across a page which stopped me in my tracks ...

Yew Leong Lee, Singaporean Fiction Writer and Media Artist, posted up this quotation from Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello on his blog :

‘The English novel,’ she says, ‘is written in the first place by English people for English people. That is what makes it the English novel. The Russian novel is written by Russians for Russians. But the African novel is not written by Africans for Africans. African novelists may write about Africa, about African experiences, but they seem to me to be glancing over their shoulder all the time they write, at the foreigners who will read them. Whether they like it or not, they have accepted the role of interpreter, interpreting Africa to their readers. Yet how can you explore a world in all its depth if at the same time you are having to explain it to outsiders? It is like a scientist trying to give full, creative attention to his investigations while at the same time explaining what he is doing to a class of ignorant students. It is too much for one person, it can’t be done, not at the deepest level. That, it seems to me, is the root of your problem. Having to perform your Africanness at the same time as you write.’

The question of course: if you live in this part of the world and write fiction, who do you write for? If you write for an overseas audience, you are constantly having to explain the local context. It's not a problem that British and American writers, for example, have to even consider (unless, of course, they write about subcultures), because through the media we've lived in their headspace for much of our lives. (Hey, sorry about the 'our' creeping in there when I'm a double agent with a foot in both camps.) It seems unfair, but it's a reality ...

Yew Leong talks about his own writing dilemma:

If I were to write about Singapore, the subject matter would make me interpreter, because I can’t fathom writing for Singaporeans and Singaporeans only. (One need only remember how Hwee Hwee Tan kept explicating in Foreign Bodies. Even Vyvyanne Loh had some explaining to do.) So I drop the Singaporeanness of my locale, and write about rootless, peregrinating characters (something anyway I know). For which I get obliquely critiqued by friends who think the only novels worth two cents are those that transcend personal experience to depict national character.

It's a question that every local writer looking for overseas recognition needs to resolve, and Shirley Lim was also saying something along these lines the other day at Silverfish ...

Shirley's Sad Stories

Shirley Geok-Lim certainly has some uncomfortable baggage. In an interview for The Straits Times with Kristina Tom* she admits :

... that her most vivid childhood memories 'are not happy ones'. Her mother abandoned her family when she was a child to work in Singapore and her father's financial irresponsibility caused the family to lose their home.

'We barely had one meal a day,' she recalls.

Displacement, she says, was the common theme of her childhood, whether it was moving from home to home, trying to fit in as the only girl among five brothers, or living what she calls the life of a second-class citizen growing up in a Peranakan family in Malacca.

Those memories still haunt her during her yearly visits with family in Malaysia. ...

And now there are other family problems. Her novel Sister Swing :

... is dedicated to her only child Gershom Bazerman, 25, who is also a writer in New York, but she doubts if he has read it.

'Everything I've valued and tried to put into my writing is of completely no interest to him,' she says without a trace of bitterness. In fact, for a woman with such a painful childhood, Lim laughs frequently, her words spilling over with enthusiasm.

'He's 100 per cent American, but I'm not lamenting or mourning it. If he's happy and healthy and building his own life, that's what he has to do.'

(*Originally in The Straights Times 16/3/06 but no longer online)

Shirley Shines

A sizeable crowd of booklovers and old friends packed into Raman's back room yesterday to hear Shirley Lim (pictured left, perching on top of a cupboard!) read from her latest novel Sister Swing and talk about the challenges she faced in writing it.

Lim explained that the novel about the three sisters had grown out of a short story (the now much anthologised Mr Tang's Girls) she had written very much earlier in her writing career. (It won the Asiaweek short story prize.) This time though, the girls kill their father in a completely different (and pretty inventive!) way and carry the burden of guilt throughout the novel. Swing is in fact the nickname given to the middle sister, Swee Wing, who is at times moody and contradictory.

Since Sister Swing is a coming-of-age novel and an important part of growing up is becoming sexual, Lim says that she had to find ways of writing about it without being either too graphic or evasive. I thought she'd struck just the right note in the extract she read from the first chapter ... about the girls examining their private parts in the mirror!

The novel also explores racism in the US (Lim's adopted country) which she sees as not just a question of white vs. other, but also other vs. other (for example, the riots in LA pitched Koreans against blacks). Lim describes herself as an "equal opportunity offender", drawing attention to different permutations of prejudice in the novel, which features also a white supremisicist boyfriend.

Lim described how she tried to overcome the problem of giving the three sisters distinctive voices. She has Swee speaking Manglish in the novel which she says is hardly ever represented on the printed page.

(I interject at this point to say that the linguist in me takes issue with the use of the term Manglish to talk about Malaysian English, and it is an issue that I want to return to in another post - especially with reference to how it affects the choices made by Malaysian writers.)

Lim points out that writers from other language backgrounds have taken pride in using dialect forms. (She gives the examples of Derek Walcott and Jamaica Kincaid who both use West Indian patois to great effect in their writing.) She says that she asked herself why she had been afraid of writing in Malaysian English up to that point. (Although when she did include a passage written in Malaysian English in Joss and Gold, a reviewer wrote "this book could have been better edited"!)

She said she asked herself while writing the book:

If I don't try to write in Malaysian English now, then when? And if I don't do it, then who will?

Is it a little churlish to point out that Kee Thuan Chye has used it to great effect in his plays and in the extract from his novel in progress (which progresses no further sadly) published in New Writing 10?

She struggled with Swee's voice, rewriting many times. Worried that the Malaysian English might alientate American readers and then worried that when she used Standard English she lost the voice, she eventually struck a compromise between the two. (The Silverfish audience yesterday felt it to be rather too watered down.)

Malaysian writers really do have a struggle to position their writing. Just who are they writing for? (Writers in Britain and the US I think cannot even conceive of this struggle, for obvious reasons.) Lim says that she was intitially targeting the Asian American audience, but as she wroe the book it became more and more Malaysian.

The book is published in Singapore by Marshall-Cavendish and in fact there are problems of distribution in the US. How do local publishers break into the overseas market? (This is a problem that bedevils Raman too.) As Lim says, there is "unadulterated prejudice" against non-American, non-British publishers.

In all, it was a lively event and raised some very pertinent issues for local writers. I was happy to get my copy of Sister Swing signed, and meet up with a ton of friends.

(For another take on the event check out Yvonne's blog - and she has lots more pictures.)

Swinging Sister Shirley

Malaysian poet, novelist and critic Shirley Geok-lin Lim will be at Silverfish (67-1 Jalan Telawi 3, Bangsar Baru) 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm on Saturday, 25th March 2006.

She will be reading from her latest novel, Sister Swing, a coming-of age story of three sisters who move from a relatively shelted life Malaysia to the harsher realities the United States.

Please R.S.V.P. by 23rd March 2006 to Vasantha/Phek Chin at Tel: (603) 228 448 37 (Admission is free but they need to know numbers! )

And for sure I'll be there. I last met Lim at a literature conference in KL several years back and was lucky enough to participate in a creative writing workshop she ran with New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera. Both were warm and encouraging sharers of their craft.

Recognising Local Writers

Nisah Haron very kindly sent me a copy of this month's Dewan Sastera in which she has an article called Dilemma Penulis Fiksyen Inggeris Tempatan (The Dilemma of Local Writers of Fiction in English.)

It's a scholarly article which outlines some of the dilemmas faced by local fiction writers. And okay yes, I'm struggling to faham paragraph by paragraph am getting the gist of it. Be patient if I get things wrong!

Nisah interviewed a number of people by e-mail including yours truly (and honestly I was flattered to be asked):

Sharon Bakar, seorang editor bebas dan juga warganegara British yang telah meetap di Malaysia lebih daripada 20 tahun, menyebut tentang jumplah pembaca fisksyen Inggeris tempatan masih lagi secara relatifnya kecil. Ini ditambah pula dengan masalah menerbitkan karya fiksyen Ingerris di Malaysia. Kekurangan sokongan terhadap penulis dalam bentuk kursus penulisan, kemudahan, bengkel dan acara turut menyumbang kepada kurangnya jumlah penulis fiksyen Inggeris tempatan.

Might as well ask for the things you need! Support for writers, facilities, courses, workshops.

Dina Zaman says that there are few local publishers willing to publish fiction in English, so we need to add that to the wishlist.

Nisah goes on to talk about the local writers who have made a name for themselves overseas: Tash Aw and Rani Manicka in the U.K. and Shirley Lim and K.S. Maniam in the U.S..

The crux of the article is recognition. Writes Nisah:

Apakah senario ini seolah-olah mencadangkan kepada penulis tempatan supaya berhijrah untuk membolehkan karya mereka lebih mudah diterbitkan dan seterusnya mudah di pasarkan. Bukan sedikit pengiktirafan yang diperoleh penulis-penulis ini peringkat antarabangsa. Namun, mereka tidak mendapat pengiktirafan yang setaraf di peringkat kebangsaan.

Am I right in thinking that the last couple of lines says that winning international recognition doesn't mean that you will win recognition at home?

Our Mr.Raman says:

... penulis yang ingin diiktifa di peringkat antarabangsa harus menulis tentang pengalaman di Malaysia. Pengalaman unik inilah dicari-cari oleh masyarakat pembaca antarabangsa.

In other words if you want to sell big in the West, you need to write about Malaysia because that's what readers there want. Can we argue with that?

Nishah also points out the nice irony of the English novel competition sponsored by Utusan Publications only being announced in a Malay language newspaper (Mingguan Malaysia). But hey, you read about it here too, right?

Anyway, Nisah's article is well worth reading for anyone interested in the local lit scene. It certainly raises the sorts of questions that need to be discussed.