MangLit*

Some thoughts (not mine) on the impatient writer and reader

2012-01-08T22:29:00.005+08:00

Today, I read two articles shared by friends on Facebook that describe (and justify) two diametrically different approaches to literature as a source of enjoyment.

The first article, posted by Sharon Bakar, justifies the impatient, let's-cut-to-the-chase approach (Robert McCrum, "Are you ashamed of skipping parts of books?", http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/jan/05/skipping-parts-of-books-robert-mccrum). The other, posted by Eric Forbes, defends the leisurely, let's-savour-every-nuance approach (Pico Iyer, "The writing life: the point of the long and winding sentence", http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-ca-pico-iyer-20120108,0,2137466.story).

We may be inclined to think that the preference for short, pithy narratives is a 21st-century phenomenon, the direct result of our technologically enabled habit of consuming (and serving) information in tweets and other small sound bytes. But we would be wrong. According to the sociologist, Leo Lowenthal, the problem of the impatient writer and reader has been around for quite a while. Here's what he wrote in 1967:

Two thinkers as different as John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Nietzsche have voiced their sorrows over the style of modern life aided and abetted by literary mass production, which seems to leave the public no choice but an almost neurotic gobbling-up of an endless stream of sounds and sights and words--not to be remembered, not to be translated into productive enrichment, and not to be translated into "dreams," that "stuff" of which, according to Shakespeare, our world is made. In an article "Civilization," which appeared in the London and Westminster Review of April, 1836, John Stuart Mill wrote:

The world ... gorges itself with intellectual food, and in order to swallow the more, bolts it. Nothing is now read slowly, or twice over. ... He ... who should and would write a book, and write it in the proper manner of writing a book, now dashes down his first hasty thoughts, or what he mistakes for thoughts, in a periodical. And the public is in the predicament of an indolent man, who cannot bring himself to apply his mind vigorously to his own affairs, and over whom, therefore, not he who speaks most wisely, but he who speaks most frequently, obtains the influence.

And in a similar vein, though in a most different style, Nietzsche wrote in the preface of The Dawn of Day:

I have not been a philologist in vain; perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At present it is not only my habit, but even my taste, a perverted taste, maybe--to write nothing but what will drive to despair every one who is in a hurry ... philology is now more desirable that ever before; ... it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of "work": that is to say, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-scurry, which is intent upon "getting things done" at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not "get things done" so hurriedly: it teaches how to read well: i.e. slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes.

To sum up what has happened in our day and age: Communication has become part of a consumers' culture in which those who produce and those who receive are hardly distinguishable from each other because they are both the serfs of a life style of conformity and regulation. It is the basic tragedy and paradox of modern civilization and particularly of our own phase that the sermon of individualism has turned into the practice of conformity, that the ideology of education and persuasion through the spoken and printed word has become the reality of insensibility and numbness to meaning, and that the professed belief of the powers that be in all spheres of public life--political or cultural or economic--in the persuasive influence of the worded message is answered by increasing skepticism if not outright disbelief in the world itself.

--Leo Lowenthal, Literature and Mass Culture (1984)--

The Bride from Ceylon

2011-08-03T13:39:00.003+08:00

First, an apology for not updating this blog for so long. I was appointed Research Fellow at the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) in January this year and have been busy writing academic papers, attending literature conferences and the like. So far, three papers have been accepted for publication, so I haven't been wasting my time and taxpayers' money. I've just submitted a fourth paper to a journal and will know its fate in a month or so.

Taking a break, I thought I would post a very short story I wrote in 2003, and which I sent to a group called Northernwriters in Ipoh. Not sure what they've done with it, if anything.

Incidentally, the only Malaysian novels in English published in the year 2003 were by South Asian writers. They are Love's Treacherous Terrain by Shoba Mano, The Banana Leaf Men by Aneeta Sundararaj, and Between Lives by K. S. Maniam. And then there was The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka (who lives abroad), published in 2002. I hadn't read any of the novels when I wrote the story, which is perhaps an indication that somehow, the lives and experiences of our South Asian Malaysians were very much part of the atmospherics (at least on the creative plane) at that time.

Here's my response to the ethereal signals. Enjoy!

The Bride from Ceylon

This picture I have of her. A young woman newly married and newly arrived from Ceylon, sitting at the back of her new house. The back of the house faces an abandoned coconut plantation, so no one sees her. She is sitting on the floor in the open doorway, leaning against the door post, legs tucked in a half lotus position. She is dressed in one of the new saris she has brought with her as part of her trousseau.

Is she crying? I don’t know. But I imagine that in her head is a confusion of questions.

Upstairs her husband sits at the marble-topped table with a bottle of whisky in one hand and a half-full glass in the other. As he has sat every evening since he brought her here, her new home in Malaya. On the floor is a torn up photo of Seroja, her younger sister. The beautiful Seroja, whom everyone knows will marry very, very well.

She had found the photo that afternoon while putting away his freshly ironed shirts away in the dresser in their bedroom. How had it come to be there? Had he known Seroja before he came to her parents’ house in Kandy to finalize the marriage arrangements? His visit had been more for her benefit than for his. It was so that she could get to see him before she gave her consent. Her parents were more liberal than most. They had said to her: You may take a look at him. If you don’t like him, we shan’t proceed. But you must know that we think he will be a good husband and provider. He is well educated in English, has a B.A. from the University of London, and is a schoolteacher in a Government school in Malaya. Not only that, although he is in a position to demand a big dowry, he is prepared to forego it because he is modern in his thinking.

But has he seen me, she had asked. What if he doesn’t like me? She wanted but didn’t dare to add: What if he doesn’t like the way I look? My dark skin? My protruding teeth? The fact that I’m now twenty-two? That I never went to school and can’t speak, read or write English?

Her parents had assured her that he had already seen a photo of her, and had no objections to her looks. If he had, would he have agreed to the marriage without even asking for a dowry? For him it is enough that you can cook well and keep house for him and give him children. That is all he is asking for.

She had seen him through the lattice screen as he sat in the living room with her parents and the matchmaker that afternoon, and her heart had started to race. He was more than she could ever have hoped for. He looked like a young god, fair-skinned, tall, well built, lean. He had the noble air of a lion, with his keen eyes, high-bridged nose, broad sloping forehead, and thick wavy hair. For reasons of propriety, her parents had not allowed her to bring out the tea. Instead Seroja, as the younger daughter, was given the duty. She noticed how he had kept his head down when Seroja entered the room, and had blushed when she brought him his cup of tea. A man of twenty-five, and still so shy with women? Her heart went out to him.

She didn’t see him again until their wedding day.

She had been fearful of what would happen on the wedding night. But she need not have been. He did not touch her. Nor did he speak to her. On the ship, he left her alone every evening in the cabin they shared with four other people, coming back to his bunk in the early hours of the morning, stumbling slightly over the metal trunk on the floor. At the port and on the rail journey to their home, he only spoke to ask her if she was hungry or thirsty. He never looked at her. At times she thought he was angry with her. But she could think of no reason why he should be, and so she attributed his reticence to shyness.

It wasn’t until they had lived together under the same roof that she knew something was wrong. He spent every evening sitting at the marble table with his bottle and glass. When she woke in the mornings she would find the space beside her empty and unslept in. She would get up and dutifully cook breakfast for him, lay out his clothes for work, and then wake him up where he had fallen asleep—at the marble table—with a gentle touch on the shoulder. He would rouse himself with a start, smelling of drink, eyes red-rimmed and unfocused; go to the bathroom, change in their bedroom, go down to the kitchen to eat. Then he was off and she would not see him again until lunchtime. He ate lunch alone in the dining room while she sat in the kitchen, wondering why he never thought of asking her to join him.

In the afternoons, he gave lessons at home. Then she saw a side of him that filled her with pride and sadness at the same time. He chatted. He made his students laugh. At times he yelled at them and even threw their books at them. On warm days, the lessons were conducted in the garden under the mango and cashew nut trees.

From the kitchen, she observed him. His energy, his vitality, his leonine maleness. The promise of a lively companion and a good father. But once the students were gone, he went straight to the cabinet where he kept his books and bottles. And it was back to the marble table until it was time for dinner, which, after the first week, she decided to serve him there.

A part of her knew this was not how marriage was meant to be. This was not the way her father behaved with her mother. But another part of her thought that perhaps it was all he wanted. Hadn’t her parents told her that he was content to have someone to cook for him and keep house for him? Maybe that was why he had not bothered with a dowry.

But hadn’t they also said that he wanted her to have his children?

The question so absorbs her that she forgets what has happened a few minutes ago. Her puzzlement at finding her sister’s photo, his anger when she asked him about it, her horror when he tore it up, and the desolation that drove her to the doorway at the back of the house where no one would see her.

She begins to make plans for the night, thinking about what she will wear, the perfumed oils she will use, the incense she will light, how to persuade him to sleep with her so that she can do what he wants and give him children.

There is no other way for her to think, because she cannot read. If she could, she would know that the name written in her father’s hand at the back of the photograph is not her sister’s, but her own.

Written on 18 February 2003

Of nuns and cucumber pens

2011-02-24T03:20:00.000+08:00

My story in the New Straits Times.

Of nuns and cucumber pens

An Academic's Review of Days of Change

2011-01-20T11:46:00.001+08:00

Click on the title to read a review of Days of Change by Andrew Ng, an academic attached to Monash University Sunway Campus, Malaysia.

The review is published in the latest issue (vol. 4 no. 2) of Asiatic, the e-journal of the International Islamic University in Malaysia. Asiatic is a peer-reviewed journal and its contributors include academics and writers from Australia, Bangladesh, India, Japan, Malaysia, Qatar, Singapore, the Philippines and the US. Check it out.

The Star's review of Days of Change

2011-01-08T01:15:00.000+08:00

Recollections of an amnesiac

My short story in Selangor Times

2010-12-27T23:58:00.003+08:00

Pasted here with thanks to Amir Muhammad.

stimes-5guat.jpg (1294×670)

I'm in Monorail Magazine!

2010-11-27T21:32:00.001+08:00

Echoes of Fiction,Days of Malaysia: An Interview with Chuah Guat Eng

Interview by Erfan Mojib

Monorail Magazine

Issue: 17
November 2010

http://monorail-kl.com/PDF/17.PDF

Promoting Days of Change on Radio!

2010-07-28T00:11:00.001+08:00

I chat with Umapagan and Shazmin about Days of Change, the state of Malaysian writing in English and other things on

BFM: The Business Radio Station

Here's the link: http://www.bfm.my/chua-guat-eng-days-of-change-malaysian-novel.html

The art of slow reading | Books | The Guardian

2010-07-22T13:33:00.000+08:00

Truly an article that warms the cockles of my heart.

The art of slow reading | Books | The Guardian

“How to Read and Write Novels & Short Stories” (3 July) | Ipoh Echo

2010-06-22T23:16:00.000+08:00

If you're living in or near Ipoh, do come to my talk. More information here.

“How to Read and Write Novels & Short Stories” (3 July) | Ipoh Echo

Well Lit: Malaysian noir

2010-06-16T08:45:00.002+08:00

Hot off the press! Read Umapagan's review of Chuah Guat Eng's Days of Change and Amir Muhammad's Rojak here: Well Lit: Malaysian noir

Arkib: What Tamil Writers?

2010-06-06T18:23:00.001+08:00

Finally found something about Malaysian literature in Tamil. This article is by Uthaya Sankar SB, well known for his writings in Malay. It was first posted by Sharon Bakar in her blog, Bibliobuli.

Arkib: What Tamil Writers?

On Reading -- on radio

2010-05-29T15:51:00.000+08:00

Chatting with Shazmin Shamsuddin on Bfm on Reading.

http://bfm.my/assets/files/TheBiggerPicture/2010-04-07_BiggerPicture_GUATENG.mp3

Thinking about the Epigraph

2010-05-25T18:27:00.008+08:00

An epigraph is a quotation at the beginning of a novel or a part (e.g. chapter) of a novel. Its presence in the novel suggests that the author sees, and wants us to see, some connection between it and the novel. Like the Title and the Author’s Note, the epigraph is a tool authors use to guide their readers’ approach to the novel. It is, however, less direct and more complex than the Author’s Note. And it can be used in many ways, depending on how creative or playful the author is.

Since there’s quite a lot of information about the epigraph available on the Internet, I shall just provide here a brief overview of some of its basic functions, so that we can see why paying attention to the epigraph is crucial to one’s understanding of a novel.

· Sources of the epigraph

Most of the time, the epigraph is a quotation from another literary work, e.g. a poem, a play, or another work or fiction. But there is really no limit to the sources an author can make use of. It can be a philosophical or historical work, the Bible or some other religious text, a technical manual, someone’s speech, a pop song, a newspaper headline, or even an advertising slogan.

Sometimes, epigraphs are quotations from imaginary works by the author’s imaginary characters. In the Dune novels, for instance, Frank Herbert uses quotations from an imaginary history of the fictional events written sometime in the future by one of the characters.

In Possession, A. S. Byatt uses both real and imaginary sources. The epigraphs to the novel are from real writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Robert Browning. But within the novel, each chapter begins with a quotation from the imaginary writings of the fictional poet, R. H. Ash, who is a character in the novel.

In The Shipping News, we find an interesting type of epigraph: drawings of knots from The Ashley Book of Knots. It has been noted by reviewers and critics that the knots are used by fishermen in Newfoundland, which is where the novel is set. For those who know a lot about knots and Newfoundland, they must have a great deal of meaning. I have never been to Newfoundland and my mastery of knots is limited to the reef knot, but at a metaphorical level, I respond to the thought association between the knots and the main character. The main character is a man who strikes me as inarticulate and ill-at-ease with himself, and this portrayal is reinforced by the pictures of the knots, which bring to my mind phrases like “tongue-tied”, “tied up in knots”, or “all knotted up inside”.

· Functions of the epigraph

The protean nature of the epigraph suggests that its functions are not always straightforward. Here are some of the questions a reader might want to ask when trying to decide on the function or functions of an epigraph.

o Does it help to set the tone for the narrative that follows?

o Does it highlight and summarize the narrative theme or themes?

o Is the epigraph used in some way to make a comment on the characters in the novel (or in the chapter, if the epigraph heads a chapter)?

o Are there certain thoughts in the epigraph that the writer then proceeds in the novel or chapter to illustrate or make concrete through fictional narrative?

o Does it invite the reader to make certain comparisons between the novel and the source-text (i.e. the work from which the quotation is taken)?

o Is the writer using it to launch a sort of dialogue with the source-text or its author?

o Is the epigraph being used by the writer to make an ironic comment on a character or situation in the novel?

o Is the epigraph being used by the writer as an authority to justify his/her views or narrative method?

Naturally, if the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then the reader has to look for evidence in the novel to support the answer.

All the above is somewhat theoretical. So next time, I’ll illustrate what I mean by discussing my approach to the epigraph in the Malaysian novel, Flowers in the Sky.

Announcing my new novel, Days of Change

2010-05-24T07:43:00.001+08:00

Launch at 1.30pm, 12 June 2010, The Annexe, Pasar Seni, Kuala Lumpur.

Do come if you can.

Pre-orders available through Amazon.com.

Amazon.com: Days of Change (9789834377816): Chuah Guat Eng: Books

Thinking about Authors' Notes

2010-04-23T04:34:00.004+08:00

Epigraphs and Authors’ Notes

The Epigraph and the Author’s Note are literary conventions a novelist sometimes uses to direct or guide his (or her) reader’s understanding of the work. Quite a lot of information on these topics is available online, so my discussion will be brief. I shall begin with the Author’s Note because it’s more straightforward.

Author’s Note

The Author’s Note (AN) is just what it says it is. It’s a note or little essay in which the author speaks directly to the reader and provides information related to the writing of the novel. The same idea is used nowadays by film makers, who take advantage of the DVD format to include a “The Making of…” filmlet.

Strictly speaking, you don’t need to read the AN to understand a novel just as you don’t have to watch a “The Making of” film to know what’s going on in a movie. However, if you do read/watch the authorial/directorial explanation, your understanding and enjoyment of the book/movie will be enhanced. And just as you may want to watch the movie and form your own opinions and judgment before you listen to the director’s explanations, you may want to read the AN after you’ve read the novel.

One of my favourite ANs is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Preface to The Marble Faun. I know, I know, I tend to cite books that aren’t on the world’s best-seller lists. But if you can get hold of a copy, it’s worth reading the AN. It’s not only witty, it’s also candid. Here’s what he says about the “gentle, kind, benevolent, indulgent, and most beloved and honored Reader” that every author writes for and appeals to:

The ‘Gentle Reader,’ in the case of any individual author, is apt to be extremely short-lived; he seldom outlasts a literary fashion, and, except in very rare instances, closes his weary eyes before the writer has half-done with him. If I find him at all, it will probably be under some mossy-gravestone, inscribed with a half-obliterated name which I shall never recognize.

Perhaps it is because writers tend to feel there’s little hope of finding readers who truly understand and appreciate them that they feel the need to write ANs. This is especially the case when writers are experimenting with their craft—either venturing into a new area of discourse, trying out a new narrative technique, or writing for a new readership. So very often ANs are used by novelists to explain and justify what they’re trying to do. While they may not go so far as to analyze and interpret their novels for the reader, they do provide information such as:

· what inspired them;

· the circumstances in which they wrote;

· their sources and resources;

· their special concerns while writing the novel;

· their reasons for choosing a particular form or narrative technique.

Joseph Conrad, who admitted to having a propensity to justify his actions, was very good at supplying information like that.

Not all ANs are explanations and justifications.

Some are simple disclaimers. When authors draw inspiration from historical and contemporary events (e.g. a celebrated murder case), they usually make use of the AN to write a disclaimer to draw the line between fiction and reality, explaining which parts of the fictional account are reliant on actual facts, and which are pure fiction.

Some function like an appendix. An example is Pat Barker’s AN to her novels, The Ghost Road, Regeneration, and The Eye in the Door, in which she provides not only information about the historical figures mentioned in her novels but also includes lists of books for further reading.

Some function like epigraphs. In the AN to Green is the Colour (1993), Lloyd Fernando tells us that the novel was suggested by an episode in Misa Melayu, an 18^th century Malay literary and historical text, and provides a summary of the episode without comment. In this case, the reader has to read and interpret the source text as if it were a literary text in order to identify themes, characters, imagery etc in the novel. How the reader understands the source text will influence his/her approach to and understanding of the novel.

Next: Epigraphs

Thinking about Titles 3

2010-02-22T02:40:00.006+08:00

Titles that are quotations from other texts

A discussion of book titles is incomplete without mentioning titles that are quotations from other works. It’s a very popular way of titling books, and was particularly favoured by Aldous Huxley: e.g. Antic Hay (from Marlowe's Edward II), Brave New World (from Shakespeare's The Tempest), and Eyeless in Gaza (from Milton's Samson Agonistes).

Most of the time, quotation-titles function in the same way as the other titles we’ve looked at so far; basically, they tell us what the novels are about. Obviously, familiarity with the sources of the titles gives us a perspective with which to approach the novels. And often our reading pleasure is enhanced by our awareness of resonances and dissonances between a present novel and a past text. But it is usually possible to read and enjoy the novels without having read the texts from which the titles are derived. For example, our appreciation of Huxley’s criticism of modern society in Brave New World is heightened, and our understanding more nuanced, when we know how and in what context the phrase was used by Miranda in The Tempest. But familiarity with The Tempest is not absolutely essential to one’s understanding of Brave New World.

Sometimes, however, we come across novels with quotation-titles that require a fairly intimate knowledge of the text from which the title came. One such novel is Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov; another is Flowers in the Sky by Malaysian novelist, Lee Kok Liang. I mention these two novels because, even though they’re about as different as any two works of fiction can be, they have some noteworthy similarities. For one thing, both authors seem to make a point of nudging and teasing the reader towards the sources of the titles, and they use more or less the same tactics to do so.

In both novels, the title-phrase is dropped very early into the narrative, but very casually as part of the narration. The authors are not just coy about letting the reader know that the phrase is a quotation; they actually make it difficult for the reader to identify the source and original context. It isn’t until nearly the end of Pale Fire that the narrator reveals the source; but the full quotation is not given, and the information is given in such a way that we aren’t even sure that we’ll find the phrase in the original. Lee doesn’t identify the source at all; instead through the thoughts of his characters, he mentions some half dozen texts, all of which are possible sources, as far as the reader is concerned. I assume that the purpose of this obfuscation is to force readers (at least those with bloodhound tendencies) to seek out the texts alluded to—and read them from cover to cover, just to locate the phrase. As Nabokov’s narrator puts it: “My readers must make their own research.”

In each case, what drives the reader to do this research is a central mystery (although most critics and scholars who have written about Lee’s novel seem to be unaware of its existence). But the mystery is hidden away in a jumble of hints and clues, red herrings, indirections, misdirections, disconnects, digressions, loose ends, silences, and paradoxes. To add to the mystification, a pervasive note of irony in the narrative voices causes the reader to doubt the reliability of the narrators and to wonder if the novels aren’t in fact elaborate jokes being played on the reader.

In a sense they are; they are literary games. And the basic rule of the games is that one has to read the texts from which the titles are derived; for it is only then that one can solve the mysteries and understand the novels. In the case of Flowers in the Sky (which is steeped in Zen thought), if one doesn’t identify and read the source text, one may not even know there is a mystery to be solved, an important mystery that unifies all the seemingly disparate stories in the novel.

The quotation-title, as used in these two novels, is like the title with symbolic meaning (see previous blog) in that it is intricately linked to the plot, characters, narrative structure and style. But it is different in that it doesn’t just tell the reader what the novel is about; it also tells the reader what the novel is. That is to say, Nabokov’s novel isn’t just about pale fire, it is a pale fire; and Lee’s novel isn’t just about flowers in the sky, it is a flower in the sky. Of course, readers will have to work out for themselves the meanings of “pale fire” and “flowers in the sky”.

It is because of their self-reflexivity (or pointing to themselves) that these novels may be considered as metafiction. The term “metafiction” is defined by Patricia Waugh (Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. NY: Routledge, 1984: 2) as follows:

Metafiction is a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. In providing a critique of their own methods of construction, such writings not only examine the fundamental structures of narrative fiction, they also explore the possible fictionality of the world outside the literary fictional text.

Novels like Pale Fire and Flowers in the Sky may not appeal to casual readers and habitual “book devourers” (i.e. those who read books the way they eat fast food) because reading and understanding them involves a lot of flipping back and forth, re-reading, and research. But they are irresistible to readers who also happen to be addicted to literary games and puzzles—which, of course, all good novels are to a greater or lesser degree.

With that I conclude my random thoughts on titles and their importance in the reading and appreciation of novels.

Next time: Thinking about Epigraphs and Authors’ Notes

Thinking about Titles 2

2010-02-18T14:42:00.004+08:00

If you’ve read the comments on my previous blog, you would have seen how paying attention to titles can enhance our understanding and appreciation of a novel. What’s worth noting is how I discover the deeper meanings in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov with Chaz’s help, because it reflects the reading experience.

The process of discovery begins when I identify a problem (i.e. the Karamazov brothers are not at all brotherly), form a hypothesis (i.e. the novel is about brotherliness and brotherhood), and get confirmation from Chaz. In confirming, Chaz provides more information based either on the text (the existence of an illegitimate brother) or on background knowledge (the Russian Orthodox view). With each confirmation and new information, I ask a new question, form a new hypothesis (i.e. the novel is about universal brotherhood) and get confirmation. And as we go along, Chaz is reminding me of things about the novel that I have missed, forgotten, misunderstood, or simply didn’t think about.

In most reading situations, we don’t have an informed reader by our side answering our questions and confirming our hypotheses. We have to find the answers and confirmations ourselves by going back to the text. In other words, we have to re-read the novel (or parts of it)—sometimes several times—to check what we have missed, forgotten, misunderstood, or didn’t think about. For me, this is the enjoyable part of reading; it’s like having a dialogue with the author through the text.

Re-reading is especially important in the case of novels with titles that have symbolic meaning. Such novels challenge us to understand the titles at the symbolic level—and not just at the literal level—because the symbolic significance of the words is deeply implicated not only in the story but also in the narrative structure and other literary devices used. In other words, the titles are an inextricable part of the “what” and “how” of the narration.

Titles with symbolic meaning

A simple example of a title with symbolic meaning is Lloyd Fernando’s Scorpion Orchid. In the first edition of the novel (1976), the front cover had a picture of the orchid more commonly known as the “spider” orchid. The question that comes to mind is: why does he call it the “scorpion” orchid? In the text, there is only one reference to an orchid and the scorpion lurking under it. Most critics have interpreted the orchid as symbolic of the Malaysian nation, which seems reasonable enough if you think about it. A few have interpreted the scorpion as symbolizing the inter-racial conflict that threatens the nation’s viability, which is also reasonable. But both these perfectly reasonable interpretations do not really explain the title. It may seem like hair-splitting on my part, but I find myself asking why, then, isn't the title something like “The Scorpion in/under/and the Orchid”? From my reading of the novel, I think the question that needs to be asked is: “If Malaysia is like an orchid, what is it about this orchid-nation that makes it scorpion-like?”

A more complex example of a title with symbolic meaning is Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. It tells of a nationally honoured, middle-aged writer who, worrying that he’s losing his creative stamina, suddenly feels the urge to travel, goes to Venice where he falls in love with a beautiful teenage boy, eats an over-ripe strawberry during an outbreak of Asian cholera, and dies.

That’s the story. But that’s not all that the novel is about. If it were only about an old man meeting his death in Venice, then the title might have been “A Death in Venice” (as in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Chronicle of a Death Foretold). The title in German is Der Tod in Venedig, which, translated word for word, is “The Death in Venice”. The use of the definite article “the” suggests that “death” here does not refer to a single occurrence of death. Rather, it invites one to think of death literally (i.e. as a universal, physical phenomenon) as well as figuratively (e.g. as in “spiritual death”) and poetically (e.g. as death symbolized in a thing or a person). This leaves the field wide open for interpretation—.

No, please don’t go to Google Search to find out how other people have interpreted the novel. Do it yourself, that’s where the fun of reading lies. Use, by all means, the question-hypothesize-confirm method I described above. And start an imaginary dialogue with Thomas Mann by reading and re-reading his novel. This isn’t such a chore because it’s relatively short, only 79 pages in my Penguin edition (trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter). You can also download a translation by Martin C. Doege (http://www.scribd.com/doc/985179/Death-in-Venice).

Let’s give it a try, shall we? Say we begin with the hypothesis that “the death” refers to the cholera awaiting the writer, Gustav von Aschenbach, in Venice. We surely can’t be wrong there. So we go back to the text to find confirmation. Now, the first thing we may notice is the number of things, words, and images related to death on the very first page, when von Aschenbach is still in Munich. Question: what does this mean? Can it be that—? At this point, we may want to get a pencil to mark every word, object, character, and image we come across that evokes the idea of death. We may want to pay attention to where they occur most frequently, where they almost disappear, and where there are sudden shifts in mood and tone (e.g. from dark to light to dark, from Hades to the Elysian Fields and back again). And we may want to stop and think about the significance of all the things we’ve noticed….

Okay. Now go get a copy of Death in Venice and sink into the incomparable pleasure of deciphering its title by reading—really reading—the novel!

Next time: Titles that are quotations from other works

Thinking about Titles 1

2010-02-11T18:39:00.008+08:00

It may seem strange to itemize the title as the first thing to look out for in a novel. I’ve chosen to do so because the significance of titles tends to be overlooked by readers.

How else can I explain the number of times I’ve observed people holding a book in their hands, reading the title and then looking up and asking, “What’s this book about?” Or the innumerable critical reviews and scholarly articles I’ve read telling me what a novel is about and how I should think about it, only to find (on reading the novel myself) that if those critics had paid more attention and given some thought to the title, they might have arrived at totally different interpretations and judgments.

I’ll admit. Titles don’t always tell us very much. But generally speaking, we may assume that the title signals the novel’s subject and what the novelist wants us to focus on. Some titles are pretty straightforward, especially if they consist of the names of characters. When you read titles like Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, you know what the novels are about and what you are being asked to focus on. We shall spend no more time on titles such as these.

What I want to talk about are titles that signal abstract subjects, such as War and Peace, or Crime and Punishment. Now we can read War and Peace purely as a historical novel about Napoleon’s invasion of Russia; and we can read Crime and Punishment as if it were a 19^th century detective novel about Raskolnikov’s crime and his final arrest and punishment. In other words, we read purely for the “story”. However, if we do, we are in danger of judging them as Henry James did. He described them as “fluid puddings” because they lack what he called “form” (i.e. “composition”, “economy”, and “architecture”) and deplored the novels’ “welter of helpless verbiage that we swim in as in a sea of tasteless tepid pudding”.

I confess that those were exactly my sentiments when I tried reading those two Russian novels in my late teens, but I’ve since decided that I felt like that only because I had failed to see the significance of the titles.

I reckon if War and Peace were only about the Napoleonic invasion of Russia and eventual retreat, Tolstoy might have entitled it something like “1812”, as Tchaikovsky called his overture commemorating the event. And if Dostoevsky had been interested only in Raskolnikov, he might well have kept his original title, which was The Drunkard. That they didn’t is an indication that they were not dealing with a particular event or character. They were dealing with what their titles tell us quite clearly: war and peace, crime (or transgression) and punishment.

What this means for us as readers is that we have to swim patiently through the novels’ massive seas of verbiage with the attitude of a marine biologist looking for a particular type of species. Our reward would be a deeper understanding of the novelists’ philosophies. For instance, how Tolstoy thought about war (or conflict) in all kinds of social and societal relations—families, marriages, and religion—and how different people negotiate their particular conflicts in order to find their peace; and how Dostoevsky thought about the relationship between transgression and punishment, not only in terms of law and society, but also in terms of their impact on one’s psyche and relationship with others.

I would like to spend a little more time on the subject of titles. In my next blog, I shall discuss titles that are more complex in conception than War and Peace and Crime and Punishment; and I shall briefly discuss different ways of thinking about them as we read.

Next time: Thinking about Titles 2

Talking about Reading: What to look for in a novel

2010-02-02T00:22:00.006+08:00

Last Wednesday, I had to give a talk to a group of university students studying my novel. Mindful of the fact that literature, in particular literature in English, hasn't been taught in Malaysian schools for several decades, I decided to talk about what they should look for when reading a novel--not just my novel, but any novel.

Here are the 10 pointers I gave them.

1. Title

2. Epigraph and/or Author's Note (if any)

3. Narrative structure

4. Repetitions and their variations

5. Narrators (how many? how reliable/unreliable?)

6. Names of places and characters

7. Fictional props (e.g. the diamond necklace in Echoes of Silence) in terms of their narrative function and symbolic significance

8. Imagery and literary allusions

9. How all the above elements are connected

10. The significance of the connections

I realized as I spoke that the students were taken aback by the approach I was suggesting. And I could understand why. Usually students are asked to identify and describe what are sometimes called the "building blocks" of a novel; namely the plot, the characters, and the themes.

Nothing wrong with that approach, except that it tends to lead to a rather superficial understanding--and very often to total misunderstanding--of the novel. It doesn't help you to gain an insight into the writer's craft and to discover the meanings that have been crafted into the novel. And it's just a deadly boring way to read a novel.

In the next few blogs, I shall discuss the 10 items listed above, and explain why paying attention to them will enhance not only your understanding of a novel, but also your reading pleasure.

Musings On Poets And Poetry

2010-01-13T15:53:00.001+08:00

Here's the link to an article in the Ipoh Echo on Cecil Rajendra, a Malaysian poet who writes in English--well known in many parts of the world but, alas, largely ignored in his own country.

Musings On Poets And Poetry

S.H. Lim's review of my fiction in Time Out Kuala Lumpur

2009-11-04T22:04:00.004+08:00

Read it here: Women's World - Books - Time Out Kuala Lumpur

Translating the untranslated: using the language of Asian narrative structures to deconstruct the postcolonial mindset in Echoes of Silence

2009-10-05T22:13:00.011+08:00

Abstract

The postcolonial novelist who writes in English is often asked, “Why English? Why the language of the former colonial master?” Lurking in this question is the suggestion that the writer has become “Anglified” by the language she uses. What often escapes the notice of those who question the Anglophone novelist is that all novelists use another language, the language of narrative forms and structures. Like words, narrative forms and structures carry within themselves the worldviews and values of their originating cultures. But unlike words, they are “untranslated” and therefore, paradoxically, get imported wholesale into the minds of their readers. It may thus be argued that all postcolonial writers using western narrative forms and structures are consciously or unconsciously purveyors of the worldviews and values of their former colonial masters, regardless of the ethnic language they choose to write in.

In this paper, Malaysian novelist Chuah Guat Eng identifies some European and Asian narrative forms and structures, translates the worldviews and values implied in them, and describes how she uses them in her novel, Echoes of Silence, to anatomize and deconstruct the mindset of postcolonial subjects whose minds have been colonized by the worldviews and values inherent in popular western narrative forms.

________________

As we all know, the word “translate” comes from the same Latin verb that gives us “transfer”, “to carry across”. In general parlance, to translate is to carry across concepts and meanings from one language system to another. Implied in translation is “interpretation” or the discernment of appropriate meanings, which requires an insight into the metaphysical and cultural values built into each language system.

Of course it isn’t just verbal languages that are translated. Non-verbal languages such as sign language, body language, and the symbolic languages of mathematics, chemistry, and logic have to be translated or transformed into verbal language for those who aren’t trained to decode them.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses the word in the sense of a physical transformation—“thou art translated,” says Quince when he comes across Bottom with an ass’s head. Today, we have some kind of transformation in mind when we talk of translating music notes into performance, or plans and proposals into action. And when we talk of translating books into movies, and vice versa, we also include the idea of adaptation and/or re-novation.

What I shall talk about today is the translation of a kind of non-verbal language used by fiction writers. By translation I mean most of the activities I’ve just mentioned—carrying across, interpreting, transforming, adapting and re-novating. By non-verbal language I mean the language of narrative structures. And by “narrative structure” I don’t just mean the plot or story line, but the overall design—the ordering or arrangement of time, place, characters, episodes, events, dialogue and other elements in a narrative.

Narrative structure is non-verbal because it isn’t explicitly stated in the text. It comes into being during the process of writing; and occasionally, it takes shape again in the reader’s mind during the process of reading. I say “occasionally” because most people read novels for the “story”, quite unaware of its structure, even though the structure is an inextricable part of the story. It is because of this quality of being non-verbal, of being of the story but not in the story, that narrative structures are never interpreted or transformed when a novel is rendered into another language. Instead, it is imported whole—“as is”—together with the translated text into the target language—and often into the literary tradition of that language.

I’m aware that it’s terribly old-fashioned in these post-structuralist days to talk about structure. Unfortunately, narrative structure will not go away just because it’s ignored. Even more unfortunately, those who ignore or fail to discern structure will not only derive less pleasure from the reading experience but also run the risk of misinterpreting what they read.

Why is narrative structure so important? Let me share with you my observations about the narrative experience—in general first, and then with particular reference to my experience of writing the novel, Echoes of Silence.

First, some general observations: Traditionally, we divide literature into the lyrical, the dramatic and the narrative. This is our way of categorizing the three main modes in which a writer presents his experiences of the world, and the way his readers or audience respond to his presentations. Speaking generally, it can be said that lyrical and dramatic presentations are designed to evoke immediate and predominantly emotional responses from the reader or audience.

With the narrative—and by narrative here, I mean fiction—it is different. Unlike the lyrical poet, the fiction writer stands at a distance from the observed world, contemplative, critical, tentative. He tries through narrative to show the world in its concreteness and richness, and to make it comprehensible—for himself as much as for the reader. In doing so, he may use the conventions of the journalist, the historian, and the autobiographer. But unlike these writers, he isn’t interested in offering verifiable information (although he may pretend to do so). What he offers is a fictional world, an alternative reality that can be checked against the empirical world and found reliable, but that in total concept needs only to be possible or plausible. His primary concern is to select and present information in such a way that he gets the reader emotionally engaged in his alternative reality. But unlike the dramatist, he doesn’t want to move the reader to the point of catharsis. Rather, he seeks to lead the reader to an intellectual distancing and judgment. The nature and degree of the tension he wants to evoke in the reader between the emotional engagement and the intellectual distancing determine the narrative form and structure.

What this means is that the writer’s choice of narrative form and structure is never naïve; it is always ordered to a purpose and an effect. It also means that whereas the verbal language is the “skin” of a narrative, the structure is its intellectual “bones and muscles”. In other words, while the verbal language gives us an idea of the writer’s virtuosity with words and imagery; it is the non-verbal language of structure that provides an insight into the nature and quality of his creative or playful intellect.

This is why, in literary studies, the milestones in the history of the novel are marked, not by writing style, subject matter, themes or politics, but by innovations and renovations of its formal and structural possibilities. It’s why we define narrative sub-genres in terms of their historically determined systems of rhetorical and compositional conventions. It’s also why novels that experiment with or parody existing narrative forms and proto-forms to achieve ironic, humorous, or utopian distance continue to have interest and relevance for us long after their writers are dead; why conventionally structured novels that observe actual, contemporary reality from a straightforwardly critical or polemical standpoint become dated as soon as the issues they raise are no longer topical; and why, sooner or later, we outgrow popular novels, which are structurally predictable and formulaic.

Now as to what I learned while writing my novel: Before I plunge into the discussion, I should let you know that at the time of writing the novel I had never heard of literary theory, structuralism, narratology, poststructuralism, deconstruction and postcolonial theory. I was learning about structure on the trot, so to speak.

The initial idea for the novel came to me in the 1970s. Naturally it was going to be a serious novel, because I was then a young woman. And naturally, the novel never got written. It wasn’t until 1994 that I began to think again about writing a novel. This time, having grown old and cynical, I had no higher ambition than to write a “jolly good read”, like a murder mystery, a romance, or a family saga—all types of fiction popular with Malaysians. But I soon found that it isn’t as simple as it sounds, mainly because the narrative structures of these popular novels kept coming into conflict with the complex reality of Malaysian life.

Take the murder mystery. Its basic structure is simple enough. A murder is committed; a professional or amateur detective sets out to find the murderer; through deductive reasoning and scientific methods of investigation, the mystery is solved; the murderer is apprehended; and the story ends. But fitting this structure in the Malaysian reality can be problematic. Who should kill whom? Who should be the villain and who the good guy? In our multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, both traditional courtesy and punitive laws such as the Internal Security Act and the Sedition Act make us constantly conscious of the consequences of stepping on other people’s ethnic toes. No matter whom I chose to be the murderer and the villain, I was in danger of upsetting one ethnic group or other.

The structure of the typical murder mystery demands that the culprit be caught and punished. But I had my doubts as to whether this black-and-white morality and clear-cut justice would sit naturally and comfortably in a Malaysian setting. This is not to say that Malaysians are amoral or lacking in a sense of natural justice. On the contrary. Apparently, our concepts of morality and justice are so nuanced that we tend to be too compassionate, especially in cases of homicide. In the 1980s, when our law-makers got rid of the jury system, one of the reasons given was that no matter how damning the evidence, our jurors would routinely return a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder, which attracts capital punishment.

There are other aspects of Malaysian life that just won’t fit into the murder mystery. On the whole Malaysians are pretty tight lipped, especially when it comes to other people’s private lives. It was hard for me to imagine a Malaysian amateur sleuth looking for clues like Sherlock Holmes, eavesdropping like Miss Marple, and asking people pointed questions like Hercule Poirot, getting very far in his investigation. It was even harder to imagine our police officers allowing amateur detectives to get involved in their investigations. Hardest of all was imagining that I could have a policeman detective as my hero. I mean, what did I know of such things as mortuaries and forensic labs? Remember the novel was written in 1994, long before we had Internet, satellite TV, Discovery Channel, and CSI.

These difficulties made me aware that the structures of western popular novels are neither innocent nor neutral, like empty vessels waiting to be filled with “local colour”. They are in fact steeped in the metaphysics and moral values that have long dominated European thought. The murder mystery structure, for instance, reflects the rationalistic, scientific, positivistic and moralistic worldview of late nineteenth century Europe. As for the romance and the family saga, their structures reflect the commonplace morals and values of the 18th century when the novel was taking shape: crime does not pay; the wicked must be punished; true love never runs smooth; in every person’s life there is only one true love; the sins of the fathers will haunt generations of descendants until the skeletons in the ancestral cupboards are exposed and laid to rest—that sort of thing. We’re familiar with these morals and values because they continue to invade and colonize our minds through pulp fiction, television, and cinema, influencing our way of looking, our way of knowing, and our way of reaching an “imaginative judgment” of life.

It became clear to me that to use western narrative structures is to take on board their metaphysics and values, and I was filled with great self-doubt. Can I truthfully tell a Malaysian story by using western narrative forms and literary conventions? Is it possible at all to write a Malaysian novel that isn’t a poor imitation of a western one? Is the problem solved simply by throwing in local colour and using Malaysian English? What kind of Malaysian English? To what extent can I use such embellishments before I’m accused of writing badly, or worse, exoticizing and poking fun at ourselves? Indeed, to what extent has my own absorption of western literary forms, structures and conventions influenced the way I approach and judge my world?

You can see I could have worried myself to death before I ever wrote a word.

Curiously enough, it was in the writing of the romance between my Malaysian narrator and her English lover that I began to see a way out of my predicament. As I wrote, I became aware that I was in fact writing about the colonial experience. It struck me then that the iconic love stories of the west—Aeneas and Dido, Antony and Cleopatra—can be read as distillations of colonial encounters. In these stories, nearly always told from the male colonizer viewpoint, the woman plays a key but short-lived role. Invariably she, the about-to-be colonized, will fall hopelessly in love with the man, the colonizer. And invariably, once subdued, she is abandoned like Dido, dies like Cleopatra, or disappears into obscurity like Montezuma’s daughter.

But my subconscious grasp of the reality of the colonial experience didn’t allow me to stick to this basic structure. For one thing, the women in my novel kept getting pregnant. I managed to kill off three women, two of them with unborn babies, but I was still left with a shocking number of racially mixed characters. For this is the reality: Colonized peoples may be abandoned, but they don’t just die or vanish. They have to live out their own continuing story and, like it or not, they have to do it with their culturally mixed offspring, the postcolonial.

So, as my characters came to life in my imagination, they began to do and say things that questioned the truth of the stories we tell to validate our perceptions of ourselves as postcolonials. Did the British really force themselves on an unwilling people? Were we, the colonized, the only victims of colonization? Did we stop being colonial subjects when we attained political independence? Do we really have to go back to our pre-colonial, ethnic roots to find our true identity? Did we all speak impeccable English until the enforcement of the National Language Policy in 1970?

As I wrote, my novel became an exercise in postcolonial myth-busting. And I have to admit, I began to enjoy myself.

I then turned my attention to the family saga. Most narratives—western or eastern—centre on a quest for something that will bring enlightenment or salvation, such as the Holy Grail or Da Vinci’s Code. The quest structure is the mainstay of the family saga, in which the discovery of past secrets leads to the salvation of present and future generations. In many novels, this secret or hidden truth is contained in a written document: a long-lost letter, a diary, a last will and testament, or a coded message.

Two classic western stories of detection involving family secrets make use of this device, Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone and A. Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear. In The Moonstone, the secret document is revealed to the reader right from the start. In The Valley of Fear it is revealed near the end. If, as modern readers, we think of these positions as the most logical possibilities it is probably because we have consciously or unconsciously accepted and internalized the authors’ 19th-century worldview with its underlying positivistic values and teleological metaphysics.

For me personally, and for the story that was taking shape in my mind, the structural models offered by Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle were inadequate. It seemed to me they told only part of the story. Do we really experience life’s journey as one of linear causality traceable to one finite point in the past? Don’t we encounter secrets of our family’s past in bits and bobs? Doesn’t each encounter cause some sort of upheaval, so that we find ourselves repeatedly revisiting our memories of events in the recent and distant past in an effort to find some kind of reconciliation? And isn’t that reconciliation usually found in our inmost core, where the spiritual or religious truths we have acquired reside?

I found a more suitable structural model in the Indian epic, the Mahabharata. The basic structure of the epic is a frame story. It consists of 18 books giving an account of a feud between two branches of the same family. Somewhere in the epic is the 18-chapter Bhagavad Gita, which interrupts the flow of the larger narrative and encapsulates its “moral essence”. I was struck by the symmetry of the structure. An 18-chapter miniature book placed in an 18-book epic—. Surely, I thought, the purpose of this structure is to express the epic’s central philosophy: that in the midst of life’s physical battles is a parallel battle going on, on a spiritual plane; that in the midst of life’s conflicts is the truth of how we should, or could, live. Surely, I thought, the number 18 has been chosen to suggest the “perfection” of this philosophy, because 1 plus 8 makes 9; and 9 is known to numerologists as the “perfect” number.

Not caring whether my inferences were right or wrong, I borrowed the Mahabharata structure for my novel—but adapted it to suit my purpose. Quite apart from the fact that I couldn’t see myself writing a lengthy 18-part book with 18 chapters per part, or even a 9-part book with 9 chapters per part, I thought it would be inappropriate to use the perfect number for my totally secular novel, which I anticipated would be judged by critics and scholars as imperfect. I settled on 5, a prime number. A prime number, as you know, cannot be perfectly divided by any number other than itself and the number 1. The result will always be an infinite series of numbers after the decimal point. Very messy. Very imperfect. Very right for my purpose. Better still, a 5-part novel with 5 chapters per part gives a total of 25 chapters; and the sum of 2 plus 5 is 7, a secular number, a number signifying things “of this world”. I was beginning to feel pretty inspired, as you might imagine.

I proceeded to construct my novel based on 3 concentric time-frames—the present (1994), the recent past (1974), and the distant past (the colonial period). My equivalent of the Gita is a 5-chapter hand-written family history going back to colonial times. Placed in the central Part 3, this document both interrupts and is surrounded by the linear time-flow of the murder mystery which begins in 1974 and ends in 1994. And cutting across all three time frames are a number of inter-ethnic love relationships that indirectly comment on one another through their thematic resonances and dissonances.

By this time I was well entrenched in my myth-busting enterprise. So when, quite unexpectedly, one of my characters referred to the hand-written family history as the Truth Manuscript, I thought I had better let my readers know that the Truth Manuscript does not necessarily contain the truth. For this purpose, I turned to the Middle East for my structural model. I used what is known as the Apocrypha of the New Testament, a collection of gospels that do not contain the gospel truth (at least according to the Church). To signal this device, I used the convention of the compilers of gospels. The chapter headings of the Truth Manuscript are personal names, not numbers. Then, for good measure, I wrote in a few mistakes, ambiguities, and inconsistencies. Just to remind the reader that this family history is a reconstruction of events by a character that might justifiably be called a western “Orientalist”.

But of course this character is not the only Orientalist in the novel; nor is he the only “historian”, or unreliable narrator. My novel is filled with narrators, each giving a different perspective of past events that have been shrouded in silence. In taking this approach, I was using a narrative structure from the Far East—the multiple-viewpoint narration so memorably demonstrated by the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa in his film classic Rashomon.

Finally, on impulse, I broke the perfect 5 by 5 symmetry of my novel’s structure by ending the novel with a Part 6. This part is only a stump, though, because it has no chapters and is only a few pages long. I have no idea whether the impulse came from the eastern or western part of my postcolonial mind. All I know is that it has something to do with not wishing to tempt Fate.

So there you have it, an account of how I translated—or, if you prefer, used and abused—western and eastern narrative structures to question our constructed histories and to deconstruct the postcolonial mindset. It has to be said that for me, it was a fascinating journey of discovery; all the more fascinating because what had begun life as a novel about a fictional murder mystery had somehow translated itself into a novel about the very real mystery of being postcolonial.

Paper delivered at MACLALS Postcolonial Translations Conference on 5 October 2009.

Readers' Responses to Echoes of Silence--Favourite Quotes/Episodes

2009-09-29T15:37:00.004+08:00

"We owe it to our children to tell the truth." --Arif Amin b Ahmad Puzi, Kuala Lumpur.

[Actual quote (p. 56): "...we owe it to your generation to talk about our past."]

"...water droplets...bonded by the unlikely presence of...an unlikely musical instrument...." --Neo Suzan Makgale, South Africa.

[Actual quote (p.7): "From that moment on we became attached: two English-speaking water droplets in a Teutonic sea, fortuitously bonded by the unlikely presence of an unlikely musical instrument in an unlikely part of an unlikely country thousands of miles away from where we stood at that moment in time."]

"The parts where Ai Lian realises she can love Michael's father, Jonathan. And truly love and care and appreciate it, with none of the 'traditional' remorse/guilt that tend to come with marrying/sleeping with one's lover's father!!." --Malar Ramalingam, World Citizen, born in Seremban

"When you're in love, truth becomes irrelevant." --Joan, The Philippines.

[Actual quote (p. 264): "...when there is love, truth becomes irrelevant."]

"We became westernized not by choice but by default (p.24)." --Samuel D., Sudan

"It is harder for me to bear your sorrow than my own pain (p. 264)." --Matthews, N. Sembilan.

Readers' Responses to Echoes of Silence--What I Like Best

2009-09-29T15:24:00.003+08:00

"I like the later parts of the story when the connections are explained and the mystery is solved." --Arif Amin b Ahmad Puzi, Kuala Lumpur.

"Not predictable. Brought different elements--detective, romance, history--together." --Neo Suzan Makgale, South Africa.

"The twists and turns as the story unfolds. Unexpected, startling, moving, humbling...like life. I especially love the writing style in which I am seeing/feeling through Ai Lian for quite a while before I discover her name!! Key discovery: names don't matter, neither does where one comes from. Or the age one loves. Once hearts are touched, all else is less important." --Malar Ramalingam, World Citizen, born in Seremban

"I didn't foresee Ai Lian falling on love with Jonathan Templeton. This part of the story shocked me." --Joan, The Philippines.

"The metaphorical reference of Ai Lian's ability to settle back into Malaysian society after she became 'uprooted'. After the story of the fallen tree." --Samuel D., Sudan

"It's different from the usual 'Malaysian fantasy' of high level of eastern morals and traditions. Instead, it's closer to reality and a portal to the postcolonial era of Malaysia." --Matthews, N. Sembilan.

Readers' Responses to Echoes of Silence--What I Like Least

2009-09-29T15:06:00.005+08:00

"Too many characters and names, and the small font." --Arif Amin b Ahmad Puzi, Kuala Lumpur.

"The politics (Communist Party of Malaya). I don't really like reading about historical era especially if it affected people negatively. Wanted a beautiful romantic novel." --Neo Suzan Makgale, South Africa.

"That it has yet to be made into a movie, brought to the masses, and inspire more to read this book, and books/good literary works in general." --Malar Ramalingam, World Citizen, born in Seremban

"Ai Lian's preoccupation with the murder mystery--she came up with the list of suspects. A little artificial for me." --Joan, The Philippines.

"Ai Lian's father ignoring his mother's presence in his life." --Samuel D., Sudan

"The incest implied in Ai Lian's marrying her lover's father." --Matthews, N. Sembilan.

Readers' Responses to Echoes of Silence--Introduction

2009-09-29T13:18:00.004+08:00

Last Sunday (27th September) I was in Ipoh, where I joined the Bookeaters' Club. The Club is the brainchild of my friend Joan, who lectures at the PETRONAS Technological University in Tronoh. It is a small, informal group consisting of himself and his students; and they meet once a month to discuss books they have read. Last month it was Antoine D'Exupery's The Little Prince. This month it was my novel, Echoes of Silence.

When Joan told me about it, I asked to be present at the discussion because I was interested to know how a group of young people (average age 18) studying science and technology would respond to the novel. The Club members were kind enough to agree, and raised no objection when I asked if my friend Malar, who had driven me to Ipoh, could join in the discussion.

I was very glad I went because the Bookeaters' Club, though small, turned out to be quite international in character. Apart from Joan, who's from the Philippines, there were two students from Malaysia, one student from South Africa, and one from Sudan. And to my great delight, Matthew, who chaired the meeting, began by asking those present to write down (1) their favourite quote or episode; (2) what they liked best about the novel; and (3) what they liked least.

I asked them to begin with the "like least" list; not because I'm a masochist, but because I had written the novel with the primary aim of making my readers feel uncomfortable. We then went on to the "like best" and ended with the "favourite quotes".

I thought it might be fun to post their responses on my blog so that the discussion can continue here. Their comments are posted here with their permission. I'm posting them in three separate posts, and if any of you reading this would like to add to the lists, please do so.

The Aim of Literature is to Combat Stupidity

2009-09-21T11:17:00.009+08:00

In 2001 I was invited to the Lahti Writers' Reunion held in Mukkula, Finland. The theme was "The Aim of Literature is to Combat Stupidity". The following essay was my "intervention", presented on 20 June 2001. I'm posting it here because some of my readers, especially those interested in writing, may find it useful.

It seems to me that before we can have any meaningful dialogue, we need to define what we mean by stupidity. The definition in the article posted on the Lahti Writers' Reunion website offers a convenient starting point. But I have to say that based on my own experience, I have a few problems with it.

Is stupidity "not a living being…the lack of thought, mental lethargy, a reluctance to think, or if one does, one doesn't think honestly or things through"? I'm not so sure.

When I look back on my own long history of stupid acts, I am inclined to think that the impulse that drove me to those acts was so animated and wilful that it can be said to have a life of its own. In thinking so I am not alone. In many cultures, that impulse is felt as so alive that it has been disowned as part of humanity, externalized and given individual shapes, personalities, and names – goblins, trolls, monosodium glutamate, sugar, TV violence, and so on.

I can also tell you that my stupidities were not the result of not thinking, or not thinking things through. If anything, they were the result of too much thinking, too much rationalization, too much trying to think things through to the bitter end – I may add, with all the best intentions in the world, with every effort made to be as honest with myself as possible. Maybe if I hadn't thought quite so much, I might have made the wiser decision, one with better consequences for myself and everyone else affected by my action. Maybe there is something in what the Zen and Taoist masters say: about being wise by being spontaneous, by avoiding intellectualizing and ratiocination, by being the happy fool.

So, if I was not guilty of not thinking, then what was wrong with my thinking that made my actions stupid? The only criterion left in the above definition is that of honesty. Maybe I hadn't been as honest in my thinking as I had thought? Very likely. Because, again from my own experience, it's hard to know when one is totally honest with oneself, and when not.

This, I suppose, is why I baulk at the idea of placing Literature in combative opposition to stupidity. First, because it assumes that Literature is by its very essence and nature, not stupid. Secondly, because it tempts writers to think, perhaps self-deceptively, that by virtue of their involvement in a profession which undoubtedly requires mental activity, they have a special claim to being intellectual, intelligent, and mentally alive; are somehow more intellectual, intelligent, and mentally alive than the rest of humanity; and therefore have a self-righteous obligation to take up arms against what he or she perceives as 'stupidity'.

The amount of beautifully written and well-argued but shallow and biased literature produced throughout the ages with the aim of combating what the writers disapprove of in society (and therefore consider as manifestations of other people's 'stupidity') attest to both the dangerous arrogance and the falseness of such a claim for 'Literature'.

Today, on a more practical level, I can't help seeing an essential anomaly in a writer protesting against, say, the chopping down of trees, or the free market economy, or the alleged rampant greed lurking in the boardrooms and corridors of industrial giants, when he still depends for his continuance and success as a writer on the destruction of trees for paper, the free market for the distribution and sale of his books, and the support of large publishing houses that increasingly swallow up smaller presses and eschew the publication of books that do not have mass appeal on a global scale. Why, I ask myself, do so many writers still depend on such an ancient publishing tradition? Why are writers not following the fine example set by this country's Linus Torvalds? Why are we not sharing our thoughts, ideas, knowledge, whatever, with the world through the tree-friendly, capitalist-bypassing, relatively free access of e-publishing?

For me, as a writer, there is only one criterion that defines stupidity, and that is self-deception. There is therefore only one level at which I can agree that the aim of literature is to combat stupidity. That is at the level of the writing process itself, before the writing becomes 'Literature'.

At home in Kuala Lumpur, I teach Creative Writing – mostly to adults who want to write creatively but do not have the confidence to even think of themselves doing it. My workshops concentrate on giving them this confidence. And we do it by helping them to bypass their so-called left brain, by opening up the passageway to that part of the brain that has been stupefied by a lifetime thinking logically, rationally, egocentrically and, yes, self-deceptively - not, I must point out, because they are inherently egotistical and dishonest, but because as in many developing countries, most Malaysians above the age of forty have either personally undergone or been brought up by parents who have undergone the hardship of colonialism, war and immigration, and have gotten into the habit of putting physical survival and social and economic success above all else.

In these workshops I see stupidity not as a dead thing but as a very alive and dangerous presence that seeks to obstruct the joy and spontaneity of imaginative and creative play. It is not a lack of thought, but a reluctance or inability to stop thinking and to start using the senses – sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, and the emotions – to apprehend the internal and external realities of their world of experience. It is not the product of arrogance, but of lack of confidence – the fear of making mistakes, of being laughed at, of looking foolish. This alienation from the real self is what creates a kind of mental lethargy, a laziness that makes the aspiring writer use vague adjectives and abstract nouns, clichés, and fall into the trap of intellectualizing and moralizing. It is this that leads to not feeling honestly and not feeling things through. And it is when this perceptual stupor - this emotional numbing - takes over the brain, that they experience what we call writers' block.

We all know what that is and feels like. The words will not flow. Sometimes we find that the only way to overcome the block is to go back and examine the truthfulness of what we have already written. Sometimes, in the quiet and darkness of the early morning hours, we start up from our sleep, woken by a feeling of unease or a sudden insight into the falseness or superficiality of a position we have taken in a piece of writing. Sometimes the characters we struggle to bring to life refuse to do so until and unless we are willing to set aside our social or other 'aims', however noble they may be, and allow the characters themselves to show us what they really are about; that even their most villainous acts can be motivated by noble and socially conscientious intentions, that even in their most virtuous acts there is often a strong vein of what we have no choice but to call vicious.

If the aim of literature is to combat stupidity, then surely it must be at this level, when the very act of writing forces us as writers to realize that the stupidity to be combated and overcome is not 'out there' in society but 'in here', within ourselves. Here, on this piece of paper or this monitor screen, is where the battle takes place. Here is where words and phrases are deployed like so much ammunition, and tested for effect and effectiveness; crossed out and deleted, or allowed to stay. Here is where our imagined characters prove to us the truth and truthfulness of our chosen aim, cause, or position, either by coming to life and living on as 'Literature', or by dying on the page as polemical cartoons.

I believe that at this level and on this battlefield, as long as the battle is honestly fought and honestly won, the act of producing literature will destroy stupidity. Not necessarily because it is our conscious aim to do so, but because that is the nature of good writing, the modus operandi of our muse. It cannot do otherwise, just as an antidote cannot help neutralizing poison.

Maybe, then, we should be talking of literature not as combating stupidity but as promoting wisdom, emotional and psychological health, existential holism–in ourselves first. It may seem like the mere rephrasing of the statement in positive terms – like describing a half-empty glass as being half-full. But in this re-orientation of our viewpoint is a world of difference. What we once saw as our enemies we now see as friends who need to be understood. What we once saw as an opposing force we now see as a potential ally. Instead of war, we declare armistice. Instead of alienating with our words those who seem bent on destroying the world, we charm them round to our way of thinking.

Then, and only then, can we hope to change the world with literature. For we mustn't forget one incontrovertible truth about our position as writers. Our target readers can always choose to stop reading.

Thoughts From a Disappearing Island

2009-09-20T03:16:00.003+08:00

I'm posting this article mainly for the benefit of university students reading my novel, Echoes of Silence, as part of their Malaysian Literature in English course. The article is based on a paper I presented at the Festival of Writing from the Commonwealth Islands held in Mauritius in 1998. It was published the following year in the British Council journal, Literature Matters. It was recently posted by Eric Forbes in his blog (see "Blogs I Visit").

THOUGHTS FROM A DISAPPEARING ISLAND

FROM TIME TO TIME I hear it in the cadence of a voice, glimpse it in a slant of light, smell it in a whiff of something cooking. Fragmented it may be, spread thin to the point of invisibility, and slipping through the cracks of written history, but the island is not a solipsistic fiction. It was my father’s island, and I grew up on it.

Official Malaysian history has it that the Chinese first settled in the Malacca Sultanate in the 15th century, following the visit of the Ming Dynasty envoy, Admiral Cheng Ho. Much has since been written about their descendants, the “Babas” of urban Malacca; their handicraft, their artifacts, their architecture, and above all, their adoption of the Malay language, food and dress. It is not certain to what degree there was intermarriage with the local people; but in private discussions with some Babas, I was told that wealthy families sent their sons back to China to find suitable brides. This in itself is an indication of the value the Babas placed on marrying within the race. This trait they shared with the later waves of Chinese immigrants who are known to be extremely energetic about retaining their culture and language.

However, the Babas of Malacca were neither the first nor the only Chinese people to settle in the Malay Peninsula. According to Sterling Seagrave, author of Lords of the Rim: The Invisible Empire of the Overseas Chinese (1995), at least a century before Cheng Ho’s visit, ethnic Chinese had settled along the coast of the northern part of the Malacca Straits—in Burma, Siam (now Thailand), Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula. I suspect that my ancestry can be traced to these small pockets of early settlers because my father was certainly not a Malaccan Baba, culturally and linguistically. I haven’t been able to find anything written about the non-Baba Peranakan. Based on my father’s history, I would assume that because of their proximity to Burma and Siam, they tended to be Theravada Buddhists, which may explain their relative lack of attachment to traditional Chinese religious beliefs and, more importantly, Confucianist concepts of ethnic and cultural purity. In the rural parts of the Peninsula, they lived as true minorities, intermarried freely with the local people, and underwent a high degree of acculturation. They kept their Chinese names for official purposes and so were nominally Chinese, but their way of life was typical of the indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia.

Little is known about my paternal grandfather, but he had business and possibly family connections in Kedah and Perlis (then part of Siam), where he died when my father and uncle were very young. My grandmother was part Burmese, although her family was based in Perak, where my father was born. She later got married again, to a Chinese who owned some rubber smallholdings in Perak. My father therefore spent his childhood in rural Malaya, living very much, I imagine, like a Malay boy. Years later, I discovered that many of the rules he imposed on us as children—getting up before dawn to bathe and change, never eating dinner before sunset, never trimming our nails after dark, and filling the house with the aromatic smoke of the kemenyan at dusk—were Malay-Muslim customs my Chinese friends had never heard of.

But to absorb the Malay culture is one thing; to be absorbed into the Malay world is another. As a young man, my father fell in love with a Malay girl but because he refused to become a Muslim, had to give her up and leave his kampong forever, thus cutting himself off from the “mainland” of his childhood. Hearing the story when I was a child, I learned that religion is an ocean that divides the world into islands.

It is tempting to romanticise the spirit of tolerance and the adaptability that foster the growth of hybrid cultures. However, tolerance and adaptability are often nothing more than the survival tools of minority groups surrounded by an alien culture, and survival in such circumstances usually requires a shaking loose of old roots.

Perhaps the most significant root shaken loose by my grandparents was the one of language. Under British rule, experienced first in Burma and then in Malaya, they had learned that survival meant an education in English. My father, the elder son, was sent away to Penang, to study in a mission school where English was taught. My uncle, formally adopted by their stepfather and therefore heir to his property, went to a Chinese school near their rural home.

From then on, the two brothers went their separate ways, culturally speaking, because education is not simply the acquisition of a language; it is the acquisition of a culture and a worldview. My uncle played mahjong, sent his son to a Chinese school, and kept his daughter at home. My father played billiards, and sent all his sons and daughters to English schools. English became the language of communication in my father’s home, and my Chinese-literate cousins would call us, with fond derision, “English horses.” After Independence in 1957, we sent our children to national schools to learn Malay; they sent theirs to Chinese schools.

Language, too, is an ocean that divides the world into islands.

Being part Burmese, my father did not look Chinese. For one thing, he had a very dark complexion. I thought he was the handsomest man in the world, but as I grew up, I learned that among multicoloured Asians, a dark skin draws to itself great tidal waves of prejudice that demolish most attempts at building bridges between islands.

Sometimes I wonder what it was like for him, a dark-skinned Chinese who did not speak much Chinese, studying in the Chinese towns of Taiping and Penang, working in the government service, married to the daughter of a man fairly well known in Chinese business circles in Kuala Lumpur. To what extent did all those encounters make him the shy man I knew? My father had few friends and little to do with relatives. He spent most of his spare time escaping into the world of books.

On my father’s island, I feasted on the cultural spread around me the way Malaysians today feast on the culinary variety our multiethnic society offers. I was taken to Chinese operas, Hindu pageants, and Muslim weddings. The radio and the cinema brought me English, Chinese, Malay and Indian music and movies. Books and magazines in English furnished my imagination with the learning and thought of the whole multicultural world. And I learned to distrust labels, outward forms, and dividing lines between races and language groups.

But Malaysia [Malaya] after Independence in 1957 functions on a framework of racial division. The ruling party is made up of three parties, each representing one of the three main races in the country. Every form one fills, whether official or unofficial, requires a declaration of one’s racial origin. The simplistic assumption is that race is identical with culture; so in spite of a great deal of rhetoric decrying racial stereotyping, racial stereotyping continues.

Unable to fit comfortably into any ready-made racial-cultural mould, I constantly have to define and redefine myself against a backdrop of several dominant cultures, all of them familiar, yet alien; mine, yet not mine. I often think that if anything can annihilate my island of fecund ambiguity, it is this swelling ocean of over-simplification.

In recent years, my fear of becoming a mini-Atlantis has been heightened by the global tendency to focus on ethnic differences in political, economic and cultural discourse. I am defined now as part of the Chinese Diaspora, and expected to feel, think and act according to the popular perception of an “Overseas Chinese.” Cultural assimilation, what my family have done for generations, is suddenly “politically incorrect,” shameful, even traitorous, because I am deemed to have forgotten my “roots.”

I have not forgotten my roots. I just cannot trace them through the generations of a single family, in the way others can. My roots are like the roots of the banyan tree; they grow from innumerable branches, trail down like vine, and slowly thicken into a complex of pillars holding up the ever-spreading tree.

Maybe that is why when I wrote my novel, Echoes of Silence, I chose to name its fictional setting Ulu Banir; ulu meaning source, and banir meaning the roots of the banyan tree.

I did not start my novel with the intention of exploring my ethnic roots. I had no higher ambition than to write a “jolly good read,” i.e., a murder mystery, a romance, or a family saga, all genres popular with English-reading Malaysians. But I soon learned that the simple act of writing is in itself an exploration.

Each genre, I found, has its own set of values. The forms and structures of the murder mystery, the romance, and the family saga are steeped in social, moral, and intellectual values that are essentially European and Christian. I wondered then: Can a Malaysian story be told truthfully through western literary forms?

Who should kill whom, for instance? Who should be the villain, and who the good guy? Answering these basic questions can be a problem in a racially divided society where, through force of habit, innate courtesy, and even law, we are made conscious of one another’s ethnic sensitivities. Furthermore, will the black-and-white morality and clear-cut justice demanded in the typical murder mystery—that the culprit be caught and punished—fit naturally and comfortably into a Malaysian setting? This is not to say that Malaysians lack a sense of natural justice. We feel horror, yes, and outrage; but in general, we leave the meting out of justice to Fate, Karma, or God. “God is great,” we say; or “Heaven has eyes”; or “He will pay for this in his next life.” Another bothersome question: Is a Malaysian amateur sleuth interfering in the affairs of the Malaysian police a plausible proposition?

Of course, no one expects a murder mystery to be realistic. Just the same, I found, as the narrative progressed, that I could not stop the realities of Malaysian life from undermining the integrity of the fictional form.

Where the romance in the novel was concerned, I decided to base the plot on the colonial experience. It seemed to me that the world’s legendary love stories—Aeneas and Dido, Antony and Cleopatra—can be read as distillations of colonial encounters. Always told from the viewpoint of the coloniser, the man (conqueror) seldom has problems getting the woman (conquered) to fall in love with him; and once subdued, the woman is abandoned, dies, or disappears into obscurity. To my growing frustration, however, the women in my story simply refused to be got rid of so summarily. For one thing, they kept getting pregnant. Although I managed to kill off three, together with their babies, I was still left with a shocking number of racially mixed characters. Once again, my subconscious grasp of reality had given the lie to fictional convention. Colonised peoples may be abandoned, but they do not just die or vanish. They have to live out their own continuing story and, like it or not, they have to do it with their racially and culturally mixed offspring.

My final major problem was that mainstay of the family saga, the “truth” about the past; the uncovering of which will set future generations free. It did not seem right to place my “Truth Manuscript” either at the beginning, as in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, or at the end, as in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear. I thought that even if one could ever know and tell the truth about the past, its relationship to the present cannot be explained along such narrowly causal lines. I finally had to go back to Asia for my literary model. I chose theMahabharata, and my “Truth Manuscript”, though not wholly reliable as a historical source, became like the Bhagavad Gita, a little parabolic narrative embedded in and illuminating the larger narrative of the continuing present.

In the end, I did not make my father’s island reappear, much less find a brave new world, by writing my “imperfect-because-unconventional” murder mystery, romance, and family saga. But I did discover that, like Prospero, I can develop my power to conjure up “Spirits to enforce, Art to enchant.” I can create stories within stories within stories. And even if the stories are faulty, I can learn from them that “the rarer action” is not in vengeance, but in wisdom, compassion, and an understanding of the human heart.

The Problem with Writing 6

2009-09-19T09:26:00.011+08:00

THE PROBLEM WITH WRITING IS…

surviving criticism

In this final article we shall consider the prickly problem of criticism.

Let’s say you’ve just written something—an article, a short story, a poem, a chapter of a novel. You read it through. Pretty good stuff, you think. And you’re overcome by an urge to show it to someone. “To get another opinion,” you say to yourself, but—let’s face it—what you secretly hope for is a whole lot of praise.

So you show it, or read it aloud. To a friend, your mother, the members of your writers’ circle or e-group. And you wait for a response.

The responses may be inane or insightful, trivialising or serious, crushingly destructive or warmly constructive. But—so writers are often told—because they are given in the sacred name of “criticism”, you are expected to accept them meekly and without demur.

Don’t believe what you’re told. There is no harm in seeking feedback from others; but there is no law or rule of writing that says you have to swallow all criticism whole.

If you’re serious about your writing, you would already be your own most stringent critic. And your own critical standards will enable you to distinguish between the kind of criticism that can be considered because it will help you to improve your work, and the kind of criticism that should be resisted and rejected because it threatens the very survival of your creativity and originality.

If you’re just starting out, however, and have yet to define your critical compass, it may not be so obvious to you what you should accept or consider, and what you should resist or reject.

So, how do we avoid being so devastated by negative criticism that we stop writing altogether? Which of our critics is worthy of attention and which can, or should, be ignored? And is there anything we can do to get more constructive criticism?

Here are some survival tips.

Ignore dictatorial critics

Dictatorial critics are those described by the American writer, Whitney Balliett (1926 - 2007), as “a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste”. You recognise them by their dogmatic tone and the frequent use of words like “should” and “ought”.

Like the classic philistine, they know what they like and they like what they know; so they have an instinctive need to nitpick and bully you into writing down to their level—and “down” is the operative word here. When you’re experimenting with a lyrical style, they will say, “Why are you writing in that old-fashioned style? You should read XYZ and try to write like him. So modern, so straightforward.” When you’re experimenting with free verse, they say, “You call that poetry? How come there’s no rhyme and no metre?”

If they have had some literary education, they will insist on strict conformity to certain rules they’ve encountered in some textbook somewhere—probably decades ago. Like: “You should always show, not tell” or “There ought always to be a conflict in your story” or “You should never have a flashback in a short story”.

Some have a depressing tendency to believe absolutely in the reality of stereotypes and the inviolability of moral dictates; and they want their beliefs reflected in your writing. Even if your story is based on real events or a real person in your family circle, they will tell you: “In reality, people never talk or act like that” or “You shouldn’t write about children shouting so rudely at their parents; it’s not right.”

Now I’m not saying that the views of such critics are entirely worthless and should always be ignored. Indeed, if you are writing for people like them, you should pay a great deal of attention to what they have to say. But if aren’t, can’t or won’t, then don’t. They probably wouldn’t buy your book when it’s published anyway.

Value critics who ask questions

Critics you should value are those like Clive Bell (1881-1964) who said, “I will try to account for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I conceive, is the function of the critic.”

If they like something you’ve written they tell you why, or at least attempt to. If they don’t like something, they also tell you why.

They may point out factual or logical discrepancies but they don’t confuse fiction and reality. And they don't try to change your story or line of argument.

If they don't understand something, they don't assume that you don’t know your craft. Instead, they seek to understand the reason for their non-understanding, and ask questions like “What were you trying to say/communicate/achieve with this word/device/technique?”

Critics who ask questions are valuable, because their questions draw your attention to those parts of your work that may need to be looked at again, but they don’t dictate how you should rewrite them.

Retain control of the critical process

To get constructive criticism, you yourself must proactively construct the feedback and critical process. Here are some steps you can take.

Choose the right critic. The best one is a representative of your intended readers. If you’ve written a story for six-year-olds, get feedback from a six-year-old reader.

Be prepared to pay for professional reading services. Lumbering friends and relatives with your manuscripts is not a foolproof way of getting honest and pertinent criticism.

Let your critic know the kind of feedback/critique you require. Do you want editorial nitpicking? Or merely an opinion to gauge whether you’ve achieved your overall writing aim?

Identify the particular area you want your critic to focus on: Grammar? Punctuation? Historical accuracy? Structure? Voice?

Be open to the critic’s views, but remember that the decision to accept or reject is ultimately yours.

With that, we’ve come to the end of this series on some of the problems of writing.

Go forth, gentle reader, and write. May your writing enrich your life and may your life enrich your writing.

The Problem with Writing 5

2009-09-16T03:34:00.009+08:00

THE PROBLEM WITH WRITING IS …

rewriting

When asked to rewrite something, many people react with negative emotions ranging from quiet disappointment to outright resentment.

It’s understandable. The task—chore—of rewriting often evokes memories of all the times we failed to make the grade in school composition. But writing is nothing if it is not an exercise in humility. And voluntary rewriting is the ultimate proof of how truly humble we are.

At the most obvious level, rewriting is an admission that we are human and can make mistakes in grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation. More accurately called “copy-checking”, this internal audit or quality control is the least we should do before we impose our writing on others. And it is not difficult. There’s the dictionary to help with spelling; the thesaurus to help with choice of words; and countless books and websites offering practical help with grammar, punctuation, usage, style, and even structure and organization. Besides, word-processing programmes come with spell-, grammar-, and style-checkers. Toggle these writing aids on, and they will alert us to problem areas requiring consideration or re-consideration: spelling errors, simple noun-verb agreement, the incomplete or the overly long sentence. True, the spell- and style- checkers are unable to deal with complex and subtle problems; there is only so much that can be programmed into a computer. But within their limits, they are useful.

One area the computer cannot help you with is the kind of rewriting that involves logic or the organisation of thoughts and ideas. Nor can I in this article; too much depends on the kind of writing you’re engaged in and what you seek to achieve with it. What I can do is share with you my thoughts about rewriting.

It is often said—especially in relation to so-called “creative” writing—that writing is all about self-expression. And so it is—certainly when writing the first draft. This is why in earlier posts I have recommended that you should begin your writing task by simply putting down your thoughts as they come, and not worrying about such things as grammar, spelling, sentences, and organisation. What is hardly ever said, however, is that you may self-express all you want; but if no one apart from you really wants to read what you have written, you are essentially writing to and for yourself. There is nothing wrong with writing to and for oneself. Many people keep diaries and journals that are meant for their own eyes only; and I know a few people who are so secretive they make their entries in their own elaborate code. But generally we write because we want to have our thoughts made known to others. Whether it is a simple note like “Dinner is in the oven”, a short story or a term paper, we write because we want someone other than ourselves to read, understand, and respond to what we have written. In short, we usually write to communicate.

Rewriting, then, is the process of shifting progressively from self-expression to communication; from writing for oneself to writing for the other. During that process, our sole objective should be to ease our message along the path of least resistance to the reader’s mind. As we go through our drafts, we have to cut out, cut down, and rewrite anything that will bore, confuse, and irritate the reader. Our primary aim is to engage the reader’s attention, sustain his/her interest in what we have to say, and get him/her on our side.

This is when we have to be meticulous about grammar, spelling, and all the other rules of language. These rules were not invented to make life difficult for users of a language; they are the systematisation of how a language is customarily spoken or written. And they are there to help us use the language in such a way that we can communicate with others familiar with the same language. Sometimes, in creative writing, we may want to break these rules to achieve a certain effect. But in ordinary writing (and speaking) if we choose to ignore the basic rules, we are in danger of not being understood. Not only that, we leave a poor impression of ourselves. The more charitable reader will assume that we do not know the language we have chosen to write in. The less charitable reader may think that we don’t respect him/her enough to correct our mistakes. In either case, we lose the reader’s attention, respect and good will.

Engaging the reader’s attention and goodwill is also why we should, when rewriting, strike out those big words, little-known words, power-buzzwords, clichés, and popular but meaningless catch-phrases. When we use such words and phrases we are communicating, whether we intend to or not, that we are showing off, unoriginal, or both. Unfortunately, these signals will interfere with the reader’s reception of our main message, because he/she may (a) have difficulty understanding us; (b) suspect we’re trying too hard to make an impression; or (c) assume that we’re simply bombastic show-offs. Where the English language is concerned, there has been for many years now a general move towards the use of plain words and simple sentences. It is held that good writing is effective writing, and effective writing is writing that communicates the intended message and evokes the desired response. No more and no less.

If you have a case to argue, work out the best way to present the facts so that they lead the reader to the desired conclusion. Then let the facts speak for themselves. If you wish to discuss an issue you feel strongly about, state your position, but do refrain from preaching and otherwise haranguing the reader. If you must harangue, try to do it with humour—wry or sly it doesn’t matter, so long as it is genuinely witty and not laboured. Remember, you can never bully or bore anyone into submission through your writing. The reader always has the option to stop reading.

Rewriting is undoubtedly the most challenging part of writing. But if one couldn’t rewrite, one would never find the courage to write at all.

The Problem with Writing 4

2009-08-19T01:39:00.008+08:00

THE PROBLEM WITH WRITING IS…

trying too hard.

Usually, in order to start a creative writing exercise, I ask my students or workshop participants to each write a word, one word, any word. Now one would think that’s the most elementary writing task imaginable. Isn’t it a simple matter of plucking one from that welter of words in our heads?

Apparently not. For some, it seems to be a monumental struggle—despite frequent assurances from me that there is no right or wrong, no points to be scored, no judgment to be made,.

Why, I ask myself as I wait, don’t they give me my comeuppance by throwing the word “word” at me. Or, if they thought the whole business a silly waste of time, the word “silly”. Or any other word that may reflect what they’re feeling or thinking at that moment: “fun”, “resentment”, “anger”, “vengeance”, or good old honest “die!”. Indeed, why not the word “a”?

But so far it hasn’t happened. Mostly I get “poetic” sounding words like “love”, “slumber”, or “dusk”. And I think sadly of the hundreds of fresh, robust words that have been exterminated in order that these tired old words may once again be dragged into the light of day. It would have been so much more fun to write a short story or a poem on the word “a”.

Now one doesn’t have to be a trained psychologist to know what’s happening here. It’s an overinvestment of one’s self-esteem in the approval of others.

Home culture and ethnic traditions may have a lot to do with it. Many of us go through childhood—and perhaps even beyond—schooled into thinking that in, to, and for everything there is either a “yes” or a “no”, a tick or a cross, a right or a wrong, with nothing in between.

Of course, our education system, with its emphasis on exams and objective tests, doesn’t help. For at least the first six years of our school life, we are given the impression that the more skilful we become at marking a tick or a cross in the square the computer is programmed to accept, the more approval we win from our teachers, parents, friends and relatives.

Is it any wonder then that unless the writing task is tightly structured, almost like a form-filling exercise, well bounded by rules and regulations, and facilitated by templates, formulas and formats, we don’t know where to begin?

If it weren’t so sad, it would be funny; because the egregious objective test is essentially designed to accommodate the way computers “think”. As a friend of mine quipped many years ago, referring to the computer’s binary language of ones and zeros, computers cannot even count beyond one!

Three things can happen if we approach a writing task with this over-investment of self-esteem in other people’s approval.

We may never get started, because we’re too busy worrying about the approval-worthiness of our ideas to explore them for their own worth.

If we are inspired enough to start, we may lose faith in ourselves and begin borrowing from the general stock of accepted or acceptable views and thoughts.

If we then push on and get to the end, we may never be sure that we’ve written anything of worth, because a part of us knows that what we have written is other people’s truths, not ours.

The Problem with Writing 3

2009-08-06T02:15:00.007+08:00

THE PROBLEM WITH WRITING IS …

getting down to it.

Let’s say we’ve done all our thinking and planning about the writing project we have at hand. We’ve got all the notes and references we need; or, if it’s a story, we’ve got a plot outline carefully worked out.

So do we rush to the desk to start writing and not get up until it’s all done?

Probably not. Unless the work has to be completed and delivered in a few brief hours, chances are we’ll have this sudden urge to mull over our thoughts, or wait for a spark of inspiration to get us going. Or we remember that in half an hour’s time there’s going to be a meeting, or lunch, or the children to be picked up from school, so of course there’s no point in starting now. But it’s all right, we say to ourselves, I’ll get down to it later, this evening, or tomorrow….

Skimming through the Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, I note that even the most professional and pragmatic of writers are beset by the inability to settle down to write. The English playwright Richard Sheridan (1751–1816) once had such a bad attack of it that his backers and the stage manager had to lure him to a room furnished with a table, an armchair, writing materials, two bottles of claret and a dish of anchovy sandwiches, where they held him until he had written the last scene of The Critic, due to open in two days.

I can think of only one situation where people more or less voluntarily sit down to write something and are so focused that they don’t get up until it’s done. It is the written examination. In an exam hall, we write. We may not know all there is to know about a subject, and in some cases we cannot even be sure that we’re writing the right answer. But we write. And we write because (a) our future depends on it; (b) there’s a time limit; and (c) there are no distractions. These reasons are not very different from the ones that motivated Sheridan to finish his play; and note that in both cases “inspiration”, often cited as the source and cause of writing, does not come into play. One presses on simply because so much depends on the task being completed by a certain time.

It seems reasonable to suggest then that if we want to settle down to the task of actually writing something, we should create a situation that simulates the circumstances of the exam hall; as follows:

Forget about waiting for inspiration. Inspiration is a bonus, but it does not always guarantee ease or speed of writing. Sir Rider Haggard (1856-1925), by his own account, was so inspired during the writing of She, that he wrote that lengthy novel—in long hand—in something like three weeks. In contrast, Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), first inspired to write an account of the rise and fall of the Roman empire in 1764, spent many years putting the idea through a “cool and minute investigation” before he started to write, and didn’t finish his voluminous oeuvre until 1787. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is proof that in the absence of inspiration, financial necessity and time constraint will do just as well to get us going. In order to pay for his mother’s funeral and settle her debts, he completed Rasselas in a week, writing only in the evenings.

Take your writing seriously. Even if you don’t depend on your writing for a living, write as though you do. Set up a routine so that you write something every day. Care about standards and quality. Invest in acquiring practical skills and theoretical knowledge of the art and craft of writing. When you take your writing seriously, people will take your writing seriously. If you’re thinking of writing as a career, your future depends on it.

Set yourself deadlines. If you’re working on a short story or a novel, work out how much you can realistically write a day, and draw up a timetable. You don’t have to beat yourself about the head if you don’t meet your targets; what the timetable does is make you aware of time passing.

Mark out a time and a place for distraction-free writing. Do for yourself what Sheridan’s friends did for him. If you plan, for instance, to write for one hour a day, you may want to lock yourself in a room with food, drink, and writing instruments. But no TV; and set your phone to record messages. To offset the sometimes terrifying loneliness of writing, you may want to meet with like-minded friends on a weekly or fortnightly basis to write together, read together, or exchange views. But be selective. Writing groupies can be an awful waste of time.

Do the easy parts first. Don’t feel you have to begin at the beginning of a story or whatever it is you’re writing. Just as you would answer the easy questions first in an exam, so in writing, start with the parts that come most spontaneously to you. Beginnings can be—and usually are—written last.

The Problem with Writing 2

2009-08-04T15:23:00.008+08:00

THE PROBLEM WITH WRITING IS…

the way we think.

When asked to identify their main problem in writing, most people give me this answer: “putting my thoughts in writing”.

Obviously, these are people who know how to form letters and words with the help of a pen, pencil, or keyboard; so it’s not the physical act of writing that is the problem. All of them are intelligent and thoughtful people; so the problem does not lie in an inability to think. Many of them are fluent and even elegant speakers; so the problem is not necessarily related to a lack of language skills.

Now, if the problem is not to be found in all these aspects of writing, then it must lie in the only thing left: the way we think, and what happens when we try to transfer our thoughts onto paper.

In writing workshop after writing workshop, I encounter participants who will happily speak out the stories (or whatever) they intend to write. Now, being a firm believer that stories told are seldom written, I will stop them and ask them to write it all down. What I often encounter then is a total freeze. “Don’t think,” I urge, “just write down the first word that comes into your head, and then the next and then the next.” But even that can be difficult, and for some the writing session becomes a slow and painful lurch from one crossed-out word to the next.

There is definitely something in the process of transferring words (for what are thoughts but words?) from the mind onto paper that is extremely problematic. Now I’m not saying that this is a universal truth; there are some very fortunate people (not me) who never have this problem. Nor am I saying that it happens all the time; but it happens often enough for it to be worth closer examination.

Speaking from the experience of my own slow and painful lurches towards a piece of writing, and after much reflection, it seems to me that the problem lies in the nature of thought.

What is the nature of thought? Whatever scientists and philosophers may have to say about it, I as a writer know this to be true: Thoughts have three qualities that conspire to make writing difficult.

They come to us with incredible speed.
They come in one big glob of ideas mixed up with emotions, memories, projections, and imaginings.
They are extremely volatile and easily deflected in all directions.

This means (for me, at any rate) that the definition of writing as the “putting down of thoughts” is not to be understood more or less literally, as a simple, mechanical act of taking thoughts from my head and putting them down in encoded form on real or virtual paper. It has to be understood metaphorically, in combative terms. Writing as a “putting down” of thoughts involves a struggle for domination and control over them.

How do we do achieve domination? Let me share my strategy with you.

Trap the thoughts. Do it in the quickest way possible. Don’t worry about whether you’re going to write a letter, a memo, a story, a term paper or a thesis. Don’t write sentences, because before you can finish one, you’d have forgotten what you originally wanted to say and why. Jot down words as they come—in any order. If you are more comfortable with diagrams or charts, or even cartoons, draw. The main thing is to capture the army of thoughts rushing pell-mell through your mind.
Divide and rule. Once you’ve got all these thoughts trapped on paper, put the total idea of what you want to do with them as briefly as possible—in no more than 5 lines. Then sift through them to decide what belongs where, and in what sequence. This is the time for weeding out: which thoughts are relevant or irrelevant to your total idea? In deciding, be absolutely brutal. Keep only those thoughts that are going to be useful, and consign the rest to a scrap file for future reference.
Draw up a plan of action and stick to it, no matter what. The plan should include your purpose, your reader, the subject, the presentation, the circumstance in which the written piece will eventually be read, and how you want your reader to react to it. This plan of action will be invaluable to you during the process of writing because thoughts get easily deflected and, if you’re not careful, in the twinkling of an eye you’ll be writing reams of something that has nothing to do with your writing intentions.

So there you have it. Guat’s 3-step Art of War. Happy fighting and happy writing!

The Problem with Writing 1

2009-08-01T18:47:00.011+08:00

While waiting for Patrick's next instalment on Sarawakian literature in English, I thought I would post some stuff I've written in the past, just so that I won't have to keep looking through a disorganized pile of diskettes (many of which no longer respond to my computer), compact discs, thumb drives, pen drives and external hard disks to find answers to questions my readers and students sometimes ask me. I'll begin with the series of articles on the problems of writing. I wrote these articles for the New Straits Times many years ago, thought I had lost them, found some of them posted on the Internet, and discovered to my horror I had to pay USDs to read them again--which incensed me enough to start my own blog (see my first posting, "Manifesto"). Here's the first in the series of six.

THE PROBLEM WITH WRITING IS…

writing itself.

Am I kidding? No. This is a seriously considered statement based on empirical experience gathered over more than half a long-ish lifetime spent earning a living by writing, being known as “a writer”, and therefore frequently approached by colleagues and other acquaintances to write something—as a favour.

It can be a letter of complaint the person wants to send to some authority about the fact that a neighbour is using his home as an office and is causing the approach road to be cluttered with parked cars. It can be a speech that he or she has to make at some local community function. It can even be the story of their own or some ancestor’s life.

But they come, and they say: “Eh, can you write for me ah?”

Thinking of the time that could and should be spent writing things that will actually pay the rent and utility bills, and the food that must be placed on the table for my growing children, I usually say, “Why don’t you write it yourself?”

And back will come a variety of reasons, all to do with the fact that the problem with writing is writing: “Problem is, uh, I can’t write lah.” or “Problem is, uh, don’t know what to write lah.” or “Actually I’ve got everything in my head you know, but problem is, uh, don’t know how to put it in writing lah.”

If you don’t believe me, ask around and check it out yourself. On the other hand, for some of you these reasons may have a familiar ring simply because you have used them yourselves. If you are a professional writer like me, you most certainly would have, at one point or another in your career.

So why is writing such a problem? In this series of articles, we’re going to try and answer that question and perhaps find some solutions to the problem. For a start, let’s look at the nature of the problem.

What do we really mean when we say we cannot write? Many years ago, when I was half my present age, the answer to that question was crystal-clear: people cannot write because they cannot (or will not) think.

I recall the time when the administrative manager of the ad agency where I was a copywriter came to me with a piece of paper held in both hands like an offering and what seemed to me like an unctuous smile on his face, and asked me to draft a reply to a letter, presumably the paper he held in his hands. As I saw it, he was asking me to do his job for him. The high priest of work ethics and rationality in me manifested itself and, to my everlasting shame, the following inquisition ensued.

“Why,” I asked, “don’t you write your own letters?”

“Because I cannot write lah.”

“Tell me, did you not go to school?”

Stunned silence.

“Did you not learn to hold a pen or pencil in your hand. Did you not learn to use them to make the appropriate marks on paper? Did you not learn to spell? Did you not, in other words, learn to write? What do you mean you can’t write?”

“Ya, but you do it better lah.”

“What. Do you mean my handwriting is nicer than yours?”

“Aya, you know what I mean….”

His voice had become faint, the smile was gone, he was losing hope. I went for the kill.

“No, I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “Because as far as I’m concerned, writing is simply putting your thoughts on paper. So if you say you can’t write when in fact you know how to, it can mean only one of two things. Either you’re too lazy to put pen to paper, or you cannot think!”

With that I may have made an enemy for life.

Today I view the matter with more circumspection. When I review my conversation with that hapless manager who I hope will have pardoned the irascibility of my youth by now, I can see where the conflict lies. It lies in our differing perceptions of ourselves in relation to writing. He saw my professed ability to write as an aptitude. I saw his professed inability to write as an attitude. The truth encompasses, as it usually does, both viewpoints and everything in between.

I can also see that in my heartless persecution of him I touched on a number of issues which, taken together, constitute what might be called the “Can’t Write Syndrome”.

What are these issues? Let me quickly list them now so that we have an idea of the direction future articles will take: education, literacy, the physical act of writing (yes, even that!), the content, the thinking process, the organisation of thoughts, the direct communication of meaning, the indirect communication of intent, and that je ne sais quoi we all aim for in writing—style.

Follow me through this series and I promise you, even if you don’t suddenly develop an aptitude for writing (although I do not exclude the possibility), you will certainly change your attitude towards writers and writing.

Sarawakian Literature in English 4

2009-06-28T00:41:00.007+08:00

Sarawakian society through the eyes of women

By Patrick Yeoh

In terms of books published, Angela Yong (photo above) stands head and shoulders above any other Sarawakian writer in English, although in terms of the number of published stories, Cecilia Ong is her equal. While Yong published six books – a collection of translated Foochow Proverbs, a book of retold stories and four collections of anecdotes, Ong published 85 original short stories in a Sarawakian English tabloid daily, 35 of which have been republished in her first book, Short Stories from Sarawak: Death of a longhouse and other stories (Jade Tree Press, 2004).

This fourth instalment of Sarawakian Literature in English focuses on the anecdotes of Angela Yong and compares her work with a collection of anecdotes written by a team of women lecturers from UiTM Sarawak Campus called Double-Boiled Ginseng is Good for the Mind (PROFES, 2004) (photo above).

Angela Yong

Angela Yong was born in 1926 in China and emigrated to Sarawak with her family when she was a year old. Her father, who fell ill when he came to Sarawak, returned home to China, where he died and left the family in Sarawak to fend for themselves. Because the family was so poor, Angela and her brother were raised by nuns in a convent.

Angela bore 13 children and, remarkably, published her first book in 1998 when she was 72 years old.

Her publications are (in chronological order):

One good thing but not both (1998) : Anecdotes
Different Lives, Different Fates (2000): Anecdotes
Through the Back Door (2001): Retold stories
160 Foochow Proverbs & Idioms (2002): Translation
Green Beans & Talking Babies (2003): Anecdotes
Sarawak Rojak (2006): Anecdotes

Like most Sarawakian literature in English, Yong’s anecdotes are more concerned with themes rather than issues. She is unrivalled by any other Sarawakian in her socio-cultural commentary of the times through her published works. Her canvas is panoramic: From the bandits (or tubees) in Nam Ming village in China to the penjamun headhunters in Sarawak, Yong recounts the events in her life with a keen sense of irony and humour.

Her books are more than an autobiography. They chronicle a time in Sarawak’s history as seen from the perspective of an ordinary citizen. They tell of the struggles of common men and women and their courage in the face of extreme adversity and hardships – from clearing the jungle in the early years to facing the horrors of the Japanese Occupation.

Survival, for Yong, came in many ways:

When Angela was born, her mother wanted to drown her because she was a girl. The father said: “This is my second daughter – it is not too many.” And so she was saved. (Yong, 1998: 3)
Angela’s family emigrated to Sarawak to escape the local thugs – “tubees” (Yong, 1998:3-4).
Every day we had changkok manis or wild tapioca for food” (Yong, 1998:9).
Every now and then, my mother would go to town to see if anybody wanted to buy girls. She had two girls at home …but nobody wanted us” (Yong, 1998:10).
…in my spare time, I had gone looking for scrap rubber heads. These were the hardened rubber pieces which had dripped down to the ground from the trees. I collected these scraps of rubber and sold them to the local cooperative…(Yong, 1998:89).

As is common in much of Sarawakian literature in English, Yong’s anecdotes offer a wealth of socio-cultural commentary of the times she has lived through in Sarawak. Her anecdotes about the Japanese Occupation are revealing as she writes about the hardships due to shortage of essentials like

Cooking oil: During the Japanese Occupation …we used the oil from coconuts and pork …and also used enkabang …which is also used for making soap and chocolate…(Yong, 1998:65).
Kerosene: There was a man who made rubber oil for lighting lamps …because there was not a drop of kerosene left in the whole village…but the rubber oil produced a lot of black smoke. People preferred to have no light than to use rubber oil (Yong 1998:65).
Thread: We also ran out of thread. An old woman tried to make thread from pineapple leaves but it was very hard to use (Yong, 1998:66).
Cloth: We did not have any cloth. Everybody had to wear rags. I knew a woman who had one good pair of black trousers. When her neighbours wanted to go to town…they borrowed the pair of trousers from this woman. Three families shared the same pair of trousers (Yong, 1998:66)

Yong also offers many other glimpses of life under the Japanese:

The people suffered greatly under the Japanese and began to hate them (Yong, 1998: 72).
The Japanese invaded Sarawak in 1942. The first thing the local people had to do was to pay tax to them. Six dollars per head, old and young, big and small (Yong, 2000:26).
There was one good thing about the occupation: there were no gangsters or crime (Yong, 2000:28).

About the society of her day:

Those days, 1932, there were no roads, only small footpaths (Yong, 1998:5).
In my early years, there were no boats, launches or express boats …We went to town by rowing a boat across the Igan River (Yong, 1998: 6).
…the sing kah, or new arrivals went to see the Resident. All the males were given five acres of jungle land (each). We received twenty acres because there were four males in our family… (Yong, 1998:4).
In those days before the Second World War, there were no concrete houses in Sibu. Only some shophouses and Lau King Howe Hospital were made of concrete (Yong, 1998: 15).
Before the Second World War, many Chinese men in Sarawak got their wives from China, especially the men from the villages. We called these girls sing moo-khiang, or child brides (Yong, 2000:15).
Men came to the convent to pick their brides.
The dowry to marry convent girls during that time was only one hundred dollars. That was why everybody came to the convent (Yong, 2000:25).
In olden days in China, many baby girls were drowned or buried alive when they were born because parents said girls were useless (Yong, 1998:78).

Although Yong had only elementary education at the convent, she has a clear mind and provides some homespun philosophy that is charming in its simplicity:

There is always an innocent person who gets the blame (Yong, 2000:43).
If everybody gives birth to boys, where will the boys get their wives? (Yong, 2003).
They say money can buy everything, even a girl’s heart (Yong, 2003:14).
…we must never give our children to other people to look after when they are babies. The mother and child must be close from birth or there is no bond (Yong, 2003).
People in this world always have good and bad luck (Yong, 2000:96).

Double-boiled Ginseng

In looking at the anecdotes by a team of modern working Sarawakian women featured in Double-boiled Ginseng is Good for the Mind (2004), and comparing them with the writings of Angela Yong, one is struck by some common themes, even though the Sarawakian society that Yong describes in most of her anecdotes goes back to a time long before the writers in Double-boiled Ginseng were born.

The personal concerns of the writers are evident in their writings. Yong writes of her difficult childhood, her marriage and her struggles to help her husband and bring up a large family. In Double-boiled Ginseng, the writers talk of their concerns for special children, their relatives, the students they teach and mentor and about their professional colleagues and friends. Both parties draw from the well of their personal experiences.

Their common themes, however, are divided by time and socio-cultural changes and affected by different priorities. Another difference lies in the literary presentation of their stories. Yong was a housewife all her adult life (even though she taught for a while early in her marriage to supplement the family income), and did not go beyond basic education in the convent, but the writers in the UiTM collection, being lecturers, are well-educated, modern working women. It is therefore understandable to find significant differences in their way of presentation.

Again, like Yong in her anecdotes, the contributors to Double-Boiled Ginseng, bare their hearts and their souls and are prepared to give and share. Their beneficiaries are husbands, children, colleagues, students and some people in society; although in the case of some of them, the focus is on their children, especially special children.

The anecdotes of Angela Yong and those in Double-Boiled Ginseng are mostly personal stories: Yong provides a very detailed narrative of events in her long and eventful life and in so doing, provides fascinating glimpses into the society of her day. In the same way, the contributors in Double-Boiled Ginseng invite us to look into their very psyches and perceive for ourselves, the world of the modern woman in Sarawak as teacher, wife and mother as well as friend. While Yong is concerned with putting food on the table for husband and children and dealing with daily challenges of sheer survival, especially during the Japanese Occupation, the modern women in Double-Boiled Ginseng struggle too in their own way – facing the challenges of the classroom, concerned with the welfare of their charges at university, the demands of dealing with children with special needs at home and balancing domestic commitments as loving wives and doting mothers with professional responsibilities.

Separated by at least half a century, their times and circumstances are different, but their concerns are basically the same and each approaches her battlefield in her own way. All, however, have the same objectives.

What is different between the two is the scope of their commentary, as seen in their respective anecdotes. Yong’s narratives cover events over a period of a little more than 50 years while the anecdotes of the modern women writers deal more with the present and ongoing or with the immediate past. While Yong is more outward and explicit, her younger and modern counterparts are more inward and implicit in their narratives, thus providing much food for thought.

In Double-boiled Ginseng, KC Ng writes in “Brother”:

…I noticed a little girl who had been hidden from my view, Seated on a low stool, she could not be more than two years. She limped up as the boy approached, eyes gleaming with anticipation, but he sat her down again, balanced the plateful of food on his lap and started feeding her morsel by morsel interspersed only by small sips of the syrup he brought her in a paper cup. Never once did he attempt to eat - or drink – in between feeding her. None of the other children noticed the brother and sister, nor did they notice the others, lost as they were in their tiny world because all that mattered was that the younger one be fed and he was there to do it.

There is exceptionally strong human interest in the anecdotes of Yong and the UiTM lecturers, in the way they empathize with their subjects - they write from the heart because they’ve been there. And yet, despite her lower level of education, the following passage from Yong is no less heartfelt than anything in Double-boiled Ginseng:

Now I live alone. I still think of my beloved husband. I remember how much he loved me, how his father asked him to sell me, this and that, and how he never listened to his father – he always believed in me … I think of the past days, sleeping with somebody beside me. How alone to turn to your right and there’s nobody there; turn to the left, still nobody there” (Yong, 1998).

Together, Yong’s three books of anecdotes and the anecdotes in Double-Boiled Ginseng provide significant socio-cultural commentary of Sarawakian society from the eyes (and hearts) of Sarawakian women. This body of work is complemented by the original short stories of Cecilia Ong, the poems of James Wong and Abang Yusuf Puteh, as well as the scores of retold Sarawakian folktales by writers from the various ethnic groups.

The total literature of a people comes in many forms and speaks in many ways to its readers. To fully understand and appreciate Malaysian literature (in Malay, English, Mandarin, Tamil, or any other language for that matter), there must be fair discussion of all that exists, or at least of the most significant, without a self-imposed regime of so-called literary yardsticks and Eurocentric criticism that need not necessarily have meaningful bearing on Malaysian literature in English or on Malaysians themselves. This is not a call for parochialism; neither is it a rejection of English literature and its literary traditions to which many of us are indebted for our interest in and love of literature – be it English literature or literature in English. It is just a reminder that the literature of a nation is the voice of her people and to fully understand the nation, one has to listen to the people’s many voices, not just those that shout the loudest. Besides, I believe that in discussing Malaysian literature in English, the more appropriate perspective is that of Literature in English rather than English literature. If we are honest enough to admit it, there is a significant difference.

However, commentary on mainstream Malaysian literature in English so far has focused on the literary works of a relatively small number of authors who seem preoccupied with a handful of over-worked themes and issues that include, among others, marginalization, search for an identity, ethnic differences, and concern with the politically-biased demarcation of National Literature and Sectional Literature. This gives the impression that writers of Malaysian Literature in English, which is considered “Sectional Literature”, are all up in arms against such discrimination. The reality is that while there are writers of Malaysian Literature in English who are concerned with such themes and issues, there are many more others who write in English in this country, whose concerns lie elsewhere. (Please refer to “Sarawakian Literature in English-2 posted earlier.) But their works are a part of Malaysian Literature in English nonetheless and deserve attention. These are part of “the people’s many voices” referred to above and if we take the trouble to be acquainted with such works, there is much that they have to offer.

Angela Yong’s anecdotes and the way she has presented them may not put her works among those of Malaysia’s foremost literary writers and may be deemed by the traditional critics as unworthy of attention. If indeed this is the case, it is deliberate discrimination, the result of painting everything with one big brush, and being guilty of faulting an orange for not being an apple.

Next instalment: Sarawakian Literature in English – 5: Half a century of short stories

Sarawakian Literature in English 3 --Waxing Lyrical in Borneo: Two Poets from Sarawak

2009-05-17T20:41:00.004+08:00

By Patrick Yeoh

Poetry has never been everybody’s cup of tea, whether traditionally, now, here or anywhere else. Having said that, it does not mean that nobody writes poetry. In fact many people dabble in it, putting lines and verses together, unburdening the most personal thoughts and emotions in their poetry. However, few such outpourings are known to people other than the authors themselves – and perhaps a few close friends - and even fewer ever get published. Even those that get published do not interest many readers.

It is therefore not surprising that although Sarawak has two home-grown published poets in Dato James Wong and Dato Abang Yusuf Puteh, few know them as poets although most adults in Sarawak are familiar with their names as ex-politicians and senior civil servants in the state.

Wong has published two anthologies – A Special Breed (1980) and Shimmering Moonbeams (1983) – while Abang Yusuf Puteh also has two published anthologies to his name - A Rose Garden in My Heart (1994) and Another Day Wakes Up (1995).

I would like to emphasize that my objective in writing about Sarawakian literature in English, of which this is the third installment, is not to critique the works mentioned, for I am neither critic nor poet. I am a playwright and participant, as well as someone with a deep-seated interest in Malaysian literature in English, whatever the genre, themes or issues, whoever the authors and whichever part of the country they hail from. And whatever their literary quality, relevance or significance according to whichever critic(s) cuts no ice with me. In fact, even if I were a poet, I would still not critique the efforts of my fellow poets for I respect their right to do things their way. My concern is with what they do, not how they do it.

My main purpose in highlighting the literature in English from the east Malaysian state of Sarawak (and eventually of Sabah as well) is to show that there is indeed a reasonable volume of such literature in English that is interesting, relevant and worth looking at and getting to know.

For too long now, there has been much said and written about too little of what exists that can and should be considered Malaysian literature in English. It is time we think outside the box and start looking outward, and looking at what exists in Sarawak should be only the beginning. Casting the net wider can only be good for the further development of studies in Malaysian literature in English. It will be a breath of fresh air that has been long in blowing.

Highlighting the works of Wong and Abang Yusuf Puteh among others will serve to prove that Sarawakians too can have a stake, no matter how small, in the literary heritage of Malaysia. As I mentioned in the last installment, there may be a conspicuous absence of “Malaysian-ness” in the works of Sarawakian writers in English (for the reasons mentioned in the last installment and not for want of love for the nation) but that is no valid reason for their works to be ignored and even rejected. In a fair study of a nation’s literature, one should look at the giants and the minnows in order to be able to paint a truer and more complete picture of the whole scene.

Between them, and in their four anthologies, Wong and Abang Yusuf Puteh have published almost 200 poems (Wong, 87; Abang Yusuf Puteh, 92). Without venturing into a critical appraisal of their literary quality, it is nevertheless interesting to note that there are striking similarities in the personal backgrounds and concerns of these two poets.

Both Wong and Abang Yusuf Puteh are ex-senior civil servants and ex-politicians. The former was once the Deputy Chief Minister of Sarawak, no less; while Abang Yusuf Puteh was once the Sarawak State Secretary. As politicians, both experienced loss and felt betrayed and ended up in the political wilderness.

It is also interesting to note that both show clearly in their poetry their devotion to spouse, their affinity with Nature, their preoccupation with their home town - Limbang in the case of Wong and Saratok in the case of Abang Yusuf Puteh. Both have vivid memories of their political experiences – with one difference: While both write about politics and politicians, Wong appears to have forgiven and moved on, while Abang Yusuf Puteh appears to stubbornly harbour a level of bitterness even though he claims to have forgiven his “enemies”.

As is also common in much of the writings in English of Sarawakian authors, these two poets reveal much of their society and their land in their verse and as such, close scrutiny of their poems reveals much socio-cultural commentary which should prove to be of interest especially to non-Sarawakian Malaysians.

Although my current research has not located any other Sarawakian poets with published anthologies, there is of course always the possibility that there may be some who have a poem or two published in some magazine or journal. The only one that I have been able to locate, who has written and published some poetry is Dr Simon Botley, currently a lecturer with UiTM Kota Samarahan, who has a handful of poems in a publication called Double-Boiled Ginseng is Good for the Mind (2004), which in the main is a collection of anecdotes contributed by the lecturers of the English Department of UiTM Kota Samarahan, that focuses primarily on the concerns of educated and modern working Sarawakian women. Among them are many anecdotes with strong human interest that deal with special children and the challenges of parenting them. This particular genre will be the focus of the next installment which will also discuss the anecdotes of Angela Yong, by far the most prolific writer in Sarawakian literature in English.

Next: Sarawakian Literature in English – 4: Sarawakian society through the eyes of women

Echoes of Silence: reading and discussion

2009-05-14T10:32:00.015+08:00

Theme: Anatomizing the colonized mind in Echoes of Silence

Time & Place: 5.00pm Saturday, 23 May at Silverfish Books, 58-1 Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur.

I shall be reading excerpts from the novel that illustrate how our minds are colonized by the things we read and the films we watch.

I shall discuss how, often at a subconscious level, our minds are colonized by world views and values implicit in some literary forms and narrative structures used in both western and eastern literature. And I shall explain how I make use of these very same literary forms and narrative structures in the novel in order to deconstruct and interrogate their hidden world views and values.

Do come if you can, and join in the discussion.

"A Baby Boy" by Liew Shuk Yuen

2009-05-08T11:01:00.007+08:00

I heard this story from Aunty Yee, who is the seller of ‘Wan Tan Min’ in 2020 Restaurant. She said she saw my cousin, Ah Siong, shopping in Mid Valley with a woman and a young boy. Aunty Yee said the woman looked like an Indonesian, but the boy looked Chinese and a little bit like Ah Siong. She thinks there is a big possibility that the boy is Ah Siong’s son. This is terrible! Ah Siong already has a wife and two daughters! This is how I imagine it must be like to be Ah Siong:

“Siong, you are the only one, you know.” Mama’s words keep hovering in my mind. This thing makes me headache all the time! Arghh… I cannot bear it anymore, where is my Salem? Here is it, I begin to smoke. The smoke is wafting all around me, seems like it brings away my bother. But the trouble comes back when it burns until the stub. I do not know why is Mama so impatient, I am only thirty and Mary is only twenty-five, we still have many years to strive.

While waiting for Ah Chee and Ah Mun arrival at the roadside mamak stall, I watch those cars pass by. There are Proton, Perodua, Hyundai, and many more—and my dream car, Honda Civic! I wish I can afford to own it. Unfortunately, now is not the time yet. Seeing Civic goes like the wind, the driver in it is fetching his girlfriend, I guess, smartly. I believe I may be smarter than him if I am the one in there, the elegant black suits me well. Anyway, it is just a dream, for the moment.

I take a look at my watch, it is fifteen passed ten, they have not reached yet. I wonder why. I stir my iced Nescafe and shift the straw to my mouth and suck, it is empty. I think I have finished it while enjoying the beauty of Honda Civic. Then I order another. While awaiting my drink, I amuse myself on my Salem. The happy smoke is surrounding me. I have forgotten when is the time I started to smoke, however I am currently addicted to it, just like opium.

Mary always tells me to stop smoking. She said it will threaten the health of me and people around me, especially our two cute little daughters. I wish I can get rid of it too, but when Mama’s words occur in my mind, it is unstoppable. “Siong, when are you going to perform your responsibility to Liew family’s posterity? Don’t you know you are the only one? How many years have you been married? Your wife never bears us even a seed of baby boy!” She always repeats and repeats the same sentences to me at every single time we meet. I can do nothing! The more I recall, the more Salem I take.

I am the only son in my family. I have one elder sister and one younger sister. But both of them never get any attention from Papa and Mama. Our family is a very conservative and traditional Chinese family. As the usual conservative Chinese do, they attached importance to the son rather than the daughter. I feel sorry for my sisters sometimes. Conservative Chinese always mentioned that growing a daughter is a losing business; they thought that daughter will be married to other family sooner or later, which means they will lose their ‘property’. However, the situation is different when it comes to the son. When the son marries, he brings in another family member, and may be more if his wife gives birth, particularly son. Since I am the only ‘live root’, I have been given orders to expand my family generation.

The Indian tauke brings me my iced Nescafe. At the same time, somebody pats my shoulder. Two men sit in front of me before I have opportunity to turn my head. Ah Chee and Ah Mun reached.

“Hey, man, what are you thinking?” greets Ah Chee.

“Haih, you know. The trouble that never fades away,” I sigh.

“Again? Pity man,” Ah Mun’s turn to talk.

Oh ya, how are your indo-girl and your boy?” Ah Chee continues with a smile.

“Hey, you know—.” I have more to say, but Ah Chee cuts in naughtily, “I, I don’t know.”

I glance at him to give a hint that this is not funny. He hides his silly face.

Then I continue, “I suspect that Ah Boy is not my son.”

Coincidently, a noisy lorry passes by and both of them cannot hear what I said. I want to repeat my sentence louder one more time, but Ah Mun yells, “It’s time for World Cup! We talk after this.”

They immediately turn their attentions to the big screen that showing World Cup prelude while I have completely no mood for it anymore. I take one more of my Salem.

I am puzzling whether I should be happy or sad if I confirm that Ah Boy is not my boy. I regret for all these years that having Ah Boy, I feel unfair for Mary, though she is an understanding wife. I really wish to have a baby boy with Mary, but thing never happens as I wish. I became suspicion since I saw Siti and Ah Boy were having lunch happily with another Chinese guy, during their meals, Siti passed a thick envelop to the guy. My instinct told me that there was money inside. I give her two thousand ringgit or even more as living cost to make sure Ah Boy has a good life! I shifted my view to the guy’s appearance, Ah Boy looks somewhat like him! Is it possible that it is just my illusion?

To reveal the truth and to comfort myself, I have sent Ah Boy’s and my hairs to the hospital for DNA test. I become worried and worried as the time passes. Tomorrow I will get the result of the test. It may be the most important turning point in my life. I owe Mary too much.

“Goal!”

The cheer brings me back to my friends. I tell Ah Chee and Ah Mun that I want to leave first and stand up without waiting for their response. They look at me with doubt but let me go. For them World Cup is more important at this time.

Another story in Chinglish

2009-05-08T10:58:00.003+08:00

I'm still waiting for Patrick Yeoh to send me his next instalment. So see the next post for another story in Chinglish by one of my students. Linguists should find in this and the previous stories a wealth of examples for their research.

"My Wife" by Tan Beng Siew

2009-04-07T01:20:00.005+08:00

Aunty Yun, who is my mother’s sister, wanted to adopt one of my cousins as her god-daughter because she believed that it would bring her good luck. When my cousin refused to be adopted, Aunty Yun made such a fuss—crying all the time, saying nobody cared about her, and even making everyone believe that she was having a heart attack—that in the end my cousin finally agreed, just to put a stop to the drama.

Here, I am telling the story as if I were my uncle, her husband.

It has been 20 years, but she remains the same. The same long, black and straight hair. Her body shape was not the perfect ‘hourglass’. She was the one who took care of us, loved us and spent her time for us. Looking at her, it brings me back to the time when we still young. Comparing to the past, she likes wearing T-shirt and pants at home. However, her looks will change when we go out. Every time when we go out she wears high heels and make up. In her point of views, every lady should wear high heels and make up.

Usually, we will go out for our family’s day every weekend. I do also provide some money for the family’s expenses every month. I believe that this is the duty of good husband. I do believe I have done my duty, she should be grateful for that. In fact she is still not satisfied with that, I believe. Sometimes I see her hide in bathroom or our bedroom and her tears flow. Other than that, she also sits on the sofa with her sad face. I really don’t know what is she thinking about. Is the woman greedy? The money that I gave her is still not enough for her? Or what’s wrong with me? Have I made her angry? Aiiy… women are unreasonable.

Now she said she wants adopt daughter. Actually we already have one beautiful daughter and two clever sons. Our daughter is married and the younger son is now sitting for SPM. I am proud of them, although they are not the best; but in my heart they are perfect. I do feel that since we already have our own children, is not necessary for us to adopt Ean anymore. But she wants, and nobody can go against her. Ean is her sister’s daughter. If Ean agrees with her suggestion, of course I will accept. But, Ean rejects.

She turns moody because of this. Other than that, she also creates some trouble to gain our attention and show out her anger, I believe. She said her heart have some problem, she will leave us soon. There is no reason to continue her life, nobody is a concern to her and loves her. She has no purpose in her life. Only Ean knows her the most. But Ean don’t want to be her daughter. My daughter and sons are not happy with this; I don’t know how to handle it. I can solve every problem in my company, but I feel useless when I’m come back home. I tried to talk to her; but she just said that I do not care about her, even our children do not understand her. She just wants someone to understand and care for her. I surrender; I really don’t know what I can do anymore.

“I don’t want to drive anymore!” I hear her voice in my mind again.

“Why? Then who is going to fetch you?” I have feeling something bad is going to happen.

“Of course you la, my dear”.

“But I have to work. I need to arrange staff for delivery and check the store everyday. I really don’t have extra time to entertain you anymore”.

“I don’t care if you don’t want to be my driver. That means you love me no more. You know? Today I had an accident, nearly lost my life because of this. You do not care about me, boohoohoo…. Since nobody is concerned about me, there is no meaning of life anymore. Boohoohoo….”

“Ok, ok. As you wish, I’ll follow what you want ok?” I am so tired with her. I need rest. As long as she won’t cry, I will fulfill all her wishes.

“Then, how about Ean? I want you persuade Ean to be my god-daughter. She is so beautiful, capable and polite. I think I’ll be the best mother in this world if I could adopt her as my daughter.

“But she already rejected you the first time you proposed—”

“I don’t care! You must find the solution”.

“But I’m afraid I can’t do it. I really have no idea about it. Can I just—?”

“Ah, ah… my heart so pain. Why don’t let me just die because of heart attack. Why must I suffer in this terrible world? Why? Why? Why?”

“Ok, fine. I surrender. I promise I’ll try to persuade her until she accepts. Ok?”

I am very tired and bored with her. I really don’t know how long I will tolerate with this situation if she continues like this. When she is happy, she will share it with me and never mentioned heart disease. But, when she is unhappy, she will kick me out of our bedroom. I tried to settle this thing by talking to her, but it is useless. I think she should have a break; perhaps travelling is good for her. When I start to plan and organize, she said I’m not respecting her at all, I never ask her opinions. She said she is a human, not a doll; she has her own opinion, is not necessary for her to obey me. Aiiiy…. Did I do something wrong? She changed, she was very reasonable and understanding when we just got marriage.

Am I wrong? She was not the same when she was young. She had a good temper, attitude and manners. Her first priority always was me before she decides on anything. But, all these have gone. Is what old people say, right? Women tend to be okay if their husband dotes on them. Or I shouldn’t chosen her from the very beginning? I should look around first before I have made a decision. But everything is too late, what I can do now is to find a solution to settle the ‘task’ that she given me.

Tan Beng Siew has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

Introduction to the next story

2009-04-07T00:34:00.005+08:00

The next story I'm going to post is "My Wife" by Tan Beng Siew. It needs a little introduction because it is written in Chinglish (Chinese English). I think it is a charming little story, and much of its charm lies in the fact that it is written in Chinglish.

In my mind, I already see my imaginary Language Purist groaning at the way English is being fractured and reaching for the blue pencil. But I don't think it is possible to "correct" the English without destroying the personality of the narrator and the authenticity of his voice.

There is a tendency among English-literate Malaysians to assume that a story written in "bad" English must be a badly written story. So I should like to draw my readers' attention to the subtlety with which the author has injected not only humour but also irony into the narration. The story begins with the narrator stating that his wife "remains the same". But as we listen to his voice and sense his growing frustration, we are led to the inexorable conclusion that she has in fact become quite unrecognisable and incomprehensible to this long-suffering husband of twenty years. If that is not skilful writing--taking into consideration that this is the work of a novice writer--I don't know what is.

"A Homeless Man" by Lee Siow Wei

2009-04-05T09:41:00.005+08:00

This is a gossip I have heard, about a man who left his wife and son. He was a professional with a well paid job, a dutiful wife, and a son that would make any parent proud. But one day, he just left it all behind. He spent his days in a shopping mall. His wife did not mind having to look after a mad man; all she wanted was for him to come home, so she visited him every day, to make him change his mind.

When I think of him, this is how I picture him – the once esteemed man, sitting in the Ikea chair of the coffee house. His usual table is at the back of the shop, one of those hardly occupied tables.

He leans into the hard rattan chair, breathing in a mixture of smells – the strawberry scented hand soap coming from his blue shirt, car fumes from the street, and the slightly acerbic note of coffee beans. His seat gives him a full view of the human traffic entering and leaving the shopping mall. Nearly motionless, he stares at the scene before him.

In the house that was once his, his wife busies herself skinning a chicken, while her curry bubbles away furiously. She hums a little as she runs the chicken under the tap, but quickly stops when she catches herself making a merry tune. She then picks up the knife to chop up the chicken.

She is going to cook him a hearty meal.

But he is not hungry. The buzz of activity around him keeps his mind off food. That is, until it is near evening, when the girl with a ponytail who works behind the espresso machine takes off her apron and punches out. That is his cue. That is when he begins to look out for his wife’s blue Honda, and that is when his tummy growls for authentic Indian curry.

He always tries not to let his appetite show until after her visits, lest she mistakes relish of home-cooked food as a sign that he misses home.

No matter how long she takes to persuade him, he will not return. No matter how hard she tries to talk him into taking off the clothes he is wearing, so she can do her wifely duties and help him put on the clean ones that she brings with her, he would simply lift a sleeve up towards her, so she could smell it and know the great effort he makes to sneak into a washroom after the mall’s operating hours, to wash his clothes and himself with hand soap, and then dry off under the hand dryer. No matter how each time she strokes his arm and tells him to eat his lunch immediately, he just sits there and stares at her blankly.

He is simply keeping to their tradition of silence. In the twenty five years of their marriage, words were few and far between. He would come home from work each day and his wife would dutifully remove his socks and fetch him a cup of chai tea brewed with three slices of ginger. Steeping time was always approximately ten minutes, and he knew because every day he came home to the same tea.

She is always so repetitive, so fearful of change. The things she would tell their boy, he knows by heart. He used to listen in silence whenever she berated their son. When Seenu was younger, she threatened him with abandonment if the boy ever seemed weak.

“Don’t cry like a girl, Seenu, no one likes a man who is soft.”

When Seenu was a teenager, she was intent on forcing all signs of gawkiness out of him. She would nag whenever she caught their son slouching.

“Straighten your back Seenu, so you will marry a girl of a straight, sturdy background. And stop playing with watercolours! See, your papa did the right thing to become an engineer. Look at the good clothes we wear now. An artist won’t be able to provide for his family!”

When Seenu was a grown man watching Benazir Bhutto debating policies on cable television, she told him to switch channels.

“A woman who talks back at a man like that is of no use,” she said in Hindi, for even though they have resided in the fancy township of Bangsar for over two decades, she seems to have escaped the effects of globalization, and speaks not a word of English. “Marry a girl who is pretty, shy and obedient – to both her husband and her in-laws.”

So he did. Seenu had followed his mother’s advice. He became a fine young man of intimidating posture, followed in his father’s footsteps, and became an engineer sought after for his ability to be scientific, pragmatic and calculative. One day, Seenu announced his engagement to a sweet Indian girl he had been dating for three months.

That was the day when something began to bother the old man. He could not sleep at night; he hardly concentrated at work. Besides the fundamental flaw of his son’s engagement to a girl he had known for only a few months, there was one other niggling thought that he could not pinpoint and it haunted him when he did all his routine work at the office; when he absentmindedly signed “rejected” on subordinates’ project proposals because they did not adhere to the company’s well-laid rules. Even when he reached home at seven in the evening and had his cup of tea; when he listened to his wife chiding the son about “good” men and “good” wives. Even then, it continued to plague him like an itch that needed to be scratched.

He scratches his scalp and lets out a yawn. His curly graying hair has grown quite a few inches since he left home. He cranes his neck to see if the blue car coming from a distance is his wife’s, and slumps back into his seat when the car drives by.

It is near evening now and he begins to wonder. His wife has always shown up at the same hour each day to coax him to get into the car. The hour-long visits always end the same way. Together they would walk to the car. He would open the car door and motion for her to get in. And she would plead with her eyes. But eventually, eventually, she would drive away alone and in silence.

But why is she not here today?

Just as he is about to leave his table, he hears her voice. He turns around to see her dressed in a stunning sari. She apologizes and explains that she has been busy with wedding preparations. She asks if he would like to attend the wedding rehearsal dinner that night. He says nothing but simply waits for her to sit down.

But she does not. She hovers at the table awkwardly and finally puts down his food and his clothes, excuses herself, and walks back to the car.

Today his wife does not plead with him to eat lunch, to put on the clean clothes she has brought him, or to go home. When his wife drives away without the usual request to walk with her to the car, he chuckles.

Twenty five years ago, he had wanted to leave Malaysia to study anthropology in Minnesota. But he did not, because his wife had threatened that if he did, he would never see her and their then one-year-old son when he returned.

He had given up his dream, and what was he now? A refugee running from a wife he could not talk to, and a son who was doing everything that his papa had done wrong….

Then, in my mind, I see him frown slightly, perhaps in confusion, as he stands up abruptly and leaves the coffee house.

Lee Siow Wei has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

"Suraya" by Khairiah AR

2009-04-05T08:16:00.004+08:00

A relative of mine is being shunned by the family because of her wild ways. I found out later that an uncle raped her when she was seven and it was not reported to the police. From her blog, I learnt of her feelings and understand her decision to flee when she was old enough.

Tears form in my eyes as I read Suraya’s blog. She has written about her childhood, thoughts, beliefs, and parents. What and how everything has shaped her to become who she is right now - the “wild” one. Whenever she writes about her mother, I sense anger and disappointment in her words.

I don’t think much about her mother, Mak Wan. When I imagine Mak Wan worrying about Suraya’s behavior, I see her sitting on a stool with a phone pressed to her ear in the dark. She is staring into space. She does not blink and even her body is still, as if she is holding her breath.

It is still early when Mak Wan tries to call her eldest daughter. There are a few hours more before the others in the house would wake up for Subuh prayers. Mak Wan has her little routine of waking up early to phone her daughter, who is living in another time zone. I have been told Suraya seldom answers her calls.

The house is huge. Her other daughter’s room is upstairs, at the other end of the house from where she is. If anything were to happen to her, Mak Wan would not know. The daughter had insisted on the room – it is the biggest – despite her disfavor. She however in the end let her daughter have her way, the opposite of what she might have done if her eldest, Suraya, had asked years earlier. Back then, the whole household had to obey her husband, who had absolute power in making decisions.

It was on a day in the year Suraya started primary school that Mak Wan’s husband brought home his elder brother, Pak Lan. He was to stay in their big house until he found himself a job. Mak Wan had then been married for more than 10 years but it was her first meeting with Pak Lan. He was usually kept away from people as he had trouble mixing with people. Mak Wan had heard many versions of speculations but she did not try to find out more. Her husband would have accused her of being nosy.

Pak Lan grinned at Mak Wan every two minutes or so, and this made her fidget in her seat. After a while, she excused herself and went to the kitchen to make tea. As she filled the kettle with tap water, Mak Wan’s mind wandered. She immediately took out her personal organizer. Her list of undone chores and engagements was still long. Among other things, she had to socialize with her husband’s friends and clients, manage the Parents and Teachers meeting in the school where she worked. From the corner of her eye, she saw that the bottles of sauces were out of place. Her hands quickly reached for them and put them in the right places, before her husband could see them.

Mak Wan’s husband came into the kitchen. He scolded her for being impolite because she had not called their children down to meet their uncle. Mak Wan looked down and did not say anything. She went to get the children. She reminded them, “Remember to salam and cium tangan Pak Lan tau.”

Pak Lan patted both of them on their heads and pinched Suraya’s cheeks after he was introduced to them. They went on with the usual discussion: the children’s updates of their school achievements. The son excitedly told them of his dream – to get into a prestigious boarding school - and how because of his dream he had no time for football anymore. The adults proceeded to discuss the politicians who were ex-students of the prestigious boarding school. As if Pak Lan sensed the children’s boredom, he cracked a couple of jokes that made everyone laugh. Pak Lan’s big tummy moved up and down as he laughed.

Months passed, and Pak Lan still could not find himself a job. Mak Wan thought he stayed indoors too much to find one. His idleness did not bother her … much. After all, he helped organize the household and even played with the children. Pak Lan, to her, was like the maid she could never have. Mak Wan’s husband had said that she was a “crazy lazy woman” when she suggested a housemaid. With Pak Lan around the house, Mak Wan got to pay more attention to her work. She wanted to become the vice principal of her school. Her school had managed to win some state competitions under her supervision. Her dream might come true thanks to Pak Lan.

The family was about to have their annual open house party when Mak Wan was a couple of steps away from the promotion. Pak Lan, who was close to the children then, volunteered to help out. Later, he informed her that her son helped him out whenever he was free while Suraya was obedient and such a big help. He said they worked hard until late; he sometimes fell asleep in the daughter’s room. Mak Wan was happy with the new arrangement. Not only was she released from some work, her husband would be happy that she let Pak Lan feel he was a part of their family. Mak Wan even joked that he was so into planning, he should consider the prospect of becoming an event planner.

On the night before the open house, Suraya asked her whether she could wear her black slacks instead of the new pink dress bought by Mak Wan’s husband in Europe. Suraya had been begging for more pants and jeans for a while now. Mak Wan advised her to put on the pink dress if she did not want to be scolded by her father. Suraya insisted on the pants; she said it would be easier for her to run. Mak Wan replied, “Suraya, please don’t create trouble.”

On the day itself, Mak Wan was too busy entertaining the Datuks and Datins in the front yard of the house to notice that Suraya was wearing a pair of trousers instead of the pink dress. Her husband pulled her to a room and made a statement that hurt her very much, “You are a bad mother.”

Mak Wan went straight to the backyard. Suraya and her brother were sitting and talking under a tree at the very back. When the brother saw Mak Wan heading towards them, he pulled his sister closer and hugged her. The three struggled with one another. They only stopped when they were yelled at to shut up and get back inside.

Once they were inside, Mak Wan’s husband closed the backdoor. She was then told to serve the guests while he dealt with the kids. She rolled her eyes when her son started to kick the chairs in the kitchen. Then, with his fists clenched, and on the top of his lungs, her son told them what Pak Lan had been doing to his sister at night. Mak Wan dropped the tray of plates she was carrying. The son went on to tell them it was unfair of them to hurt Suraya any more. She looked at her husband, and the husband looked away.

Mak Wan puts down the phone she is holding. She decides to check on her daughter. The daughter has left her door slightly ajar. She gives her a soft peck on the cheek before she closes the door. She plans to get a lock for her little girl’s room later in the day.

I close the window of the blog. For the time being, I have stalked enough photos of Suraya in clubs kissing different white guys.

Khairiah AR has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.