Dipika Mukherjee chats with Elaine Chiew About Writer's Postcards and her travel-writing

Credit: SC Shekar

Bio:

Dr. Dipika Mukherjee’s collection of travel essays, WRITER’S POSTCARDS (Penguin Random House SEA), was published in October 2023. Her work is included in The Best Small Fictions 2019 and appears in World Literature Today, Asia Literary Review, Del Sol Review, and Chicago Quarterly Review, Newsweek, Los Angeles Review of Books, Hemispheres, Orion and more, and she has been translated into French, Portuguese, Bengali and Mandarin Chinese. She is the author of the novels SHAMBALA JUNCTION (Aurora Metro, winner of the Virginia Prize for Fiction) and ODE TO BROKEN THINGS (Repeater Books, longlisted for the Man Asia Literary Prize), and the story collection, RULES OF DESIRE (Fixi). Her latest poetry collection is DIALECT OF DISTANT HARBORS (CavanKerry Press, winner of Quill and Ink Award). 

Her work has been performed and installed at the South Asia Institute and the American Writers Museum in Chicago, and is being developed into a choral composition by Art Choral Canada for live performances in 2024-2025. 

 

She has received grants and fellowships, including an Esteemed Artist Award from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (USA), Illinois Arts Council Agency (USA), Ragdale Foundation (USA), Faber Foundation (Catalonia), Sacatar (Brazil), Rimbun Dahan (Malaysia), and Gladstone Library (Wales), among others. She has taught in the United States, India, China, Netherlands, Malaysia and Singapore and was Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at Shanghai International Studies University, China; Affiliated Fellow of the International Institute of Asian Studies in Leiden, the Netherlands; and affiliated to the Roberta Buffet Centre for Global Studies at Northwestern University, USA. 

 

She is currently core faculty at StoryStudio Chicago and teaches at the Graham School at University of Chicago.

Credit: Author

 

Book Synopsis:

Part travelogue, part memoir, and part commentary, Writer’s Postcards is a collection of essays that examine imagination and culture through the lens of geography. A flaneuse and person of the world, Dipika Mukherjee takes readers through various encounters from her highly mobile life: the lugubrious literature of Brazil; the linguistic diversity in China and Tibet; and meeting the Dalai Lama while travelling as a lone woman through New Delhi. She examines the political unrest in Myanmar after the brief international reach of Burmese books; weighs in on Chicago’s literary landmarks and famous writers; reminisces on the languid feasting of Diwali celebrations at Port Dickson by the Malaysian-Bengali community; and finds new notions of home, identity, and belonging in the Netherlands-among many others.

Thought-provoking and unabashed in its entirety, this is a collection of essays that goes beyond the personal and communal to examine issues of international concern.

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EC: Welcome to Asian Books Blog, Dipika. What an honour to have you. Thank you for sending Writer’s Postcards. I really enjoyed reading these essays about travel, solitude, spirituality, writing, teaching, food, cultural festivals, family bonds, unsung voices, and so much more. What was the impetus for this project?

 

DM: Thanks for these fabulous questions and such a nuanced reading of my book! My impetus would be the gendered landscape of travel writing, even today. I belong to Facebook groups of Women Travel Writers and I personally know a very diverse group of women travel writers; I have written for travel magazines and inflight magazines like Hemispheres and Orion, where women are well represented, but google “BEST TRAVEL BOOKS” and it is the Bill Brysons and Paul Therouxs of our world that pop up.

Fantabulous Nonya cookbook author Sharon Wee dishes on the new edition of Growing Up In A Nonya Kitchen

Courtesy of Author

About the Author:

Sharon Wee was born and raised in Singapore, graduating from the National University of Singapore. She worked for Mars Confectionery in Hong Kong and China in the 1990s. She has an MBA from New York University and resides in Manhattan where she trained at the French Culinary Institute. Her recipes have been featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post and she has given interviews about her Peranakan heritage. She chronicles her food experiences on Instagram @nonya.global. Sharon frequently returns to Singapore. 

Courtesy of Author

Synopsis:

This is a cookbook, and an intimate memoir, giving readers a sense of what it felt like to grow up in a Peranakan Chinese family ― descendants of local womenfolk and the earliest Chinese settlers to Southeast Asia.

As a fifth-generation Nonya (honorific for female Peranakans) from both sides of her family, Sharon Wee recollects her life in Singapore. She interviewed older relatives and recreated her mother’s personalized recipes, many orally passed down for generations.

Growing Up in a Nonya Kitchen was originally published in 2012. This updated edition includes revised recipes and cooking methods, with more detailed explanations and guidance for the young or unfamiliar cook to Peranakan food, spiced with a dose of humour. It also includes new contributions by subject experts on the heritage and beautiful cultural legacy of the Peranakans.

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EC: Welcome to Asian Books Blog, Sharon. What an honour to have you. Thank you for sending me your wonderful cookbook, Growing Up In A Nonya Kitchen; it’s refreshingly novel that you’ve embedded a memoir plus cultural commentary on the world of the Peranakans that expand beyond cuisine. Why did you choose this blended approach?  

SW: When I considered publishing my book in the early 2000s, I was cognisant of the fact that there had already been a few established Peranakan cookbooks. Yet, very little was told about the significance of the food and how we ate – the moments we shared, the celebrations, the customs. 

I wove the memoir in to give readers a sense of our culture, and I revolved it around my mother’s life because she was from a vanishing generation of women whose lives focused on raising a family, keeping a home, all while being compromised in their education. Cooking was their currency. I’d like to think that this format of a cookbook memoir with headers elaborating on the dish, was not as common as what you see these days. 

Pulitzer finalist Vauhini Vara launches her short story collection This is Salvaged.

Courtesy of W.W. Norton and Author

Synopsis

This is Salvaged (W.W. Norton & Company, 2023).

 

A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbor who is descending into dementia. A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators. A competitive sibling tries to rise above the drunken mess of her own life to become a loving aunt. One sister consumes the ashes of another. And , in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project yet: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible’s specifications. In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found? The characters in This is Salvaged, unmoored in turbulence, are searching fervently for meaning, through one another. 

 

Author bio.

 

Vauhini Vara has been a reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and the New York Times Magazine, and is the prize-winning author of The Immortal King Rao. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. 

Courtesy of Author

Award-winning writer Saras Manickam dishes about authorial ego, complicated women and race discrimination in Malaysia in My Mother Pattu

 

Courtesy of Author

About the Book

My Mother Pattu (Penguin SEA, 2023).

 

Deeply humane, in turn wry and humorous, the stories in this collection haunt readers with their searing honesty. Authentic and unsentimental, each story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit even as it challenges comfortable conventions about identity, love, family, community, and race relations.

Saras Manickam, courtesy of Sharon Bakar

About the Author

Saras Manickam won the regional prize for Asia in the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Contest. In 2021, her story was included in the Bloomsbury anthology, The Art and Craft of Asian Stories. 

 

Having worked as a teacher, teacher-trainer, copywriter, and writer, Saras Manickam’s various work experiences enabled insights into characters, and life experiences, shaping the authenticity which mark her stories. 

 

My Mother Pattu is her debut collection of stories. She lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

_________________

 

EC: Congratulations on your brilliant short story collection, My Mother Pattu. I’m delighted to see the love it’s been getting. I’ve not enjoyed a short story collection this much in a while. I’m curious: many of the stories are set in Mambang (which also means haunting/spirit). Is your Mambang a fictional town or based on a real town (e.g. Mambang di Awan, Perak)? 

 

SM:  Thank you, Elaine, for your very kind words. It’s rather affirming that My Mother Pattu resonates with readers.

 

Mambang is not a real town. It’s fictional, and therefore gives me the freedom to craft the streets, houses, places in it. It frees you up, you know what I mean?

 

Eternal Summer of the Homeland: Agnes Chew talks about writing a story collection and being the Asia Winner of the CSSP

Courtesy of Author

Book Synopsis

The stories in Agnes Chew’s first fiction collection illuminate the complexity of choice when duty and desire collide, and what a person is willing to sacrifice. A daughter grapples with an unexpected discovery in the aftermath of her mother’s death. A husband struggles to understand his wife’s reaction to her pregnancy. An adolescent and a domestic worker exchange secrets whose weight they find they cannot bear. And in a corner of Changi Airport, a nondescript office cubicle, a patch of open forest, others strive to find meaning and home.

Courtesy of Author

Author Bio:

Agnes Chew is the author of Eternal Summer of My Homeland (2023) and The Desire For Elsewhere (2016). Her work has appeared in Granta, Necessary Fiction and Litbreak Magazine, among others, and her story, ‘Oceans Away from my Homeland’, won the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Asia Region). She holds a Master’s degree in international development from LSE; her prize-winning dissertation, which examines inequality and societal well-being in Singapore, was featured in Singapore Policy Journal. Born and raised in Singapore, she is currently based in Germany. 

 

 

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EC: Agnes, welcome to Asian Books Blog, and congratulations on being the Asia Winner for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize as well as the publication of Eternal Summer of My Homeland. Let’s start with this: what draws you to the short story? 

 

AC: Thank you so much, Elaine, for your kind words and for this opportunity! I actually started out writing creative nonfiction, and when I ventured into the realm of fiction writing, the short story form felt like a natural (and conceivable) choice. The more short stories I wrote, the more I found myself drawn to the form. I appreciate its requisite focus on purity and intensity—the way it compels you to distil meaning within a compact space. It’s also a thrill to be able to write a short story within a feverish span of hours or days, especially when I compare it to the far longer process of writing a novel, which I’m now working on.

 

Ghost Girl, Banana: Elaine Chiew Chats With Acclaimed Debut Novelist Wiz Wharton

About the Book:

Set between the last years of the “Chinese Windrush” in 1966 and Hong Kong’s Handover to China in 1997, a mysterious inheritance sees a young woman from London uncovering buried secrets in her late mother’s homeland in this captivating, wry debut about family, identity, and the price of belonging.

Hong Kong, 1966. Sook-Yin is exiled from Kowloon to London with orders to restore honor to her family. As she strives to fit into a world that does not understand her, she realises that survival will mean carving out a destiny of her own.Thirty years later in London, having lost her mother as a small child, biracial misfit Lily can only remember what Maya, her preternaturally perfect older sister, has told her about Sook-Yin. Unexpectedly named in the will of a powerful Chinese stranger, Lily embarks on a secret pilgrimage across the world to discover the lost side of her identity and claim the reward. But just as change is coming to Hong Kong, so Lily learns Maya’s secrecy about their past has deep roots, and that good fortune comes at a price.

 Heartfelt, wry and achingly real, Ghost Girl, Banana marks the stunning debut of a writer-to-watch.  

About the Author:

Wiz Wharton, Courtesy of Author

Wiz Wharton was born in London of Chinese-European heritage. She is a prize-winning graduate of the National Film and Television school, where she studied screenwriting under the filmmakers Mike Leigh, Stephen Frears and Kenith Trodd. Ghost Girl, Banana is her debut novel. Adaptation rights have also been optioned by a leading UK production company. She lives in the Scottish Highlands. Her twitter handle is @Chomsky1and Instagram is @wizwharton 

_________________________

 

EC: Congratulations on your debut novel, Ghost Girl, Banana, which has just launched to much critical acclaim in the UK. In your acknowledgement, you mentioned the story’s inception as ‘the discovery of some old-fashioned floppy discs in a box’. Can you tell us about how a whole novel was borne out of this discovery? 

WW: Yes, so this happened back in 2020 when I was moving house and discovered the discs in a box of my late mum’s possessions. Initially, I had no idea what they were, and it was only later that I discovered they were transcriptions of her diaries, kept since she arrived in the UK in the early sixties as an immigrant from Hong Kong. Although painful to read in parts, they were also transformative in revealing so many of her experiences which she had never really spoken about during her lifetime. That stoicism is germane to many women of that generation, I think, as much as it’s also a cultural thing, but I remember wondering how many other hidden stories there were out there, and what a tragedy it was that they weren’t more represented in the British fiction space. As much as a novel is always an ambitious creative project to embark upon, I had a whole wealth of information in front of me to draw upon, so I was very fortunate in that respect.

Elaine Chiew Interviews Khanh Ha, author of prize-winning short story collection All The Rivers Flow Into The Sea.

About the Book:

From Vietnam to America, All the Rivers Flow into the Sea is a short story collection, jewel- like, evocative, and layered, brings to readers a unique sense of love and passion alongside tragedy and darker themes of peril. The titular story features a love affair between an unlikely duo pushing against barely surmountable cultural barriers. In “The Yin-Yang Market,” magical realism and the beauty of innocence abounds in deep dark places, teeming with life and danger. “A Mute Girl’s Yarn” tells a magical coming- of-age story like sketches in a child’s fairy book.

Khairat Kita: Interview with Fauzy Ismail and Zakaria Zainal

A collection of interviews, photographs, essays and personal reflections, Khairat Kita is a project documenting the last few remaining Malay/Muslim Mutual Benefit Organisations (MMBOs) providing aid and charity to their deceased members' families. Known as badan khairat kematian, they are volunteer, community-led initiatives based on a centuries-old tradition of mutual aid. 

Khairat kematian organisations are social anchors in the community and custodians of intangible cultural heritage in Singapore’s Malay/Muslim community. 

With around 20 such organisations left, declining membership and ageing committee members, the future looks uncertain for these MMBOs.

Courtesy of Ethos Books

About the Authors:

FAUZY ISMAIL researches Singapore’s architecture and urban heritage. He completed his masters in architecture at the National University of Singapore, investigating heritage and thirdspaces in architecture, and dealt with gazetted buildings as a government conservation architect. He was an artist-in- residence at The Substation from 2018 to 2019, and was also a fashion designer in Paris.

'Badass' Women in Singapore Art and Literature

Source:Wikicommons, Movie Poster

Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (The Library of America, repr. 2022) had this one line, “Girls are like maggots in the rice.” That’s not to say that all Asian women have it bad. Nor it is denying that Asian women labour to free themselves from the trampling foot of patriarchy. 

 It’s that an infinitesimal shift is in order: looking at Asian women in contemporary arts and culture, what they’re creatively producing, what they’re making, can tell us something new hopefully about how stereotypes are being dismantled, specifically, how a ‘badass’ Asian woman is being redefined. From Michelle Yeoh’s main role in Everything Everywhere All At Once to Kirstin Chen’s Counterfeit (William Morrow 2022) we are seeing a moment (arguably, cyclical) in the Asian feminist zeitgeist, a regional lens threaded through a global landscape, where female protagonists are challenging the straitjacket of how they should behave, and how they should ‘win’, without being held up as bearers of tradition or exemplars of ‘female’ or even ‘feminist’ behavior, but in fact, showing that being ‘badass’ means carving out space to be who you are, to do what you do, on your terms while embracing all your passion and imperfections. 

 

In what ways then can we begin to conceive of the ‘badass’ Asian woman for our region? This month in a non-exhaustive focus for #SingLit, AsianBooksBlog spotlights works and voices who challenge, albeit break, the framework of how a ’badass’ woman should be defined.

Crime Noir Graphic Novels Spotlight: Elaine Chiew Chats with Felix Cheong and Arif Rafhan on their collaboration for SPRAWL

Felix Cheong, courtesy of author

 

About the Author:

Felix Cheong has written 23 books across different genres, including poetry, short stories, children’s picture books and flash fiction. His works have been widely anthologised and nominated for the prestigious Frank O’Connor Award and the Singapore Literature Prize. He has also collaborated across disciplines with musicians and artists. 

Conferred the Young Artist Award in 2000 by the National Arts Council, Felix has been invited to writers festivals all over the world, including Edinburgh, Austin and Sydney. He holds a masters in creative writing and is currently a university adjunct lecturer. SPRAWL is his first graphic novel. 

Arif Rafhan, courtesy of Arif Rafhan

About the Illustrator:

Arif Rafhan is a comic artist based in Malaysia. His work can be seen in publications both in Malaysia and Singapore, Gila-Gila magazine (Malaysia), anthologies, and webcomics. He also works with Lat (Kampung Boy) as his inker and colourist. He has also collaborated with Felix Cheong on a second graphic novel, Eve and the Lost Ghost Family.

Book cover, courtesy of Marshall Cavendish

About the Book:

A hardboiled detective.  His knuckleheaded partner. And a bar girl with a mysterious past. 

Their lives intersect in the most unlikely of places – a murder scene, where a minister who supposedly killed himself 20 years ago, is found dead again. 

 

In the tradition of noir comics like Sin City, Sprawl is gritty and laced with dark humour. Innovative and surprising in its blend of poetry and art, SPRAWL is the first in a new graphic novel series by Felix Cheong and Arif Rafhan. 

_______________________________

EC: Welcome to Asian Books Blog, Felix and Arif. Congratulations on SPRAWL (Marshall Cavendish, 2021), a hardboiled detective graphic novel involving a murder and a police conspiracy. How did the book come about and what is your collaboration process?

 

FC: This book has been more than 10 years in the making, would you believe it? It began as a verse novel. Back when I was pursuing my masters [at the University of Queensland], almost poet and his pet dog Down Under was writing a verse novel. I thought I’d give it a go, especially after watching The Monkey’s Mask, a verse novel by Dorothy Porter adapted into a film.

The trigger for the story was “Sprawl”, a song about the chaos of the city by Arcade Fire. The lyrics had its hooks on me for the longest time. I imagined a noir-ish, Sin City-like Singapore. Corruption at the highest level of society, filtering down to the cops.

 

But after 14-15 poems, the story was stuck in a rut. As with most things mouldy, I just left it alone. In 2020, I picked it up again after publishing In the Year of the Virus (Marshall Cavendish, 2020). That poetry comic book gave me the confidence to write differently. Poetry not as standalone lines on the page, but as narrative handmaiden to art. That was when I approached Arif.  

 

AR: Our collaboration was 100% virtual. We had a chat on the phone and once we got aligned creatively, we continued our discussion through text messages. Basically, I would provide visuals and modify them accordingly, based on Felix's feedback. But Felix has been gracious and letting me go wild with my imagination. So, I am very thankful.

FC: Your wild imagination is just right for the book!

Asian Cartography At Its Best: The NLB Exhibition and Literary Maps

 

Asian cartography has a very special place in my heart. Cartography is Western-centric but the maps currently on exhibition until May 2022 at the National Library of Singapore’s Mapping the World: Perspectives from Asian Cartography, will show that in fact Asian cartography has a long lineage, predating Western cartography. These maps are worth several trips: not only are some of them quite rare (and difficult to access since they form parts of collections elsewhere), they span multiple kingdoms and dynasties, geographies and eras, from the religious Korean map Cheonhado (Map of All Under Heaven), Joseon Dynasty, 19^th century, on loan from MacLean Collection, Illinois (Image 1) to the Idrisi world map of 1154 (on loan from the Bibliotheque national de France), produced by Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi (1100-1165) and composed in accordance with the Islamic tradition of orienting the south at the top. (Image 2) 

Image 1

Wesley Leon Aroozoo Shares His Inspiration for "The Punkhawala and the Prostitute"

As the saying goes, “History is written by the victors” and with that the stories and documentations of the forgotten or lesser regarded in history are usually limited or unknown. As a Singaporean storyteller intrigued with early Singapore history, I am passionate in uncovering these forgotten stories and sharing them. One of the forgotten stories that inspired me greatly belonged to the Karayuki-sans (Japanese prostitutes) who played a part in shaping the history in 1800’s Singapore. 

 

I came across bits of information about the Karayuki-sans as I naturally gravitated towards the history section of the library. I was surprised that I had no idea that we once had Japanese prostitutes in Singapore. I began to realise that the stories in our textbooks in school only covered one side of our history, in particular, stories about British Masters and philanthropists, their worldview and success stories, but not the lesser-known ones like the Karayuki-sans, who are seemingly marginalized or maybe even shied away from. Another fascinating role from early Singapore history that captivated me was that of the Punkhawala, a servant who manually pulls a ceiling fan for their masters. The role of the Punkhawala is usually carried out by an Indian servant or even an Indian convict labourer who is serving his sentence in Singapore which was a penal colony back then. I chanced upon a very brief mention of this labour intensive role and was intrigued by what could possibly be on the servants’ mind while pulling the manual fan all day. 

The House of Little Sisters: Eva Wong Nava Writes About The Challenges of Writing YA Historical Fiction

Thank you, Elaine Chiew, for the invitation to share about the challenges and issues in regard to writing historical fiction for a teenage audience, and about my book The House of Little Sisters, launched February 22, 2022. It is categorized as a Young Adult or a YA book suitable for a readership of 12-18 year olds. but YA is an age category rather than a genre, created by publishers to market books. The genre for this novel is historical fiction. 

The blurb of The House of Little Sisters tells readers that the novel is a “supernatural exposé of a past system that still has a tight grip on contemporary Singapore and Malaysia.” The word “past” gives this novel its context.  What brought me to finally write HOUSE was a burning curiosity about the employer/ helper relationship that is so predominant in Singaporean society. During a 7-year sojourn in the city-state, I was struck by how families in Singapore relied so much on their helpers. I was particularly struck by how co-dependent several employer/ helper relationships I had observed were. I wanted to know what the historical premise for this was.

I knew there were challenges in writing a historical fiction novel. Because I am also an art historian, I understand the nature of research and how sometimes, research can throw up some curve balls. HOUSE took me nearly 5 years to research. My research includes trawling through archived photographs, locating and reading historical documents, interviewing and talking to people. 

TEXTURES 2022: AN INTERDISCPLINARY APPROACH TO LITERATURE & ART IN THE SINGAPORE HEARTLANDS

The fifth edition of TEXTURES (4 March 4 to 3 April) returns with the theme The Great Escape, opening in six Festival Pavilion locations (Oasis Terraces—Punggol; Sumang WALK – Punggol; Ang Mo Kio Public Library; Canberra Plaza; The Arts House, Sengkang Library) and offering workshops and programmes in other community and public library spaces (Sembawang; Toa Payoh). 

Small London Indie Press Leopard Print Releases First Anthology of Asian Stories

This week's Contemporary Voices column is written by Ivy Ngeow as guest writer for Asian Books Blog.  Ivy is a true Renaissance woman (see bio below for all the other hats she also wears). 

We celebrate the first Asian Anthology from Leopard Print. Ivy, take it away...

Small London Indie Press Leopard Print Releases First Anthology of Asian Stories

By Ivy Ngeow, Commissioning Editor,  Asian Anthology: New Writing Vol. 1

Leopard Print was founded in 2019 by Josh Antony Lee and I. With our design and small business backgrounds, the idea was to welcome more books which we loved to read but felt were lacking: beautiful, diverse and eclectic books by the culturally underrepresented. 

SWF: Quick Round Up Part 2

 Darling, You're Fabulous: An Hour With Tan France

A most enjoyable hour long chat moderated very smoothly by Maya Menon with Queer Eye host Tan France, who has not only written a memoir but now also runs his own fashion brand Was Him, a spin off of Tan France's middle name Washim, the back story of which was sadly from his childhood days of being bullied. Tan spoke about how he came to write his memoir and some of his most important values regarding style vs fashion, and why dress empowers and enhances self-esteem, how he loves to cook and how that came from being made to watch his mother cook, and how he loves styling women more than men. He spoke plainly about the discrimination faced by celebrities of South Indian descent in Hollywood, and how wearing a Sherwani on the red carpet was a political statement. Tan was not just entertaining and approachable and so likeable, but his political conscience and pride in his own culture was infectious. To him, styling people is to allow for self-expression, to bring out a quality that already exists in the wearer. Asked if he had any advice for stylish Singaporean men in terms of how to dress themselves, he couldn't resist making a gentle poke at the tightness of their clothes, which to him looked so uncomfortable: "save sexy time for behind closed doors, I don't need to see everything on the street." And in case you didn't know, Tan's comfort food is dhal, and he loves cake so much he eats it every day! Honestly, I so agree. There is nothing so dire in life that cannot be solved with a slice of cake.

Elaine Chiew Chats With Catherine Menon about her startling debut Fragile Monsters

Photo Credit: Paul Emberson

Bio:  Catherine Menon is Australian-British, has Malaysian heritage and lives in London. Her debut short story collection, Subjunctive Moods, was published by Dahlia Publishing in 2018. She is a University lecturer in robotics and has both a PhD in pure mathematics and an MA in Creative Writing. Fragile Monsters, published by Viking in April 2021, is her debut novel.

Synopsis: Mary is a difficult grandmother for Durga to love. She is sharp-tongued and ferocious, with more demons than there are lines on her palms. When Durga visits her in rural Malaysia, she only wants to endure Mary, and the dark memories home brings, for as long as it takes to escape. But a reckoning is coming. Stuck together in the rising heat, both women must untangle the truth from the myth of their family's past. In her stunning debut novel Catherine Menon traces one family's story from 1920 to the present, unravelling a thrilling tale of love, betrayal and redemption against the backdrop of natural disasters and fallen empires. Written in vivid technicolour, with an electric daughter-grandmother relationship at its heart, Fragile Monsters explores what happens when secrets fester through the generations. 

EC: Welcome to Asian Books Blog, Catherine. Congratulations on your startling debut, Fragile Monsters (Viking, 2021).  It literally begins with a bang, one revelation following another like a series of explosions through the book, keeping this reader on her toes. Every character has an incredible secret, even Karthika, the grandmother’s domestic helper. Tell us about the making of this book: was there a clear starting point and what was the process of writing it like?

 

CM: Thank you so much for having me, Elaine. The inspiration for Fragile Monsters came from the bedtime stories my father used to tell me about his own childhood in Pahang. It was only as an adult that I began to understand the context of these stories. Kuala Lipis, where he grew up, was the headquarters of the Japanese army in Pahang during the Occupation. 

 

I began to read memoirs and interviews with other people who’d lived through that time, and I was struck by the extent to which all of these speakers were taking ownership of their own narratives. They were describing what had happened to them, but with a focus on the emotional truth rather than the specific events. This was an amazing thing to realise: the sheer resilience that they had had to show in order to take back control of the past. 

 

I very much wanted to reflect this imperative – this need to own your own past – in the character of Mary. Mary understands the importance of stories and the power that they have over our memories. Durga, of course, is the exact opposite. She values logic, certainty, a kind of rigorous and exacting thought process that doesn’t allow for something to be “right, instead of true”, as Mary tells her. In writing the book I tried to keep their characters and perspectives distinct, even when they were, in effect, telling the same story. These two women are opposite sides of a mathematical equation – as Durga would put it! 

Contemporary Voices: Elaine Chiew Chats with Jenny Bhatt, Author of Each of Us Killers

 

Photo Credit: Praveen Ahuja

Bio:

Jenny Bhatt is a writer, literary translator, book critic, and the host of the Desi Books podcast. Her debut story collection, Each of Us Killers, was out Sep 2020 with 7.13 Books. Her literary translation, Ratno Dholi: The Best Stories of Dhumketu, was out Oct 2020 with HarperCollins India. She lives in the Dallas, Texas area and teaches fiction at Writing Workshops Dallas.

Synopsis:

Stories woven at the intersection of labor and our emotional lives. Set in the American Midwest, England, and India, the stories in Each of Us Killers are about people trying to realize their dreams and aspirations through their professions. Whether they are chasing money, power, recognition, love, or simply trying to make a decent living, their hunger is as intense as any grand love affair. Straddling the fault lines of class, caste, gender, nationality, globalization, and more, they go against sociocultural norms despite challenges and indignities until singular moments of quiet devastation turn the worlds of these characters—auto-wallah, housemaid, street vendor, journalist, architect, baker, engineer, saree shop employee, professor, yoga instructor, bartender, and more—upside down.

Cover design: Harshad Marathe