Review: A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand
Reviewed by: Helene Wong
Editors:
Paula Morris & Alison Wong
Publisher:
Auckland University Press
ISBN:
9781869409470
Date Published:
13 May 2021
Pages:
474
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$49.99
First, this is a beautiful book to hold. A silk-like texture, a cover design by Keely O’Shannessy, evocative of Asian landscape painting and a weight that banishes any assumptions that Asian writing in Aotearoa would only fill a slim volume. It’s an anthology that says, Let Seventy-five Writers Bloom.
Those writers span the ages from teens to 80s. Some names you may recognise: Gregory Kan, Rose Lu, Nina Mingya Powles, Chris Tse. Others are making a name for themselves through online sites. Some have won awards. Included are published pieces, excerpts from longer works and works-in-progress. All writers had no more than two full-length publications at the time of selection, hence their description as “new.”
To corral them under the umbrella of “Asian” might seem problematic. It’s a term convenient for policymakers and racists and is rightly resisted. Yet here, perhaps for the first time, is proof that the sum of the parts can be greater than the whole. In the short introductions prefacing each writer’s work, we are confronted with a profusion of mixed parentage and of countries either born in, passed through or currently resident in: Japan, Malaysia, United Kingdom, South Korea, Bangladesh, South Africa, Fiji, Indonesia and more. (The only region that seems to be missing representation, with the exception of Fiji, is Pacifica.) These globally mobile writers have fetched up in Aotearoa with multiple identities that not only reveal the full kaleidoscope of what the term “Asian” encompasses but transcend it.
They also unquestionably expand the meaning of “migrant contribution” to include the creative as well as economic. While some of these writers possess parent-appeasing qualifications (medicine, law, music, physics, engineering), many have subsequently turned to courses in creative writing. And the fact that editors Paula Morris and Alison Wong have chosen to limit A Clear Dawn’s focus to poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction implies that other voices in other genres (film, theatre, journalism, nonfiction) are also out there, busily enriching our culture.
As you might expect, themes common to the migrant experience predominate: “home” and “not-home;” memories of a childhood in another culture; family relationships, especially with grandparents; food as comfort, ritual or marker of difference; identity and, of course, racism. They are the universal consequences of displacement but whether these writers express them with anger, sadness or humour, or by interrogating their internal conflict, they are breaking free of the pressure laid so heavily on their forebears to be a silent minority. They aren’t afraid, either, of taboo subjects such as sex, gender and suicide. They have claimed their voices and each has their own idiosyncratic take on those common themes.
Politics was another subject shied away from in the past. Fears about Communism kept mouths shut, and “being political” was frowned upon in a model minority. Politics, however, is deeply entwined in migration. It drives the push, the pull, and the reception at the other end, and this generation is less afraid of speaking out. Sherry Zhang’s I cannot write a poem about China traverses her confusion of loyalties and identity as a Chinese Kiwi and causes her to wonder, “Am I a spy?” Tze Ming Mok reflects on her Cantonese-Malaysian father’s response to the race riots in Malaysia in 1969 and on the military career of her maverick grandfather. In Lorry heaven, Han Mai Nguyen offers a simple, devastating memoriam to the Vietnamese migrants who died en route to the United Kingdom in 2019.
Yet emerging with confidence from behind the admonitions to “keep your head down” can still be difficult. Thus, writing allows a person to stay somewhat in the shadows while pouring the pain, frustration and ambivalence out onto the page. Might this explain the apparent abundance of Asian writers taking creative writing courses and appearing online?
Writing is also the perfect refuge for an outsider, someone on the margins, as migrants so often feel they are. It turns them into powerful observers. The result of all that fine honing of the senses and insight into human behaviour is that it allows them to push the boundaries of “Asian migrant experience” into something much more universal. Angelique Kasmara’s excerpt from her novel Isobar Precinct (due for publication this year) exhibits an intimate sense of the milieu of Karangahape Road while only casually referencing her “Asianness.” Feby Idrus’s Monster is a shrewdly observed take on being a stepmother, though with the added wrinkle of being an Asian stepmother. In Kwong Tao Uncle, Eva Wong Ng transforms a Chinese child’s point of view into a mature understanding of humanity.
There are some vivid imaginations at play here. Yan Tan Danny Lam subverts the Asian preoccupation with food in his three selections, conjuring highly visual and sensuous episodes out of the territory of dreams. In Fission, Nicole Tan’s work of speculative fiction, we find ourselves plunged into a detailed futuristic world that explores gender and the trials of love. Both, as with others in the collection, have a strong filmic sensibility. We see it as we read it. Sometimes we also hear it, for example in the work of Xiaole Zhan, and Grace Lee, both of whose flowing rhythmic prose begs to be read aloud.
Appreciation is due to the editors for encouraging the use of non-English script for names and specific words in the texts instead of romanisation. It’s a smattering and causes no difficulty for the reader – the context usually supplies the meaning – but it’s an appropriate step towards normalising cultural respect. Also appreciated is the listing in the back of the book of previously published works by the writers, although it needs to be read in conjunction with the introductory biographies as it is not exhaustive.
As with any anthology, this is a book for dipping, not skimming. Each selection demands full attention and rewards more than one reading. Some take you by the hand into their worlds with remarkably controlled storytelling; others of a more experimental or surreal bent make you work harder, requiring a retracing of steps before giving up their intent. But by the end, reflected on as a whole, there is a palpable sense that you have witnessed the beginnings of a redefinition of not just “Asian” writing but also the future of Aotearoa/New Zealand writing.
Reviewed by Helene Wong
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