Shze-Hui Tjoa : The Story Game

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Browse selected titles at books shop dot org forward slash shop forward slash all it up. Today's episode is also brought to you by Sm moss, a much anticipated debut novel by Lisa a. Called beautifully strange by Samantha hunt, and tents and absorbing by Karen joy Fowler. Sm Moss follows the story of 2 sisters in 19 eighties Appalachia.

The 2 sisters, Sheila and Angie could not be more different from 1 another, But the brutal murder of 2 female hike on the Appalachian trail brings them together in what turns out to be a dangerous game of cat and mouse. At one's beautiful and other otherworldly, Sm moss invites us all to more closely consider what is real in what is haunted. Sm moss is available now from Tin house. I can confidently say that today's guest, show t memoir is like no other you've ever read.

And I say that with the highest praise. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that what she has contributed for the bonus audio archive today is also like nothing else as well. For as long as it has existed, the contributions to the bonus audio archive have mostly been readings either of a writer's own work outside of the main book discussed or writers reading other writers that they love, often with really interesting commentaries about them.

Less commonly, there have been kraft talks or readings that sort of double as mini kraft talks. And the archive after that has largely consisted of long form interviews with translators when a guest comes on for a book. That is either not originally in English or only partially in English. For instance, with the last episode with Cecilia, The long form conversation with Poet and translator Daniel Bo, who translated her book is in the Bona audio archive.

But then last year, Contributed that brilliant and bonkers and other worldly extended sound experiment of Moan and g from various cities on book tour, mixed with various sounds recorded in space, whether solar flares or black holes. And that mysteriously set off a a mini trend of people suddenly sending in sound contributions from Kin Lu to Nam.

Similarly, very recently, Joy Mcs sw, was the first person ever in the history of the show to contribute a video, of video performance from her Libre pis rex. And lo and behold, should we try has also contributed a video, 1 which oblique deepens our main conversation about her memoir, a memoir which circles some un things from her childhood. And also her life then in a piano conservatory in Singapore. For the bonus audio, should we went beyond the beyond and her gift to us.

She took 1 of the most formative picture books from her childhood. A book that is still deeply meaningful to her as an adult and translated it for us from Chinese to English. First, she orient us to this book. Then she shares a recording of 1 of her friends from conservatory playing a piece of music for us to help bring us back to her childhood before she reads this translated book.

And then page by page of this picture book, she na in English, the Chinese language text, written along with the incredible illustrations of Taiwanese illustrator, Jimmy Lia, all of which we get to see because it's video. So this is 1 definitely not to miss. The Bonus audio is only 1 possible benefit, 1 can choose from when joining the between the covers community as a listener or supporter.

And you can find out about the many, many other things from rare collectible to the 10 house early reader subscription at patreon dot com slash between the covers. Enjoy today's program with Shi t. Good morning, and welcome to between the covers. I'm David Na, your host. Today's guest, writer S T is from Singapore. Studied literature at Oxford and now lives in the Uk. She is the non fiction editor at Sun dog, and her own work has been listed as notable in 3 successive issues of the best

American assays essays. 2021, 22 and 23. Her work has appeared everywhere from the Southeast review to the Colorado review to the quarterly literary review, Singapore. She has been granted residences at the Vermont Studio center and the green olive of arts residency in Morocco, done writing mentorship through the Aw p writer to writer, mentorship program and the exposition review. And done workshops with V, short for voices of our nation's Arts foundation.

1 of the only multi genre writing workshops for writers of color, as well as at dis quiet international and Portugal and the 10 House writers workshop. Her essay the story of body was adapted to the stage, publicly rehearsed at Center 42 in Singapore performed at the Adelaide Fringe festival in Australia. Show T is here today to talk about her debut memoir, the story game. A memoir really like no other before it.

Picked as a most anticipated memoir of spring by publishers weekly and a best book of May by Book riot. Lily Huang says of the book. Shall we trust the story game is a patient excavation of selves? Not the eye of today, but the version before and the 1 before that, flawed and flying all the way back to childhood, reaching through history and memory to dust free so many cruel reflections, ardent, exquisite, show we try tenders aston with blessing 10.

The Boston globe calls it a memoir that challenges the genre definition and function. And writers Wendy Walters and Ja shakira diaz join me in the experience of calling it like No, they have ever read. Pass between the covers guest, Genie Von adds. After reading it, I felt a new world of creative possibilities opening. The story game is hyper specific, yet ether, serious and funny. It's mesmerizing. And finally, Tee care says of this book.

The story game introduces a major debut work from a most astounding talent. Show who he memoir, not only challenges genre, It up ends and splits it wide open. In meditations on grief, displacement, mental health and family, T will have you wondering how and why we remember and what we can't forget. The story game is h not, wise, and thunder innovative. I will teach this book. I will treasure it, and I will continue to learn from its astute and hopeful insights.

Welcome to between the covers. Should we t? Thank you for having me. That was a beautiful introduction. When we open the book, we encounter 4 or 5 pages of dis body dialogue in a place called the room, a place we return to again and again between each of these assays essays and sometimes within each of these assays essays. But I wanna delay talking about it for 1 moment and talk about the first essay first, the opening essay.

Which isn't representative of the book as a whole, but that's also something that's true about all of the essays. But this first essay represents your first conception of the book, a book you didn't end up writing. It works entirely on its own terms. It isn't a draft but I think nevertheless it represents a book project that you conceived, but didn't complete. So talk to us about the book that never was that the island Paradise essay was supposed to be 1 of the anchors of.

You're so right. You're at a multiple level like Chili. Initially when I started this book product, I I was by doing a book about politics and I thought that the premise of the book would be that everywhere, I note I kept seeing this tech that I found really rep repulsive. I would see all these systems that looked very beautiful. Our perfect outside but inside something was wrong. So with that first essay the Ballet essay sa, it was about with experience I had going to Bali,

with my parents. My father is actually part Indonesian, and he's not from Bali, but we go to Bali often. And you know, because the tourism industry there is really, really, like, the backbone of bali economy, but it's also been very destructive for a lot of local people in terms of the ecological impact, particularly with the water scarcity problems

that vale faces at an island. But also in terms of the wealth disparities that I generated by such a behemoth industry that is mostly catering for, people from outside with a not more money than the local people. So it really exacerbate all those social divides, and you know, for me, I was like, oh, this is a perfect example. Of the thing I wanted to talk about. That is, you know, I want to... I want to make it, like, a case study, and it can fit into this book I'm writing that's all about how

the whole world looks like is. Mh. So that was initially when version of book that I was hoping to write and didn't end up writing. But you're also right in another sense, which I'm not sure if you already knew this, but Before I started at writing any of the essays in this book actually, the very, very first, the very, very first thing that made me think I even wanted to write a book was that my father's family told me maybe you should write a book about your brand father's life.

And that's because my grandfather is Indonesia indonesian, and he grew up in Sum. But when he was a young boy, there was a large kind of, like, there many programs in Indonesia. I'm not sure if that's a technical word for it but I was ethnic cleansing and my grandfather is a Chinese person. When he was a young boy, he already paid ethnic cleansing and had to, like ran from his spinach together with his family and seek refuge elsewhere.

And in 19 65, there was a very, very large genocide of Chinese people that happened in Indonesia, like, a mask given that until today is though not very much discussed. Actually in Indonesia and in politics there, but that was the event that pre my families moved from Indonesia Singapore. So I think because of that, there was a very large part of our family's history that just got lost in time because my grandfather and grandmother don't ever talk about what

happened. And the insight never really even hold their own children. The reason why they left Indonesia, I think, you know, in my father's mine, at least, there was a big question of, like, there was a big part of self that he felt. He could only access if Storyteller was able to write about it. So he intact me with this? He was like, why don't you write a book about your

life. And I think that's why the very first and kona I had with this beam was around Indonesia because I just felt like there's something in this part of the world that I need to go back through and try and dig up again. But if you'll see her a having red epi that didn't happen l. Do you think you'll ever write this story of your grandfather? Is that something you're considering writing? I can't speak for, like, my future ourselves.

But for me, currently, I don't think I do... I will write that because I think in a sense, I do think I have already written the book. Because story game is that book, I in a sense, I was talking about this a little bit just now, but with the first essay, I started out trying to write about my Family history and then I gave up, and I wrote about myself. It ended being an essay where I said, you know, actually, I don't feel a strong

emotional connection to Indonesia. I understand that there's a lot of trauma and pain had us to this place, but I don't feel a strong connection because I only visited a few times. When I was growing up, I don't really speak the language Fluently, maybe the the part of it we kept the most was the food, but from that, You know, at my family is very much integrated into Singapore. And so I feel distant from this place. And that was the final of the essay

sa. And actually with only many years later. So after the story game was published by 10 house. And in fact I, it was after the story games, already on the shelves. Put, like, very recently like a few months ago. I suddenly realize, I think that in writing the story of myself, I completed the task my father sent me. Because that was what my grandfather wanted it with his silence. He chose not to draw on his camera because he wanted it his his defendant to be able to have the new story, I think.

Know, he might dad has have a better line than the life he had. And he worked really hard to to staunch his own wound and, like, staunch that thing inside him that was cashing full of stories. Mh so that we could have that. And I think my book is a very perfect. And caps relation of is which it came true. Oh, that's wonderful to hear.

Well, if someone were to ask whether this were an essay collection or a memoir, I think the answer would be yes to both, but neither separately or together would be a sufficient description. If someone were to call it a detective story or a meta meditation on memory and narrative and the construction of self, I don't think they'd be wrong on either account either. And likewise, and perhaps most pertinent to what makes this book stand out to me.

If someone were to call it a fiction or even fantasy, they would also be partially correct. For me, the most mysterious thing about this book is that it is the fictional fantasy elements of the book. That make the individual essays into a memoir that provide the glue or the connective tissue between the essays and somehow makes this not only, not an essay collection or not a collection of things at all, but a cohesive journey.

So before we start that journey, I wanted to spend time with this fictional connective tissue, both what it is in its own right, and how it functions to bring the book together. The book opens, as I mentioned earlier in a place called the room, which is both a real place and an imagined space, and it's populated with imagined versions of real people. A place we return to and visit many, many times in this book. So let's start with a first attempt to describe the room. How would you describe

what we encounter. The room, its occupants, and then the game that happens in it as we start the book. This is a very good question because when I was the right thing to book... I asked myself this question also as I was writing. And maybe the murky kind of quality of the room if we related it through that because I myself as the writer. I didn't know what this place was. I just felt that I had a strong desire to create it.

So in terms of how the room looks, it's patent on a bedroom that I used to share with my younger sister when we watch children. In our parents or house. And it has a few elements of the... I would say kind of, like, physicality of the room. So for example, like, the humidity of the end, Singapore, or, like, crickets outside, and also the the ceiling fan that turns and it makes a very, like, loud wishing sound because the areas of humid and also the smell of the movement eucalyptus.

So it has all those elements. But at the same time, it's case that's missing a lot. So I think right at the beginning of the book, the narrator of the book who is sort of like me. She's gave the. I don't remember what pictures are here, and I also don't remember what furniture is here. So it's a place with both present and I

would say, and it comes together. I you know, to create us enough of a vibe that the person reading the book understand that, you know, it feels real like, a person could live there and characters could live there, but equally there some questions about how real is real. And in terms of the people who are in the room, 1 of them is and it girl, and 1 of them is me. And, the little girl

addresses me at has sister. So that's how to book begin, and then we have a chat, and, you know, she she had the voice of a very young child right at the beginning where she's saying, like, it's not fun or like, you know, put more drama and the stories Are, like, you're lying to me, like, the kind of very emphatic things with small tail with there. So I think that's what I would say about the room.

Well, as we read this first political essay about Bali, we returned to the room several times before the sa ends. We do this because your sister or the figure that represents your sister. Is unsatisfied with your telling of it. She wants a story, not an essay. She doesn't want something scholar or imp. She wants something personal and intimate. So each time we return to the essay from the room, we return knowing that you are continuing to write in the aura of this critique.

And this points to an element of non fiction that is interesting, but usually not foreground grounded, I think. That even when we're earnest trying to quote unquote, tell the truth, sometimes we aren't able to. Because of things we haven't sorted out inside of us yet. We aren't necessarily trying to deceive, but what we write is still ob the truth even from the writer themselves.

In the Bali essay sa itself, there are questions of performance and truth that are not explicitly linked to these questions for you as the memoir writer, but they sort of rhyme with the questions in a way. We learn that when the Bali royalty commit mass suicide in 19 o 6. In front of the invading Dutch soldiers that the Dutch are so shamed in Europe to such an extent that they vowed to preserve bali culture from time and from modern.

And even fake invented dances get incorporated into tradition and become part of the real face of what Bali puts forth for the tourist. The illusion of glamour is maintained regardless of the cost to the people on the land, even if that cost is death or drought. We also learn about the popularity of cock fighting, and it's theatrical nature, how it also creates an illusion for the gamble that their positions in life are mobile and fluid, even if in reality, no matter what happens

in the game. Their actual positions in the world are fixed and I mobile. I have multiple questions I wanna ask you about the fiction in this book. But first, perhaps in the most general way, what are your thoughts about fiction in relation to the real and fictional elements and their role whether by design or inadvertently within memoir or within non fiction. This is such a good question.

But I don't wanna generalize realize, but for me, suddenly, I feel like, fiction and non fiction feel like they are the same thing a lot of the time. Because as you said, for me, like, my experience of the world incorporate a lot of fiction. And if I were to try and tell somebody what

it feels like to be me. The most authentic thing to do if we did also tell them about the many fantasies I have in my head, and I'm bringing up all the time sometimes, kind of without my own control or without my own... Without, like, consciously trying to do it. Know, but they're always there, like, a parallel kind of stream of thought that's happening in my head. I think the question you add is so interesting because reason yeah, I've been thinking about this how,

my sister actually works in reality tv. Oh like. So big bad that is so funny to me. Maybe to use the word test, Like, it rhyme. Yeah. It's like a my inversion of the the thing I do it. I work in non fiction. I don't think I would ever write a book of picture fiction. I just don't have that inside me plus I'm reason to desire to make a product that's primarily thick fiction. I will always

wear non fiction. But the fix the predictive elements are kind of, like incorporated into, the biggest structure and the super structure is, like authenticity basically. And I think it's funny because maybe for is that the other way around. The container that holds everything together is. But there are elements of their real. And maybe it's something about the environment we came from where truth was not directly addressed, and truth was always hidden and the many layers of ob location creates

the way of approaching the world. Where the fiction, the story is in reality. Right? Because the story is technically what we lived through. You know. The story that obscure the truth was our lived in reality. If that makes sense? Yeah. I love that.

And... And this notion of a writer maybe not quote unquote, telling the truth without knowing they're not telling the truth is really interesting and fiction, but also even just formal decisions, like, the most norma form of a memoir which is not your memoir of a 3 act double timeline. Yeah. That's a fictional form I mean, that's a form. Like, that's not how anybody's life happens. So to put to put your life in a form, seems also to be bringing and f elements.

I think also, for me part of it probably comes from growing up in Singapore, where there was a lot storytelling telling around me all the time. There was a lot of I guess you might call it state messaging, not that other countries don't have this, filing in Singapore it's very explicitly messaging from this state that when you go in public transport for example, they'll be, like, stories that are circulating around you.

And so I've always been very aware of that that you know, these stories are about the reality around it. But in some way, the stories are constructed, and you can see quite clearly. I think in singapore especially it very transparent. And almost like, you can see the bones of the story, and you can see the people in the background. I putting elements together to decide, okay, This is how we're going to frame the current reality, our country in. And this is the the way it comes

out as a beautiful story. That's easy for people to grasp and follow. So for me, I just... Yeah. I I agree completely, but is that, like, even when a writer is trying to tell the truth. That ad of telling is fiction. Mh. Maybe the the the part that involves using your voice is imaginative, you know, Well, in in the story game, we quickly discover that this sister figure who both asks for stories for 1 story after the next, She also inter each 1 1 to the next.

And there's a way in which this sister figure is your first reader but also almost like your editor slash critic, almost like a therapist relationship because she knows you because as a sister, she has been a witness. You have shared lived experiences. And so she can comment on how you are or are not being honest with yourself as you write, what you're avoiding and more. Maybe more than anyone else could.

In this sense, it feels vital that this figure b your sister or an imaginative version of your sister but it's also really clear that it's not your sister that it's an imagined version and that you're giving words to this figure that she probably has never spoken. And I believe it was your editor at 10 house Elizabeth D, who called this book speculative non fiction, which I really like. And this imagine sister feels like it's at the core of this element of the book.

There's always, I think in any writing, a gap between a represented person on the page and the actual person in the world. But I think that gap in your book is really accent. Which both calls attention to the art of any representation through, I think an exaggerated sense of art in your book, but also actually not trying to capture your sister on the page at all. Yeah. Even as it's important, that it sort of, quote unquote, remain her.

In a way, it feels like your sister is in the end another aspect of you. But talk to us about the parameters given that she is a real person working in reality Tv. Talk us about the parameters of what if there are parameters of what you would allow for yourself and how you portray your sister. How far you're willing to travel from what she would actually say or do as you portray your sister in the room. I feel like the only part of the

book the my sister is actually herself. There's a slight overlap between the sister and the book and the sister and the world. Is maybe in the very last page of the book where I have a phone call with my sister in the real world. And you have no idea how many times I edit Peter. I edit them so much. In fact, I think the very last edit that I gave Elizabeth, my editor. Before the book wendy to print was to tell her to change a word in that sentence where I'm describing the quality of my

sister's voice. But I said, okay. This is not a right word. It's It's closed but it's not exactly right, and I need it to be exactly right because this is the part where she's a real person. I think that I have a lot of risk respect for other people's sense of self.

Like I just always had had this, particularly when it's someone who's close to me, like, with my sister, I find it almost impossible to tell lie about what the person sit, or I feel like very, very, uncomfortable speaking on behalf of the other person. Like, I would maybe transcribe out words directly.

If they gave them to me. But then again, I feel like, even so there is a power dynamic that appears because my name is on the book and they end up being a character in the book whereas a more accurate kind of literary for on maybe it has yet to be imagine. What call us c creators. Right? Like, memoirs is a c with every single other the human being. Who appears in their pages as a character. And I feel like for me, it just feels like a place I can't really go.

But equally, I love wanting that it's very clear that this is not my because I think that the person who appears in the book is why I wish my sister was. It's like all the elements of wish about the relationship that we never had. Like, we never got to have this relationship because our relationship was 1 of silence for many years. And so there's so much love that was lost over the years. And I think that for me I always have this question about when does this stuff go? You know?

Oh, it's getting funny because I mean, just be going attention a little bit. I recently was at a reading for another writer. I think Renal Kong. And then she was talking about how for her she feels like fiction is the way of exploring that. She's like, you know, because there are so many un realities in your life. It's, like, every time you choose is a path, like, a thousand other pass disappear, or, like, an unbelievable number of disappear, you cannot count. I'm uncomfortable.

And then she's like, okay. So all that daphne needs to go somewhere. And for her, she puts it in fiction. And I think I have that same heart actually. I have that same emotional drive. Like, I need to preserve everything. I've kind of like a hoard when it comes to emotions. Our experiences our abstract qualities. And I have to keep everything. And so it has to go in the book. But really for me, it goes into a non fiction.

Yeah. Because it's such a shame to give up an all that love or the love that I could have imagined existing between ads. I don't want it to disappear. I want people to know that. This is what I wish we had. Well, before we leave the notion of the relationship of representation to the real, 1 1 thing we learn in the book, is that you have a memory gap in your childhood, where you can't remember many of the years leading up to a major scoliosis surgery you had in your teens.

You could say this is 1 of the sources of suspense in the book. 1 of the ways the book feels, I think like a detective memoir or a psychological excavation where we and you don't know what we're gonna find as your sister pushes you more word authenticity on the page 1 essay to the next.

But 1 thing that jumped out to me in 1 of your interviews for this book is that when you attended a theatrical performance of your essay, the story of body that it was only seeing yourself being performed by another on stage in a specific scene that made you realize the gravity of what you had been through in real life that the theatrical performance had made your own life more real to you, and I just wanted to hopefully, give you a moment to talk about that experience a little bit.

Yeah. That's another 1 of those things where summer somehow the fiction is reload and the real life experience. So my friend who performed that seeing Xi 1 of the choices he made was, because I have a number of packing titanium screws in my bet, and I was unconscious while the screws are being put into me. So I didn't experience it It's almost like time folded in on itself. Right? You know, you I was lying there on the operating table, and then the next moment, like, I was wait and, you

know, life goes back to normal. Nothing has happened. It's almost like, a chunk of time was bitten out of my life. And I think that with She performance, because you were, you know, the you're using your body. So the body lives in time. Right? Lives in chronological ordinary time. And he decided he would make every for every single 1 of the screws that went into my spine, he would make a sound. So because it became, like, translator into this oral thing that I could here.

I felt like I really understood how much time went into fixing my spine. And that was already You know, he was already shot it. I was got a surgery was like. It was a really, really long surgery. Took at in an entire day by the surgeon. And something about feeling like the the bread and the kind of weight of time I did have brought a new kind of grief that At that point I had somehow kept for myself because, you know, when I'm, a book. Right? Things can happen so fast.

You can move from, like, 1 year to the next year from sentence to sentence. Time is just like a thing you play with. It's like something you tackle, and then you put it down, and then you you move on to something else. But for people who who are working with their bodies, Time is it's like the limiting factor. It's the biggest enemy of the body time. Time is the thing I making me die in

the end, you know, Mh. And I think as a writer, sometimes I forget about the reality of time because I'm no master time when at writing. So think working with that person, S, was a really special experience for me. I feel like almost he had a point of view of my life that I was not able to have And because of, like, the clothes, I've hit on relationship with his body, I could access something that for my own self protection, I had hidden away from myself, Well, there are actual

fictional influences to this book. You've mentioned also. You've mentioned the book here S by Susanna Clark, and also And also that at 1 point you binge on both Ag Christie Books and Tv adaptations. So how how would you speak to the influences of of these other fictional books on on this non fictional book. So with Per, the thing that I love about P is the bowl building element. So for anyone who's not ready people. I'll give a very quick summary. It's just about a man who lives

in a giant house. It's a huge house. And he wonders around room room to room and there are lots of statues in the house, but there also tidal waves, know, there flock of boots, It's a house that basically stands in for the entire world. And this man is, like, a very innocent man, and he just wonders around. He He pray there's the house because it is his world. It's his the god. You know? He

believes the house created him. And he he gives a lot of respected at house, and he generates the house basically. But 1 day, a little bit of doubt is cast and due this worldview because there's another man in the house, and the man calls him this named p. And the character that it's like, I just feel like this is not my name. You just has an implicit feeling that this is

wrong. And I love that because I think to then our o'clock is actually telling a really it's a very like universal experience of what it feels like to be lonely And also what it feels like do not know who you are to live in a world or somebody else making, and yet to believe that that is normal the world. You know, do do not have a grasp or, like, what is yours and what is the others? And what has been given to you. And I think that This is such a

a universal and also complex idea. I think you could write like a thousand books about this, but instead she built a whole world rather than kind of dissect the idea, she built something creative and a new thing to represent an idea. She built a house, You know, and I loved it. I think for me, that's something that happens in fiction that has

always drawn me to fiction. You can see, like, I was talking about with the advertisements on the public chats in singapore of the exact same You see someone with a hammer and nail and you said I'm like, building they're building a wall and that's so, like, intriguing to me. I love to see that process. Yeah yeah. It makes me feel like I'm living. And

I watch people for do it. Yeah. And pretty detective stories, I think what I need was comfort while I get from those stories of comfort... I hate the read them also when I was a tile Actually, I binge read the entire that I read off, I get At could Facebook when I at the child. I think the because there's so much comfort built into the promise that somebody knows where the story is going. And even if it takes a lot of duncan, you know that a detective almost always softer and mystery.

And, you know, at the very last moment and the right clue all led on his lap. Should get before laid up, but he'll be like, oh, I know who did it. And I feel like When I was working on this story game, I didn't have this. I didn't have this feeling because I was venturing out into the unknown, especially at the dialogue section. I really didn't know if it was for anything. And I also as I said before, I didn't know who would the characters were. I didn't know who the little girl was.

And because of there, I just needed to have this feeling of, okay, if somebody knows what's going to happen. And I had to believe that I could feel like Get christie accuracy. If the thing, inside me that created at the beginning, what's the same thing that would end the book, then, you know, I have to trust it that knows where it's going?

Well, with the second essay, your best American essays notable essay on being in love with a white man, we already see a little bit of shift in how you write an essay. It's still intellectual and political an exterior in some ways, but it is also about meeting your future husband. We get your an anxiety idea about whether you can even now talk about d or be on the right side of history if you're married to a white man.

And also choosing to live in Europe about how you meeting Thomas, sort of mimic the fe Singapore meeting Sir Stamford Raffle, the the man who founded the Port city in its modern incarnation. And we're with you as you explore this gap between what you know you should want and what you actually want. So I was hoping maybe before we talk a little bit about this essay, if we could hear a little bit from it. Yeah. Sure. What I was thinking was 42 to 44.

Okay. Nobody's ever asked for this section, But but actually, a lot of Singapore and people have told me this is their favorite section. I know. Yeah. My friends are. I ordered it. Okay. There is a template for how stories like mine should and fall. A white European men meets a southeast Asian woman. In life as in language, subject and object, click neatly into place. Man and women become the seeker and the sore after Europe and Asia, the explorer and the explored.

I grew up believing in the pre nature of these roles, As a school child in Singapore, I had learned that these pairing were rooted in history. Our own nation had once been a mute, but lovely island in Asia, waiting to be colonized by an English man named Stamford raffle. Before his arrival, might teacher's it. We had the nothing more than a primitive fishing village. For in some vital existential sense that could not be ignored.

But in other ways, we had been hopefully endowed with the right kinds of feminine traits. A beautiful form for instance, and sun baked slowness, a dripping tropical for. For centuries, we seem to do nothing but sit pretty on the equator bid doing our time. Then 1 day it all paid off. A European rounded the corner with a clinic in his eye and delivered us to the world.

If pre colonial Singapore taught me a sense of self, Then Raphael furnished my earliest ideas about White and what to expect from them. Sitting behind my desk and sweating into my school pin 4, I was captivated by the legacy of his desire. Here was the white man revealed as a glut, or himself on the other. Sailing from shore to shore and hopes of consuming the world. I thought about the force of this desire, which had lifted us out of the darkness and into the bright lights of modern statehood.

I thought about the little fishing village opening her mouth for the first time and finding out that she could speak. I am. I imagined her saying blinking into the light. I am. I am. This story of Singapore is over 2 decades all now. 1 rally encounters it in circulation anymore. These days, the government's official line has shifted so that the great are learning a very different tale of how their nation came to be. The textbooks paint a picture that is 700, not 200 years old.

They read that the kingdoms of the world has been tracing through our island since the fourteenth century long before raf set sail. Perhaps then, they are also absorbing different ideas about desire. What it is and how it comes to be, who gets to wield it and who merely suffers is it. I have my suspicions though. A few years ago, at the state funded by Centennial to promote Singapore history, I seem to recognize the previous story from my textbooks. Lengthen by addendum, but otherwise unchanged.

Earlier explorers were mentioned with more emphasis than usual. And other statues now rose to join the sculpt to of raffle that stands by the Singapore river, But ultimately, it was still raffle we reign supreme over the activities. Still were proved impossible to criticized. How could we the Gl z public exhibition seem to ask with a ringing of their hands, How could we condemn the white man who imagined our city and pointed it in the direction of things to come?

The struggle is to denounce that which ultimately I ushered in a good and present selves. So we hold on to the white men who in the midst of his greed ina inadvertently showed us the way from third world to first. His landing is no longer a fiery re dawning are the ancient beginnings of the world. The white European man no longer declared the fear. Our new stories that he initiates are paris, the land under his feet. Releasing her into the life that she always should have had in the first place.

His role has softened from that of a god into that of a catalyst. His presence figured as a necessary condition for the village to grow up and blossom them in her own tan skin. In my own life, It is the second story that has proven truly insidious, difficult to announce for standing so dangerously close to the true. And listening to show we T read from the story game.

So pretty early in the book. Having only encountered the first several essays and been into the room now many times within in between them. We not only understand that there's a memory gap. A place where your character can't go within themselves that your sister is pushing you toward. But also that there are ways you have learned to present yourself that aren't true.

And I even wonder if some of these ways you present yourself that are false might be part of the mechanism of preserving the the memory space. But either way, your sister sort of calls bullshit on the second essay. An essay that is quite nuanced about questions of race and nationality and about the ways theory, and embody desire can be at across purposes, but also 1 that completely your marriage. Which we learn in the room is actually in disarray. Something we would never guess from the essay.

And similarly in the third story, we get Singapore as a place, you love to be from and to return to. But later in the room, we learn that in reality, you hated it. That it felt so destroying, authoritarian, hyper capitalist, anti queer and more. We discover we're with an unreliable narrator but 1 who is unreliable to herself ultimately, and yet 1 who also has this room of accountability.

So we have Absences where language can't yet be formed by the person speaking, and we have someone also at odds with how they use language with regards to what they know about themselves. And you've linked some of this explicitly to trauma but also some of it to cultural forces and how these both intersect.

In the book, you talk about how school began at Sunrise and went to 10PM, that at age 9 children would be sorted into gifted, express or normal you've written outside of the book about how at piano conservatory, they would physically and verbally c you placing thumb tax on the piano keys to punish you when wrong notes were played.

In your interview with Claire Chi at electric literature, you talk about how being shu into the gifted track in school very early, made you want to live up to the label that was given to you rather than to figure out what you would want to authentically be on your own terms. And you've also talked outside the book about how humanitarian Singapore is, something you've alluded to today already. That lots of the messaging is through the we pronoun.

Unlike the pledge of allegiance here that begins with the word I, the pledge in Singapore begins with we, and it was from this place that you started from and figuring out who you were. A structure that the book mimics and so insofar as the essay start very exterior and become less so.

Talk to us more about how you see either the culture of Singapore generally or its educational approach, more specifically, becoming an element of the difficulty of presenting yourself, failing or presenting yourself unhappy on the page. This such a good question. Especially now so many years have been leaving home, Like, I moved to the Uk 12 years ago now. I feel like, I'm not the best person tell you about what life it's like there anymore. There are people who

can do it much better than me. And so I guess I'm a bit wary about speaking about what it's like now. But for me, in terms of the education system that, yeah, it had a very strong impact on me, and I didn't even realize for many years. There was a kind of national system that assume that all people have the same kind of intelligence. That's the first the first thing. It does assume that there is 1 kind of intelligence, and it's the kind of intelligence that can be captured on a piece of paper.

And then also that it makes a further jump, which is to say that well the level this kind of intelligence you have will determine the role you play in society, for the rest of your life, which I think it's a really terrifying message. Not only for anybody pick hear. But for a 9 year old to hear because it feels like everything you do rides on on this 1 piece of paper that you're holding.

And you know, I mentioned that particular streaming exam because I think it's the most unusual example, for an outsider to hear, but this dynamic was something that was repeated constantly in my childhood. There were always more and more pieces of paper that you had to get to prove your worthiness. To, you know, rise up through their ranks and get a powerful position in society to put it very cool. And I think that for me, for many, many years, this actually prevent me from understanding

how my own form of intelligence works. You know, like, actually, I had to go through... As you said I study in But and I also study in Cambridge actually, that is... I'm not something I usually tell people, but the reason why I don't usually help people is because I think that going through those 2 academic institutions, The main thing it showed me was actually that, like, the kind of intelligence I possess is not really like academic

intelligence. Actually, it's not the kind of intelligence that I was for and that I was set to put this by this state when I was young. I think I actually have a lot of, like, intelligence from doing things. But you see that in the story game who because I am living the book in real time while writing it. I have to lift things to really understand them. I had to do them with my hands. Mean I was a pianist, so it kind of checked

out. I have to, like, live it with my body, and then III grasp the essence of the thing, But I'm not good the fact. I'm not going with rec cow. And I feel like, The story game is so interesting because it's... You know, writing a book, I am playing into this tradition of academic excellence. But I took many years do kind of, like, extract myself wrong. But I guess that the story game, you know, some people on good have fitness this. Is that, like, it's not really a book not

a for people who usually like them. I they're like, yeah. I don't usually like reading. I don't usually like books. So I like this book. And I feel like whenever I, hear that I feel like that's such a comfortable because that you authentic in my own experience I'm writing this book. I thought I was writing a really dense. A academic thing that would, you know, be, like the final stamp of approval that, like, Yes. You made

it. You are what you were promised that you would be, and you have achieved your potential. But it turned out to be a completely different thing. I realized that the standards I was trying to live do were not standards that I like, and, you know, they're not standard that make me happy. Mh. I'm much more comfortable. Like, finding my way through, like, real life experience.

And I think the book is a book that kind of breaks the founder, you know, between the text and life in that way because of this You you wrote this very moving essay outside of the book about your experience doing the Aw p writer to writer, mentorship program, a mentorship you had under the writer Lily Huang where she was really amazing at sensing when receiving feedback from her could be potentially overwhelming or derail the writing process.

And at 1 point, she tells you sort of witnessing your I think your demeanor and facial expression that you should just hold on to the feedback, not look at it and keep writing. And her flexibility, her listening to and for your response to her, the sort of bidirectional nature of it. Where it was the opposite of of a top down approach, seemed to me as if it were revel to you.

And there are qualities of how you describe Lilly in the sister character too, I think, as well as as I mentioned earlier, qualities of a therapist in the sister figure where the critique of your work isn't based on an external system, but rather from your own relationship to yourself. And in fact, you start to see a therapist part way through the book as well.

And 1 way, I think you could view this book is as your journey toward not just a sort of ind situation from your family of origin and culture of origin, but a journey toward becoming a writer. And I wondered if that felt right to you. If you felt like 1 way you could frame the the journey we take with you is the journey of becoming a writer. Yeah. I think you heard the knee right.

And it also makes me think of your previous question and what we spoke about there because I feel that when I started the book I had a very I had a very clear received notion of what it means to be a writer and to be a person who who has done a book. I thought that, you know, it means certain kinds of ways of, perceiving the

world. I mean to certain relationship to other people to a public, like my readers, for example, And actually when I finished writing the book, I became a writer, but I became a writer on my tons. I was like, this is the reason why I write, and it's not funny things that people told me I did get. Like for example buying a good, maybe when 1 very clear example of that in met own now is like my relationship

to prestige. When I started riding the book, and I think you can see this reflect in the tone of the essays also, so I believe that I was doing it to gain prestige. Thought that was the most important thing. And in fact when I was sending out those essays after there I wrote them, I would send them to, like, the most prestigious places I couldn't imagine like send it like New York tech send a delay. You know, all these things it it's like, you know, like, the tell science, I don't read.

A lot a few things. But I was, like, I feel like I stood because this is what a writer would do. And I think as the book progressed and my own writing journey progressed, and so I I started it, Like, you know, I think my relationship with Prestige changed completely because I realized, like, for me, the reason why I wanted that prestige was because I wanted to be in connection with other people who had accept me and see me for whoever was. And Actually, like, you don't need prestige to get

there. Like their speech is not a da necessarily have to walk through find connection. You can find connections. Just my being, like, yourself off. And so by the end of the, I was, like, submitting the differently is that, you know, I... Like, my vision of what a meant never a happy literary like, totally changed. So I don't know if that really answers your question. I do think my feeling of what it means to be a writer has changed very, very dramatically over the past 5 years.

Well, in your conversation with your editor, Elizabeth, she talked about how many writers approach her regarding how useful this book is to them as writers, and I can see why, I wanted to read a couple of things you said on your blog in this slide. These are things you wrote before you had a book deal. Quote, I've written on here before that for me, The temptation has always been to erase the past from my own artistic record and present myself like a person who has always been fully formed.

Instead of as someone who has had to grow over many years and discover what works doesn't work for them. And then speaking about writing the story of body an essay that comes late in this collection you say. This essay has made me reconsider what I'm doing with my whole book project.

Once the story of body arrived on the page, I knew with a hundred percent certainty that this is what I wanted to be writing about this topic, this part of myself, which maybe wonder if the other essays, which I previously thought might be coming together to make a book. Were really nothing more than practice pieces. Rote exercises and s up history in language. This isn't a question that I've fully resolved yet.

I wonder if there isn't some value after all in sharing practice pieces with the world, something in it it has to do with being real and vulnerable and human. But what I think great about the story game, contrary to your fear, is that each piece does feel complete. It doesn't feel like you're sharing drafts or incomplete pieces, but you are sharing drafts of yourself, and perhaps with this essay this essay say the story of body, you feel an arrival to something more fundamentally you.

But either way, it feels super generous that we get to travel with you, practicing you. I I assume this journey across essays was something that you created through careful ordering and reorder and construction through that ordering. And so I was really amazed to discover that the essays appear in the book in the order that they were written. I was likewise blown away that the last thing you wrote was the room dialogue scenes the aspect of the book that is most

essential to it. And the only way I could imagine it working together as a collection was the actual element you didn't have until the very end, and then you took nearly a year to figure out how to how to do it. In in a what way. So talk to us about the construction of the book as book, maybe about the book before the room existed, and how it arrives at its final form over time. Okay all, Thank you for reading from my.

I feel like that's very moving for me because I feel like, the writing I do on my blog is not listed in the writing I do in a published book. It's the same thoughts. It's me. So for This is... Yeah. It's very moving. Actually, you do hear you read from the 3 with that as the words under the printed page. So thank you. Mh. Yeah. Yeah. The book was written in the exact claim order as of it appears. And maybe that also was taking a risk exposing something

that... Could be vulnerable to people because you're not the first person to say this, and and maybe I don't really understand. Actually, because everybody is always very surprised by this But to me, it feels like the book could not work if I reorder the essay sa. Like, the very chronology of the essays, and the the order in which they appear

is me. You know, that was the journey I went through because I'm basically showing the reader different versions of myself and getting that ordering correct is important because I'm showing you the journey of growth I went through. And the way I changed from Sa to Sa As you self mentioned, I think, like, earlier on, you know, between the first and second essay, you can see the way already I'm healing my sense of self. Based on my self protection after during the first essay, I'm

like, okay. I I realized I to academic there, so I need to include more details of my life. And then after that second essay, I'm, like, well, I didn't include a lot of details from my life, but they were very dishonest. And they were they didn't include the ugly thing. So I'm the third essay sa is going to be very ugly. It's going to be about depression. You know, you can literally see the thought process of the person moving from from draft the draft of themselves.

In terms of how the book came together, it was literally written that way, essay by Essay sa. And as the blog that when I got story of body, I was like, oh, man. I think this is it. Like the edit of days were just attempts to get here, and this is the place where the book actually has a form. And it actually it contains something that's true about me. But then after that, I say, I had a very strong feeling that needed to write something about my sister.

And, you know, I tried it really, really hard to write the essay. But equally when I was trying to construct this essay sa, Felt like the Essay form was not the right container. For I had to say about my sister because no matter how much I tried to talk. About her. I realized that it was impossible for me to know what she was thinking. Our relationship when we were growing up was so heavily you wrote in terms of its control dynamics towards me. I had so much control, and

she was so much, lacking an agency. I think when we spend time together. That I always knew what I wanted her to do in every interaction that I could recall, but I had no idea how she responded. Like, my brain had just blocked that out because it in summary, I guess it saw her, like, a doll, rather than a human went being and it was not possible to write about her. And I remember, actually, when I was going through this process, it took 8

months. This painstaking of writing and writing and trying to worry about my sister. I actually had experienced a very, like, I would say intuitive moment of grief that 1 day I just broke out and I cried, and I had therapy that day, and I home my therapist. I was like, I feel like, in writing this essay I'm destroying myself because I'm destroying the egg of storytelling. This essay day is going to be the end of all stories for me. Wow. Yeah. It... I mean Very. I got heard domestic.

I looked I was like and no. Like I say cheapest was like okay. That's interesting. But I feel like, that was something. 0II kind of sense even before I got there, maybe did. You know, the traditional essay which contains the story structure. Right? It's like, you know, there's some sticks, and then there's some suspense, and then there's a big even event that resolves it, and then I learned something and I

changed. I become a new person. That was not going to work for what I now in the do it was to include a subject video idea of another human theme. Maybe it booked plus some other writers. But for me, I just knew that what I think of as a story was actually an obstacle rather than I help in terms of describing my life and my relationship with this person who I love. And, yeah. It I was very sad for you because I think I am quite good at telling stories of, you know, the previous

essay essays. I enjoyed that process. Do I enjoy creating a story. And I I don't think a lot of my identity derive from my ability to do this and practice the skill. Do But that's also why I need to grow. Right? It's that's so why I used to grow. It try something that not necessarily. Doesn't have a hundred percent success rate guaranteed and and then, you know, that was what I think kind of processing that feeling of,

like, all the stories are disappearing. Your more stories that I will was what bought me to write a dialogue. I I do think the daylight rep at the end of story like, to be. So you've talked elsewhere about how before you found your agent, who as an aside, I think is another person who seems to have some of the qualities of your sister character in your book. A person who was able to sense emotions and you that were too sub textual on the page and and push you to draw them forward.

Before you found this agent, you had a different agent reach out to you who was curious if you had a book. And when she saw your manuscript was interested if you would remove the experimental elements in it, the the room elements in it. So it was actually interested potentially in in the essays, as an essay collection. And I wondered if you could talk for a moment about that encounter and that... And the series of decisions to walk away from 1 agent and look for another?

So she reached out to me at a time when I was already seeking Bed reader feedback on the manuscript, and she basically... She had read 1 of the essays in the collection, which was called the true wonders of the Holy land and she really liked that essay. So I think she was hoping that I would produce for her stack of essays that all kind of sounded similar and tone through

that. That's a particularly... I would say it's a particularly chat essay a It's a particularly, like, funny as they with a lot of, like, human character. Like it's a lot of, like, funny new characters in the Essay. And I think she was drawn through that, but I didn't have that show her. I actually only had this your script.

So I gave her A I hat, and then she didn't really... I think she she gave me a piece of mixed feedback actually where she said that she really enjoyed the book, like, she read it really quickly. She read it in 1 night, and she she liked it, but she doesn't think she can stand it. So that was a bit... I think for me, I when I received that piece of feedback, I just felt like, because she wanted me to try and rewrite the book. I felt like of, I don't have it in me.

I don't have it in me because the thing took 5 years. And, you know, as I said, I was so careful even with the ordering of the essays. I think For me, it feels like the thing I'm showing you is the evidence of my life. I know? And I can really redo it. This is actually how it happens because the book of documenting the process are writing. I can tell you allow about how the book came to be. So I just wasn't really interested

in that. But at the same time, Alison, my asian had also met me an offer, and I felt that Alison saw to book very clearly for what it was. She liked the dialogue. Said that that wasn't something thing that drew her that the acid, to the book was that it felt like eat as they was digging deeper and deeper. So I thought we were a good fit because the dialogue is maybe, like, you know, how people I would say, like, when you're looking for new relationships, you should

leave it the rough edge of yourself. Maybe not people are always. I have heard it been it. And I think the dialogue is the rough of me in the book. And it's all very important whoever I worked with was able to, like, not only vincent tolerate that, but enjoy it and acetaminophen benefit that. Well, before, I knew that you had read Jeannie and as before I knew that Jean V had read you that she has placed you permanently on her teaching syllabus.

Before I knew that 2 would be doing various events around this book together. Back when I thought of you both entirely separate from each other, It was her book, the 1 that she came on the show for, things we didn't talk about when I was a girl that I thought of while reading the story game. Not because they're similar reads, I don't think

they are. But because easily, they're the 2 memoirs that first come to mind in terms of how formally innovative they are and the degree of risk that they both take formally, but also personally, Martha ba sells for Lit hub said of Jean book. It's Nuanced, profound, murky morally complex, truly uncomfortable in infuriating. I'm so sorry I need to call it brave, I'm still out of breath, processing, needing to discuss it. So please everyone, hurry up and read it.

You're in her approach and motive beam within the 2 books are very different. But 1 thing both book share is that as you've already mentioned today, the questions of the book's construction are very much part of the book itself. Questions of how to make the book are asked and deliberate Did over within the narratives of both books. And when I discovered that she was a huge champion of yours, and that you you're going to be in conversation with her as part of your tour.

She sort of became my undercover spy with your blessing. She went she went to your conversation with Elizabeth Male, and she recorded it on her phone, including a dog having a protracted hacking hacking fit very close to the phone's microphone at 1 point. You 2 also had an off the record Zoom interview as part of your development of your upcoming conversation for Ba magazine of which I was given access to and much more. So really a ton of the intel about today is thanks to Genie.

Here's a question for you from Genie V, about another mystery in the book beyond the memory gap. The many years when your sister in real life stopped speaking to you without explanation. Hi, Shay, and hi, David. Thank you so much for letting me be a part of this conversation. So I keep thinking about the moment in the story game. When we tell her sister. The truth is that whenever I looked at union, there was a part of me that thought, I am bad I hate myself, I shouldn't exist.

But because it was impossible to hold on to those thoughts for very long, I wished that you were gone instead. I shouldn't exist, and I wished that you were gone instead. Our common thoughts among victims of the silent treatment, especially when a loved 1 inflict a lengthy silence and the silence goes explained. As you know I'm writing a book about my experiences with my mom silent treatments.

Which is why I'm so curious to hear you talk about the silent treatments influence on your writing process, What I find so interesting in your case is that your sister silence started years before you pursued writing. So I'm also wondering if you have any sense of how her silence may have shaped you as a writer. Thank you again both of you, and I look forward to your answer, She we. Well, fifth of all, I'm so happy that

Jamie as the cushion because... Yeah. It do that she's been such a huge supporter of the book, and I love her books so much. I think that not only, you know, we're are similar in the way you describe in terms of like playing with form and the bravery to trying new forms, but also from having worked with her the un booked her, and it also just from being a read of a

book. I think that, you know, this kind of respect for the other, and the other subject activity is something that's really present and Ginny work, and that's always been something I really really end my. Because I think it's a very interesting question to play with as a memoir. What can you do to write about another person and you you recognize that they are exactly as real as you are? And in that second book you mentioned things we didn't talk about when I

was ago. I think she is exploring that question in such a powerful way. And for me, I was like so generative to read that book for. Thank you but at a under the show. In terms of how my sister silence shaped me as a writer, Think the funny thing is until I spoke to Jeannie for that interview you referenced for, a bond magazine interview, I had never thought of what my sister did to me as the silent treatment.

I had never really applied a label due the way she treated me, maybe because, there was an inability to acknowledge it for me, You know? I prefer to live in my fantasy where I was, like, this person really loves me. So somehow, this silence must be a manifestation of that love. And the only way I could make that make sense to me was to think that maybe the silent was a game hence the story game. Yeah. Because I was like, you know, I can't believe that this person doesn't

like me because we grown up together. So this must be some kind of fun game that they have created for me to play and maybe if I find exact right thing to say to her or I move in the exact right way or I cracked the code somehow, like a detective. Right? I cracked the code, and I find a key. Then the sign will end. So I could only perceive it as like, a fun exciting thing because I guess my head couldn't hold their reality that we are not that close.

So I think that that actually, maybe the way in which the silence most profoundly affected the way I write. It fact that this kind of, dynamic in the book where it's like 2 people dwelling. I think in 1 of the reviews that I read for a story game, somebody said that my sisters are worthy adversary ended exactly how I felt about her silence. I felt like she's created this home victim, I must win because she already appointed. And maybe something about that.

Gave me some creative or generated energy. You know? Because if it's a game, then there's not the news. Right? You can keep playing because you believe that deep Deepgram inside, the person loves you. Thinking both about your sister's silence towards you over the years while living under the same roof, and you creating an imagined version of her, but also how much we learned about your husband, Thomas and your marriage, and perhaps most about your parents.

I wanted to ask you how you did or didn't involve them in the making of the book or in preparation for the books arrival. When when you talked with Claire Chi, who... I presume is from Singapore too, and she says, quote, Singapore adopt a pate approach to governance that compounded with common Asian dynamics of f pie had produced a general cultural aversion to questioning one's elders.

In the book you have to reckon with how your parents, who you assert are good people could hurt you so terribly. And your answer that being a good child meant that 1 had to in order to respect one's elders, deny the parts of yourself that remember all the ways they were made to feel small or angry or afraid, and you ask what kind of love is this that will fully denies the fullness of what we can remember about another person.

And lastly, in a podcast conversation that I particularly loved, A podcast called writing stories. You you talk about how originally, you worried about whether the stories would find readers. But now that you were on tour, you were no longer worried about readers leadership or connection, you were with your readers, you were finding connection. But instead, you were worried about how family and people from your childhood would potentially react to the book. And in anticipation

of loss or rupture. You re reminded yourself of the new connections that were being made. You mentioned in that pot podcast that your parents were coming to an event at an upcoming reading on your tour, which by now has already happened, and I it get the impression there you don't say this explicitly that they haven't engaged with the book much before this. But what what conversations did you or did you have?

With any of these people who are close in your life and and who become portrayed in a personal way because you're revealing personal things about yourself in your own process. How much or how little were you willing to show them in advance of publication? And if you're open to it, how how has it gone in the end with family and friends and now that the book is out in the world? Sorry I read this book last night. It's called the words that remain by S Ga. And it's a book that my friend David

Martinez who's also a memoir. He recommended it to me because he was actually my first conversation partner at the event So before my parents were involved, not the event my parents went due, but the only event preceding that, and we were talking about our parents various reactions do our book It's actually not true that both my parents haven't engaged. My mom has engaged very deeply with the entire book. In fact, very, very

quickly. She read everything. And produce a response instant instantaneously. But my dad has not read the book. And I think because of, you know, what I was chair that this book. In some, it's my attempt to write about whom and about our family connection through that particular side of my. I think it was very painful to me that he would not actually read the entire book. And so my friend, David, who I think went through something similar, He recommended. Got to me which is a a great story. I

quite continuously they are reading this book. It's a story about how there are 2 men and they're in a relationship. But they get separated because of, prejudice against, you know, that gay relationships in Brazil, And then 1 of them writes a letter to the other 1, and the other person doesn't read it. So he just carried this letter for his whole life I know he an old man, he doesn't read it because he's in the

and he doesn't... He kind of, like, visits learning to read so that he never has been reason to open this letter.

And, you know, they're are the entire book, and the book has a story about him kind of, like, going on this journey to learn to read, Like, he goes to met class, and, you know, he slowly picks up the skills and kind of processes what happened in enough, to generate the bravery to open the letter, and throughout the in entire book, you're kind of kept on tinder hooks because I was very

curious as a reader, like, what? This letter says what in this letter because this man has lived for, like, decades, not knowing, you know, just keeping the material the physicality of the letter under the body and that's like his reminder of the past. Don't wanna give it spoiler, but I think suffice to say that that's not very important at the end. The actual content of the letter and not so important as much as the gesture reading it.

And I think that something about this this story reminds me of, like, my feelings and how my father not reading to book. Because at the beginning, yeah. I think I really wanted, like, a a certain response from him, but especially with him coming to my La even. He may not read the book, but he brought his body there. The story game is a book about going from the mind to

body. By understanding that leader body is also an equal and equally at the side of expression and of self, And I think something about just his physical presence there because he doesn't live in La. Right? He flew all the everything singapore well, to La, but it... Not only for this event, but he showed up at this event event. And I think something about that, accepting that debt is enough, for me. It's kind of, like my equivalent of opening the letter. You know...

Because I think it's for me, maybe he has been trying to give me something all my life that because I lived so much in my own head and not in my body. I was not able to receive this gift. I had to write the story. To go back and do my buddy and be, you know, your presence is enough. Thank you for coming the date event. But yeah was a long brief involved in this journey.

Yeah. No... That's beautiful ref framing though, imagining the the presence of his body of of him supporting you outside of language. Shares exactly. And I think of, you know, maybe also because of my background. Like, I would have a lot a lot more highly educated at my parents, like they also went to university, but in terms of the leap between the generations, like, you know, a lot of people in singapore about their grandparents might be illiterate,

for example. And then I went to, like, a very procedures overseas. I think there is an extent to which, like, the older generations might not be able to understand the medium of connection that is most easy for me I'm more intuitive for me personally, and something about just, like, making peace with that. Is a way of accepting them for who they are. Yeah. Well, I want to preserve both the mystery. Around the memory loss and the mystery around

your sister's silent treatment for the reader. But I do think what makes this book richer is that it isn't just the discovery of 1 oneself as a victim, but take a more sophisticated look at what victims of trauma do with trauma, which not uncommon is to reproduce it. There are ways you reproduce sort of the authoritarian environment that you are susceptible to in

the book. For instance, in in 1 great essay about going to volunteer at an eco lodge, in the Baltic, only find yourself in an exploit authoritarian scam where the work you do not only wasn't particularly ecological, it was mainly funding the owner's vacations. Or to a lesser extent you're volunteering at a Palestinian con in East jerusalem where your Palestinian coworkers were my, why you would fly across the world to wash other people's dishes for free.

But in ways that I won't go into here, the book also explores the way victims can be victim mis. The way victims can continue a chain of victim. Instead of talking about it in the book. I wanted to talk about some of what you've written about Palestine outside of the book.

You've been very outspoken on social media on behalf of Palestine and you've written on your blog about your anguish regarding the 8 months of d, disposition and ind destruction and death that has been unleashed on an already confined civilian population since October seventh. Back in late November, you say that something had died in you, watching Israel and western governments, genocide of the Palestinian people unfolding in real time. That you were so shaken that you couldn't shut up.

And you say at the end of that blog post, 6 months ago, quote, I will probably feel it until the day I die, and will probably live inside every piece of art or writing that I make from now on. Before I bring this back to the project of your book.

Let's start exterior as your book does. For instance, where you talk in your blog about the grief you felt for a political system, you thought you lived in but now realized for certain that you had never lived in, not for 1 second of your life, and where you talk about how how the prevailing notion and ideology in Singapore, the 1 that you were raised under was that leaders by definition were ben. And competent.

You've c written an article with Amir Os about some slides from Singapore ministry of education that were meant to teach students about Gaza and about the uproar and controversy that these slides caused. I wanted to make a space for you to speak about Palestine, but also perhaps share with us about the particular situation of Singapore in relation to Palestine

too? Yeah. This is another difficult 1, where, I feel like I don't I want to answer it in a evaluate I don't speak on behalf of everyone everywhere from Because there are many many people and... And actually people have very different views lenders. So I think a lot of pets that

your pushed. Right? 1 of them is the grief I feel, which actually, for me the most interesting question Arguably of the past 9 months is why is it that this grief and anger at seeing the sites that I have seen and I would say many people on Earth have seen, why is it that this thing which my body instinctively does upon seeing these horrific horrific sites. But, you, I've I've seen, like, a person's leak get shredded. I've seen, like, you know, like, really horrible things.

Why is it that somehow that instinct of feeding does not translate into the level of politics and into the level of collective action. I think for me of the question debt, nor like, profoundly disturb me, but also energizes me. And maybe that's what I meant when I said that... I think it will be there always in my writing. The level of d that I see happening in the media at the moment.

I think there is a way in which I understand for having written the story game is not really possible to d another person to that extent. Unless in some way, you also believe. That you are not human. You

know, In some way, you... It's not very positive Not very easy to d and another person representative you yourself are d because as much as you recognize your own experience of self but you are able to afford that grace to another person, and you are able to recognize that they probably feel that same way about themselves. Of, and I think for, I the status and most like, troubling thing because I've realized that many, many people around me. In this industry, that was just like Social.

And also many of my friends, Right, who are in this government menu mentioned, the singapore about government moment it has done a lot, actually the rep repressed. People who want to speak up of who just want to voice is how unhappy, how shaken they are, even that voicing, you know, it's something that's seen as a threat security and must be stamped out. And perhaps this, somebody who's is not from a social position with find it very easy to print criticize,

You know, like, all government officials. I just, like, homeless people who only care about, like, you know, efficacy and about material concerns of security indeed have no hot, you know? But I cannot say that... Because these are people Are went to school with Beside the children who were streamed with me at age night and do this stream. And I remember what they were like when we were 10 years or 11 years old I remember that, you know, we used the play game, and I remember the

deaf feeling. I remember, like, yeah. Shame when, like, the teacher called under, and they don't answer correctly. I remember like Jeff is cash. I just remember all these small thing to such a huge extent that I cannot stop

seeing them as real people. And something about reconciling debt with the level of d denuclearization that they are now executing makes me in some very set it makes me feel very, very sad, be left almost, I think for a lot of my friends because I realized that Ne feels such a great emptiness. That they can also treat other people as if they are empty containers with no soul. And, you know, I I know only feel be and set as an outsider,

I think I also empathize because... When I first started at writing the story review and the person who I was at that time. I mean, I think I would still have been, like, this is terrible. But the feeling would not have been so... It would not have been so rude it and so bone deep inside me. It would not have been a feeling that I feel every morning went out. Wake up, and I look at the news, you know, it would have just been like, yeah. This is the thing that I should say. And so I

say it. Kind all. Like, a progressive person I should say this thing so I say Okay. Yeah. But it but no, I have come from a real of, like, my stomach hurts, like my my hair hurts, like, I feel like this is turning, feeling and inside me and feel like, I must say something, You know? I I really loved some of your engagement with us and the questions that have come up for you on your blog around it. You talk about how you grew up in a a zion Christian church, and as a young adult left your faith.

Nevertheless in your blog post in October of last year you talk about with your heartbreaking over Gaza that you found yourself wanting to play old songs from your Christian passed on the guitar, something that my you because you no longer held any of these beliefs. And you even felt embarrassed showing this side of yourself to your husband who had never witnessed this part of you.

And you say, quote, I needed to sing the old songs to remember in a time where my feelings are running particularly high that the other is not out there in the world. As a thing to reject and smear and direct immense amounts of hatred towards.

It feels uncomfortable to admit this, but the other is in me actually, in some ways, it is me is a part of me that I can bring up every once in a while and still have genuinely strong feelings of connection and gratitude towards even though I no longer identify with it. And then later you say, We have to accept that both these potentials to dominate and be dominated, l dormant in every single human heart, including our own.

And when I look at the zion rhetoric that is currently flooding our news channels, what I see is a group of people who have been completely unable to accept the presence of this duality within themselves.

Even though this is all from outside the book, It does feel like this spirit animate the story game, a book that you and others have var called a book of self situation or a book about loneliness, but it's also a book about control and power where in becoming a self, you also imp the self at the same time. And I wondered if you see that connection, between the 2 that in some ways, this book is also engaging with the other in the self I think that's what the the construct of

my sister represents. Right? Because I think there is a way where at the beginning of this book. I am integrating this other into myself, but it's not a true other. You know what I mean? I think that I actually go through the entire book without once touching my true sister as you yourselves sit until the very end of the book. That's the only moment in which she is truly out, and I truly have made a little space within myself or someone who could, you know, really threaten my worldview.

You know, it's very easy I think to think you have a relationship with another person, but actually you join. Is very easy to think that you know who another person is and what they believe and what they want from you of what viewpoint they hold towards you.

And kind of maybe not paradox because I think it does makes sense that the further away you actually are from the further it is the easier and easier is to integrate this kind of, like, false cell or like your projection of the other person into you and to think that you're engaging with another person, you know, they really truly believe that... Yeah. This thing that you have is wise. Hey, Off, there's some kind of emotional energy

being exchanged between you. When, really, it's just you exchanging emotional energy of yourself. And I think the at the start of story game. This was my relationship with the other who, maybe my sister sends in for the other and with a sense of rich which, you know, I can talk about all these people. Like, you know, I can worry about people in value. Just people in barely on masse. You know Just like, as when Gigantic decor, And I think that I have a relationship

with them. You know, I think that I have very intelligent. And I do have very intelligent news it and wealth formed parts to say about them. But It's not about them. You know, it's about me actually the Every everywhere I go I see me in the other person, and I see my own insecurities and my own fears. And only be at the very, very end I'm, like, I have made in enough space just, like, 1 person. Like, the person who is closer closest doing me and, you know, who I love the

to pick up that little speech. And in terms of how relates to diana swift, I guess, probably affects years I know. But I think that often I see people engaging, you know what they say, like, the other is like this. The other is like that. But It doesn't feel like the person you're talking about is a real person or real people, you know, It feels like they're engaging often

with, like, protections. They have written. I think as a sense, you can feel that you can see that there is just 1 feeling that keep getting recurrent to in the comments. And I think in in in this case, from what I've been reading on social media. I lot yeah, you know, A lot of, feelings of of worry about being themselves of obliterated. And so I must of literary other person. But actually, how do you know, you know, how do you know what the other person things unless you talked to them?

Yeah. You you just never... You can never know. And unless you... And as you take that step out, do the real world, and you may another person. You you really, you know, they might be completely outside of the framework of references that you believe to be the whole wall. Yeah. The world is update. Think that's why would say. And there was a place composed of genuinely other people. Yeah. And without them, it's so

lonely. It's so lonely to live in a wealth of your own making, to be so no need that you were in invent people, you know, to invent people to dominate over, and then carry out that domination against their flesh and blood. Let a blood, at the wall. It's so there. It's such a lonely only position. Yeah. Do you wanna talk a little bit about some of the organizing and activism that you're doing? I would actually. So I've been organizing with a group in the Uk called Fossil free books.

We are, like, a loose kind of collective of many different people in the books industries and some of us at authors, some of us out publishing workers or, you know, they brand podcasts, for example, are reviewers of people who were at literary festivals.

And then we've all come together to kind of julie's our position as workers, to try and get the books industry here to play a role in a dives diverse project, from companies that sponsoring that is really gen genocide at the moment and also companies that have investment in fossil fuels. But I never

like to say about this. So for me, they're very rare interesting thing that I have found from organizing in this way is that, you know, the thing that actually fuck free book is asking for is we are asking the literary festival, to utilize our relationship, the relationship that they have with, for example, Bailey Gif, who is an investment firm to invest in a lot of very problematic project, They're saying, okay. You have this relationship with them. Right?

So for you use this relationship to try and ask them to dives vest of know, if we pull out our labor as workers and as authors from the literary festivals, can you use that as a bargaining trip with, you baby give and see please. Either,

our authors are not coming back. But what has happened actually as a result of that is that baby gif while some festival cut your has for baby give and then baby give it themselves just drop all the festival in the Uk including huge est like hay and Edinburgh book festival, they shut them down. No. They didn't shut the festival down. The the... The festival was going on, but then the company has the decided to cut highest of the festival, So they no longer sponsored their festival.

And as a result of that, there's been a lot of, kind of like backlash and the Uk media where people are, like, oh, you know, you want your festivals to be secure and clean And that's terrible because who's gonna find out festivals all it. And I find that this misleading of the entire campaign aims is very interesting. You know, we're talking about projections. Right? I feel like this is not at all what our campaign was asking for. We were saying you let... You don't mind bailey gift like

leave. We want you to utilize the radiation that you have with Daily give to ask them to do something different. You know, because, like, if festival I've gone around for you they, you know, We love baby care. Like we have a special relationship with a relationship of closeness. And this group not to read a cave at all of good best sign of trouble,

really good at just cut in this. And I feel like the public has chosen to see this has chosen to read it in a certain rate, Like, we want more purity. By think that, you know, it often people see you, and if they're seeing you, they only see what they want you to be. They only see that projection of you. Know, you're just talking about it. Right With was zion? I think this is happening in the Uk? Because I find it so interesting. Like, why do why aren't people? You know chosen to

a situation in this particular way. Is it because they feel insecure about their period, like, the ability to have, like, pure, a pure experience of of of the arts, you know? Because there's no ads for at all. Just to go back at a story game, kind of, like, the link because I feel like fits the wavelength blank for me, You know, and at the end of the story as a part where I talk about my relationship with my sister, and I see it many years. I thought she was so selfish.

I thought she was a really selfish bitch person. Like she was selfish bitch. I felt I had no I had no sense self. I didn't have this for this thing inside me that was able to assert and, like, stand out for myself. So when I saw it in another person, it was into. It was like, I felt extreme resentment, and I was, like, you can't have that quality, or, like, because you have

that quality, I can't have it. You know, you took like, all the selfish that's in the world, and then I have not for myself, So I've left as a selfless person. And sometimes when I see the public, kind of response to fossil free books at a wave a public has misread our campaign. That's why I'm reminded of, you know, they're like, you can afford to be morally pure of your author. And then we... We had no choice. You So we're a example. You can't be morally pure because if we can't

be no I can be. And I feel like, this for. That's a very interesting, Christian. I guess are there any British lives on it. Thank sure I would ask, you know, why? Why do you think that you can be more already pure? And that that is the purview of authors. And then you get said that you see when you see others exercising the thing that actually a very normal healthy human trait. You know, why do... Is it because you feel like you can't have that truth? And if so why.

Right? They're interesting to me. Yeah. It's interesting to me too. Well, as a final question, and in talking about your agent Allison, and how she both identified anger, buried and unspoken in your writing and how she wanted to bring it forward. You've said that your next manuscript will come from anger, but you've also said on your blog, the following, quote, Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the role played by the other in my creative process.

I wrote the story game more or less within the constraints of my own mind. And to some extent within the constraints of my own system. And the book needed that, it wanted it because it was an exploration of the coping mechanisms, a person can come up with to deal with extreme loneliness. But this new book, this second book,

I think it wants something else. It wants another in a different way than the first book did something like it needs other people in order to be written in order to find its way. Something that comes from the outside to un settle the inside. In the way that a single line of dialogue from another person can instantaneously un unsettled the entire world of assumptions you've built up inside your own head about who they are and what they want.

In light of that, I wondered if you feel comfortable sharing anything about what you're working on now or what you imagine you'll be working on next. Yeah. More that that 1 I think. So you can confirm me I always see the endpoint much, much, much. Earlier than then I see the journey. So I see, like, the final goal. Like, with the story game, for example, very early on in a process, I told someone. I think I'm gonna write a book that will be who thinks it's true and 1 that falls.

And I feel like this is the... I need to write a book about this and And then I had no idea how Was gonna do it or what the vegan would be or, you know, what journey would take me to let point in, but many of data Turned out I did write that book. And at bigger of the second book project, I feel like the final destination is motherhood. It's like a book about,

See. Can't even say what it's about. I just know that the final definition is something about being a mom or, like, having a mom, a mom's general role. And also maybe about empire, you know, again, I think I often have to go through this political lens to arrive at myself. So I feel like, the political side of that

that most appeals... Oh, I feel like it's most analogous to the experience of motherhood that I went through with my mom, it Empire where 1 person, 1 person knows everything about the other person. In in this case, I I felt like I you a lot lot of things about my mom, but she didn't really know or see me. I feel like something about that imbalance really reminds me of the dynamic of Empire. Mh. And so these 2 regrets are kind of

like weaving. And there was a a lot of other things I think that might be spinning with the book. For example, I've been thinking a lot about female friendships that I had, throughout my life. But and about how in some ways they replicate it this dynamic or, you know, they try to... Maybe they try to break away from this dynamic, but we're not so successful, and I'm curious about why And then another threat is that I feel like they're going to be interviews in this

book. So 1 of the thing Why think I'm saying about. It's like learning how to listen. I think I'm... This is actually an area where I'm not very strong because all my life, I have been able to give off this that's. And the person of things I'm this thing. But I'm just, like, constructing a story about them in my head. Finally, I think I need to know how

to listen. Like, really listen Yeah. On the other person's terms in being rather than my own, and that's the challenge, I think of the next scope. Well, the interview forum sort of helps, I think create a space for this other voice. Right? It's not the imagined other voice. It's an actual other voice. So other people's words are gonna be in your book. I think so. And I feel like that's the only way. I quit buy another but we've imagine what. But then I would just be writing this book again. I

don't want it. If you like deploy us like you tried new things. But, yeah. I mean, just to kinda derail it little little bit, like, having had that x... Be of you and the others this podcast is so it interesting for me because I feel like even if we're doing this, I'm looking at you I'm learning how to this. And, I'm trying to lay understand how you are doing the thing you're are doing and trying to, like. I don't know. Yeah. It's just very interesting think.

Yeah. That's on that's an honor to hear. Thank you for being on the show today. S we. Thank you very much. But this was really nice to feel like all your questions were so deep end thought provoking, and there were also questions that know many people have asked me before. Oh, good. Yeah. That's great to hear. I We've been talking today to Show T about her debut memoir, the story game. You've been listening to between the covers. I'm David name and your host.

Today's program was recorded at the volunteer powered, non commercial listener sponsored full strength makeshift home office be David Na. You can find more of S t at her website, t s dot com, TJ0ASHZEHUI dot com. For the bonus audio, she's recorded a, 30 minute video for us, a page by page narration slash translation of the Chinese language picture book mister Wing, accompanied by a piano performance from 1 of her childhood peers in conservatory.

This joins many long form translator conversations, readings, sounds landscapes, and kraft talks. The bonus audio is only 1 possible thing to choose from by joining them between the covers community. It's a listener supporter. Every supporter can join our brainstorm future guests and every listener supporter receives supplementary resources with each conversation.

Of things discovered while preparing for the conversation, things that we reference during it and places to explore once you're done listening. Additionally, there are a variety of other potential gifts and rewards. The bonus audio archive to the Tin house early readers leadership subscription. Getting 12 books over the course of a year, months before they're available to the general public. To a bundle of books selected by me, and sent to you.

If find out more at patreon dot com slash between the covers. Or if you prefer a 1 time donation, you can do so my paypal at 10 house dot com slash support. I'd like to thank the 10 house team, Elizabeth Tom mayo and Lisa Og in the book division, best s New York department, Becky Kramer and Publicity, in Lance Cl, the director of the summer in winter 10 house riders workshops. Finally, I'd like to thank past between the guest, poet, musician, composer, performer, and much more.

Alicia Joe Robbins for making the intro and the out for the show. You can find out more about her work, her writing, her music, her film at joe dot com. ALI cia AJ0 dot com,