Tash Aw’s book The Harmony Silk Factory has made the long-list for the Man Booker Prize, thus making Malaysians proud. But he’s not the first Malaysian writer to get international exposure. Thirteen years ago, BETH YAHP's The Crocodile Fury, whose story is located “somewhere in Southeast Asia”, was published in Australia. It has since been translated and published in several European languages. But the award-winning novel by this Malaysian writer only reached our shores two years ago. Her short fiction, essays and articles have also appeared in numerous publications in Australia, Southeast Asia and Europe, and she has edited or co-edited several collections of stories and essays. Before heading back to Sydney for a doctorate degree at her alma mater, the 41-year-old writer, editor and teacher speaks to JACQUELINE ANN SURIN about the struggles of being a writer and the business of writing.

theSun: Could you tell us how you got to publish your first novel The Crocodile Fury in 1992?
Yahp: Oh, what a long story! [chuckles] Should I start at the beginning? When I was a child, I always wanted to be a writer…? I’m just kidding [laughs].

You didn’t?
I did, actually. Ya, so I knew pretty early on that I wanted to be a writer. Either a writer, or an artist, or a nun, or a thief [laughs], those were my choices.

Yeah, but The Crocodile Fury was published in my late 20s and I’d been working on it full-time for about two years. Originally, I had been contracted for a book of short stories. This was before I got a collection together. So, I had maybe, like, five short stories, and then I was contracted by Angus & Robertson, which was later bought up by HarperCollins.

And so, The Crocodile Fury was actually one of the stories that I was writing for this collection, which just kind of grew and grew and grew, and became a monster.

Actually I wrote it very soon after going back to Sydney from Malaysia. I had spent about two, three months in Malaysia, and went back to Sydney and wrote this story in the night… without knowing any of the characters… it just came out.

And it’s really interesting because the first paragraph is the same, and the last paragraph is the same. And it has all the main characters bar one in that short story. It was an impossible short story. I tried to publish it as a short story, but it never worked. It was too compact, made no sense.

And probably most of the writing of the book was actually teasing out the entry points that that short story gave me.

You said you wrote it after going back to Sydney. What was going on in your life at that point?
I was already working [in Australia]. After I finished uni [University of Technology, Sydney], I took on all sorts of jobs, very low-paying jobs [laughs]. Because I’d made a decision that I wasn’t going to have another career — writing was going to be my main career. And unfortunately, writing doesn’t pay very much especially if you are an unknown, [chuckles] and you just finished studying.

Um, I can remember actually getting my first cheque from a story that I published. It was A$30. It was amazing getting it! But, you know, if a short story will pay you A$30 — it’s not going to take you very far!

So I had a variety of jobs. You know, the usual story. Shop assistant in a book shop, which is really great because you got to read all the books and buy them discounted. I also worked delivering pamphlets, as a packer in a small business that sold greeting cards, and I was an artist’s assistant, which was fun. Ya, all sorts of different things.

I was doing all that and writing at the same time. And also, partaking in the writer’s life, which you are advised to do if you want to be a writer. Which means, going to readings, listening to other writers, published writers, going to talks. It’s kind of getting an idea about what that world is like.

So, how did it come about that your short story was published as a novel?
The publishers were very happy to hear that I was writing a novel, and said, to me, ‘We’d rather have a novel than the short stories.’

And how were you found? Was it at a reading? Did a talent scout discover and commission you?
No. Although, I had like, maybe, two or three people, editors from publishers, who had seen me at readings, who came up and gave me their cards and said, ‘Send stuff’.
But, I finally went with one of my lecturers, who was also my mentor. Drusilla Modjeska is her name. She’s a feminist writer but was also, at that time, teaching at the university where I was studying, and a wonderful teacher. And she went on to work as commissioning editor for Angus & Robertson, and so I went with them because of her.

What do you think it takes to get published? What role does marketing and publicity play in the publishing world today? How easy or difficult is it to get published?
Well, I’d say the thing you probably need most is perseverance [chuckles]. Ya, I always tell people who are sending their work out to kind of be very clear about their work rather than being swayed by the market.

This was actually what I was trying to tell my [creative writing workshop] class last night. I felt like such a, you know, like a damp cloth on their enthusiasm because they were going, ‘Oh, the market! The market! Bestsellers! We want to be bestsellers!’ [laughs]

But, for sure, there is that pull, as well, right? The pull of the market in terms of what sells?
But even publishers will tell you that it’s very difficult to predict what will be a bestseller. I mean, they take shots, and often, it’s a gamble.

You know, the biggest bestseller of all time, I think, was the sequel to Gone with the Wind — I can’t remember the name of it — which sold an incredible number of books internationally. Fastest selling novel in its first week of publication, and then [it] kind of disappeared because it’s an entirely forgettable book. So, that was a book completely driven by marketing and promotion.

I mean, it’s self-fulfilling in a way. If a publisher pays a lot of money to promote a book, the likelihood is that it will sell. I think publishers take pot shots. You know, they kind of predict as well as gauge what people will buy and what the trend will be.

So, you would tell aspiring writers to be very clear about what they are trying to say in their stories rather than worry too much about what the market is calling for?
Yeah, yeah. I would say, there is a reason that you are writing. And, it has to be a balance between an inner reason, and an outer reason which is the marketing side, you know, the world of selling books — that dream of prestige that is attached to being a writer, the romance of it. All of that exists on the outside. And well and good, you know, good luck to people who can sell lots of books and live that dream.

But, you also need something else inside of you to produce the work, and to produce work that is true. Rather than produce products for a market. I am always telling people that the work has to be true rather than something that is packaged to be sold.

And do you think that something that is ‘true’ will eventually get sold?
No. Well, it depends on what you mean by get sold. Do you mean like a publisher will take it up and you get lots of money from it?

Yes.
Then, the answer is definitely, ‘No’. I mean, there are so many wonderful books which are produced which appear and then disappear, you know. And then, the author dies in amazing poverty [chuckles], and then after they are dead, somebody discovers this amazing work, and it’s published, and becomes a classic.

There are also books that are published — like John Kennedy O’Toole who wrote A Confederacy of Dunces — couldn’t get published in his lifetime. He wrote two books, committed suicide. And then later, his mother sent it off to publishers, it got picked up, and it’s still in print, like years and years later.

There’s also Zora Neale Hurston, a Black American writer who was very well known in her time, and published a string of wonderful novels. Their Eyes Were Watching God was one of them. Have you read that?

No, I haven’t.
It’s fabulous. In fact, I just discovered her this year. One of the great books I’ve read this year — browsing in one of KL’s secondhand bookshops. And, she died in poverty. She was a maid. And kind of just fell out of favour. Her work was not popular. And then, it got retrieved, mostly by Alice Walker in the 1970s, and now it’s considered one of the great classics of Black American writing.

So, I would say, it’s not the market that determines what stays with us, and it shouldn’t be the market that determines how you write something.

I mean, fine if you want to chase that way of life. If you do want to write a bestseller, it can be done. There are lots of how-to books on how to write a bestseller [laughs]. It’s not easy, I’m not saying it’s easy, at all. But I’m saying that even the people who write bestsellers will tell you that it has to come from, it has to be, something else, it can’t just be the market.

When you say, to write something ‘true’,  what do you mean? True to yourself? True to the character?
I think most people who want to write have a  kind of impulse or an instinct which drives them to want to say something. You know, because it’s a crazy job. If you take away the idealisation of writing, take away the glamour of the bestseller —  and most writers don’t have that experience of being a bestseller — if you take away all of those trappings, basically, it’s [a] very lonely occupation.

You have to be obsessive, and kind of, a little bit anti-social. [French novelist] Flaubert used to stay up all night, drinking coffee and writing. [Franz] Kafka never went out — except to the bank! [laughs] I’m exaggerating, of course.

But a lot of the actual work of writing involves sitting somewhere writing by yourself, engaged with imagined people in an imagined landscape. I mean, you might be writing about Kuala Lumpur 2005, but it would still be an imagined landscape that you have to build word by word, sentence by sentence, in the universe that you are constructing on paper.

So, it’s quite lonely, you know, and quite often a tedious job, and you have to kind of be able to sustain yourself in that role, and sustain the work as well.

So, I guess, in terms of truth, you really have to go into the deep places in your self and find out what is there that drives you to create.

Actually, the idea of the true thing that I’m talking about is not connected to the idea of truth [chuckles]. It’s something personal, you know.

And the true thing that you are talking about is not necessarily marketable?
No. In fact, it’s quite often not marketable. Because, quite often you don’t even know what it is. And the reason that you are engaged in this crazy job is because you are chasing it. You are actually trying to find it.

In fact, Virginia Woolf talks about having a glimpse of something as though it was a creature rising up from the depths of the ocean, and she glimpsed it once, a slight movement. She says it much better than I am paraphrasing it. It’s quite a famous passage in her journal where she’s talking about the idea for The Waves. It wasn’t even an idea at that time, it was just a kind of feeling, a thinking in motion, which gave rise, many years later to this wonderful novel, The Waves.

And she says, the coming of that novel, how she wrote it, was a kind of reverie, and then a kind of pursuit, of actually trying to find that thing that rose up from the depths. You can’t actually see it, and you don’t know what it is and you don’t know when it’s coming again. And, I guess, when I say the ‘true’ thing, that’s what I’m talking about. It’s a search that every writer has to undergo.

But once you are published, is it easier to get published again?
Well, it depends on how your first book does. You know, it’s heartbreaking — these may be old statistics, I’m not quite sure now what they are, but I’d be surprised if they have changed very much — but, you know, the shelf life for a new book is actually six weeks.

A new book comes into a bookshop, and if it doesn’t sell in six weeks, it’s returned. And that’s heartbreaking because you might have spent five years working on this book, but because it wasn’t chosen by the publisher to be one of their leading titles, it was published quietly. This happens to many a book — it comes out, and then, just quietly disappears.

But, actually, once you have a publication out on your CV, it is easier. There’s more chance that publishers and editors will actually look at your next work.

I should also say that not all editors and publishers are in the money game. There are many, many publishers and editors out there who are in the game because of a love of literature. A kind of mad, desperate love, maybe.
 
Despite your being Malaysian and your novel receiving the 1993 Victorian Premier’s Prize for First Fiction, and the Ethnic Affairs Commission Award, it wasn’t until two years ago that your book was available here. Is there an explanation for why it took so long to reach Malaysia?
Um, it was actually picked up in Singapore, quite a while ago. Maybe 10 years ago. So, it actually came out with Heinemann Asia. They distribute in Malaysia, so they actually asked for the right to distribute in Malaysia/Singapore.

I don’t know why.  I wasn’t active… I’m one of those authors, you know, you write something, you publish it, and then it’s gone. For me, I’m not very interested in trying to get my book published elsewhere.

And all the other translations and publications that I’ve had, I haven’t pursued them. They’ve just arisen out of chance. So, I didn’t actively pursue getting my book published in Malaysia. But at the same time, I never had any interest from anybody in Malaysia wanting to publish the book here.

So, the Malaysian publisher who picked it up three years ago is Pak Chong [from PJ-based Gerakbudaya Enterprise]. Heinemann Asia had the distribution rights for a few years and then they didn’t reprint, so, the rights lapsed and came back to me. So, I actually gave the rights to Pak Chong to publish in Southeast Asia.

It’s very interesting that he picked it up because it’s still the only fiction title that he has. He’s not a fiction publisher! He’s very cute. Every time he sees me, he kind of scratches his head, and says, ‘No royalties lah! Very bad, very bad.’ [laughs]
I mean, I really like it that a small publisher has picked it up in that way. Because, obviously, Pak Chong is a publisher who publishes from the heart. I mean, he’d love to have a bestseller [chuckles], and I think he was probably looking at me and thinking, ‘Oh, next book!’ but I’m so slow.

Does it bother you at all that your book took so long to reach Malaysia, and your story is located in Malaysia and you are Malaysian?
Um, [long pause], no. Interesting question.

Actually, what I would like to happen, and what does bother me, is the fact that it’s translated into European languages but it hasn’t been translated into any Asian languages. And I would love [for] it to be translated into Malay, although a comment that I’ve had when I’ve raised this, is: ‘Why would anyone want to read that book in Malay?’ [laughs]

I don’t know what the answer to that is, because I really don’t know what people read in terms of novels in Malay. Or Chinese.

There was actually a local publisher interested in translating it into Chinese but it turned out in the end that it’s too large. If it were a smaller book than it is, I think it would actually be translated a lot more. But the fact that it’s a big book and they have to pay the translator just kind of pushes the cost over. I mean, this is what the local Chinese publisher said to me.

But, it’s also been said by European publishers because when you translate something into a Romance language, for example, it becomes, like, one third longer. So, the book in French and Italian, it’s enormous! It’s two-and-a-half inches thick.

How and why does an Asian novel like The Crocodile Fury capture the interest of the Western community and yet it hasn’t quite taken off in the Asian market?
I think there’s probably a longer tradition of translations of interesting Asian works [there]. Although having said that, my European publishers were really happy to find me because they were actually looking for material from Asia, and hadn’t found any.

It’s interesting how I got picked up by my first European publisher. By chance, as I was saying.

I went to the International Feminist Book Fair in Melbourne, and a lot of international publishers came. Actually, I have to thank a Malaysian girl for my first European publication. You know, [Tan] Beng Hui, she was at this fair. I didn’t know she was there. And I was just walking down the aisle, a bit forlorn, because it’s very big, and can be quite confusing, and there were so many authors, so many writers, so many events going on there.

And then I hear this shout, ‘That’s Beth Yahp! You should grab her!’ And I was, like [looks perplexed], ‘Who’s that?’ And it turned out to be Beng Hui and she was with somebody who knew the Dutch publisher, and so the Dutch publisher, says, ‘Come with me. I’m so happy to meet you.’ Because they had been looking for a book to become their 125th title. They were called Novib and they are a publisher attached to Oxfam. That made their publishing list much more international. They had lots of African writers, South Americans, and they were looking for Asian writers.

So, that’s how I first got published in Holland. And then, that Dutch publisher introduced me to a Spanish woman who had just set up a literary agency in Barcelona and she was specialising in Asian African writers, and then, ya, various other translations happened.
 
Sort of like a domino effect.
Ya. I mean, the main thing is that you continue working. It’s not like you publish a book and then you spend all your time trying to get that book published elsewhere.

I mean, that’s the way I’ve always looked at it. Because I’d spent quite a long time working on that book, in isolation, and ended up becoming very anti-social and un-socialised [chuckles] — I was living in the mountains and was quite isolated then.
I was living with a partner at that time, and he would teach in Sydney half the week, so I would have half a week where I saw nobody and talked to nobody.

And I was just, like, you know, in communion with my characters [chuckles]. I was working very intensely and so, after two years of that, because I worked on it full-time for two years, I just decided I wanted to do something else, which for me meant, actually, teaching.

I became a writer-in-residence in a community centre in a working class area in Sydney. So, that meant lots of interaction with lots of people! Mainly [with] kids who had very interesting stories to tell, and also troubled kids. Coz all the kids who wanted to get out of class came and did my writing class [laughs].

Ya, that was a choice I made — to do something entirely different. But, then at the same time, still working at writing, at chasing that true thing. Which can take different forms, because then I started writing more non-fiction, started to edit also much more, and also to teach.

Was the novel in any way an account of your own childhood and a way to reclaim your own history in Malaysia?
It’s a work of fiction, Jackie! [laughs]

My childhood…  well, you know, it’s inevitable that a part of yourself actually makes its way into whatever you are writing. It’s inevitable that characters you create contain germs of yourself. In that sense, I would say there might have been things that I saw in my childhood that made it into the book.

But, the writing process is also a transformative process. So, if you are saying, are there characters in the book that come from life? Then, no. There are elements of characters that come from life.

I mean, the image that started that book was actually the image of the grandmother telling stories, which is an image from my childhood. Coz I had a grandmother who was a fabulous storyteller and also a very tough storyteller because she used stories as a kind of reward and punishment for us kids.

So, it’s really that idea — the storyteller having power over the listener [being] one of the main themes of the book — which came from that image of my grandmother refusing to carry on the story if you were bad. She would say, ‘I’m not telling anymore. That’s it.’ [chuckles]

The book is all about bullies, really. You know, people ask me what’s it about, and I was joking, saying it was about convent girls running around in the jungle having fun. But the thing that interested me in that book was exploring power structures and hierarchies, and also how the people who owned the stories, who have ownership of the way stories are told, are the people who have power.

Are you able to make ends meet by being a writer?
Well, solely from writing? Errr, no. Which is why I did so much teaching in Paris, and which is why I have to do a bit of teaching in Malaysia, too [laughs]. But that’s just bad luck. It was bad luck that my powerbook got stolen, and I had to replace it very fast. My whole office disappeared.

Would you say that your sense of national and cultural identities has changed from living, working and writing abroad?
Aren’t they things that change anyway? Even if you don’t write, live and work abroad?  I mean, national identities are constructed. Identities are constructed.

And also, I subscribe to the idea of identity as something that is constantly in the making. I mean, we are kind of constantly negotiating who we are, where we are. [It’s] to do with inner kinds of experiences but also to do with the milieu that we are in and how people define us. That thing about being called something. Does that make you the thing that you are called? So, [pauses] I guess, the short answer is, no [laughs loudly].

What do you think is the role of the creative writer? What drives and inspires you to write?
A student made an interesting comment last night. And it’s very interesting because it’s a very quiet student but she became very passionate talking about fiction, she said it is not just something that’s made up but something that resonates with the kind of deep-felt, big themes of, you know, good and evil. I mean, what struck me was this idea of fiction as being something that’s just made up [chuckles].

You know, it’s that word ‘just’ there, and the idea that the made-up actually doesn’t tell you anything about the world that you live in. I guess what I’m saying is that the role of the writer or any creative person, for me, is to provide a reflection on the society that they live in. When we talk about fiction, ‘just’ fiction, I mean, it’s like a mirror. Salman Rushdie has talked about this. That the world that the writer or the artist shows to the world is often a mirror image of the world, seen from a different perspective. And sometimes, that mirror image can show you a truth that you can’t see when you look at the world bare-eyed.

And the role of all fiction has been to talk about the human condition, and what constitutes it, what burdens it and to kind of reflect human-ness, and bring people back to that.

Because we can forget about those kinds of things when we are just running around caught up in the mechanics of modern cosmopolitan living. We don’t have time to reflect on what it means to be human. Or to live in an environment that is constantly under siege in terms of quality of life.

What do you think of the local literary scene? Do you think Malaysian English creative writing is heading anywhere?
I’m hesitating because I don’t feel like I know this scene very well. I think just from readings that I’ve gone to and the classes that I’ve run that there’s some interesting work being done here. Real interesting work.

And I think there’s also an energy here, an enthusiasm. And it would be good to see that kind of energy and enthusiasm and the kind of work that is already being done, kind of, harnessed and see it result in something… I’m not sure what that thing is, actually.

I mean, we can’t help talking about markets and publishing, but I’ve just been encouraging everybody to self-publish. Coz, like last night, we were talking about outlets for people writing fiction — there are not that many in Malaysia for writing in English. And yet, the students have a lot of energy and are keen to write and keen for their work to be heard or read. And, so for me, you know, it’s like, ‘Okay, if you’re keen on getting read, just do something about it.’ I mean, that’s how movements get created, when people have the energy to actually start things and keep it going.

And now, with the means of production [that we have], producing is actually much easier because you can practically do it all with your little iBook. Distribution is still a problem, but there are various means of getting around that.

I think there’s a lot of potential. I think people are probably not so sure about how to go about things. And again, my comments are based on [a] very narrow experience; I haven’t actually looked at the literary scene as a whole.

But, I have a sense that the idea of writing and being a writer, and kind of leading a writing life, is so new here to most people. Most people here are at a stage where it’s a dream, you have a dream of being a writer but you really don’t know what the steps are that need to be taken to get there. And so, what we probably need is a sharing of information. And also a kind of sharing of possibilities.

And what I’m really comparing this to is when I was a student and learning the craft of writing but also kind of learning how the writing scene and the publishing scene and the small magazines scene worked. And so, we were doing things like producing work ourselves and writing stuff, and then sending it off to small magazines. And there were a lot of small magazines around. And that’s the thing that I’m asking myself. Where are the small magazines here which are run by students? You know, because they are really the training ground for new writers and also they are the means by which new writers get their work seen. Where are all the readings with open mike sections where the new writers can go up and listen to established writers and read and be heard on the same platform? Because we used to do that. Famous writers or people who were more experienced would be reading on the official list and there would always be an open mike section where students could go up. And then you have the experience of reading your stuff in public and then you get to talk to the more established writers and a connection gets made. And then you go and listen to authors speaking, um, you do writing workshops, you send your stuff out. So, there’s quite a lot of turnover with all this stuff happening…

It’s not just like kind of dreaming about it, sitting in your room by yourself, in isolation. That’s very hard! I mean, I think that’s very, very hard, to begin writing, in isolation. So, that’s the kind of stuff I would love to see happening here.

And this is not about immediately making big bucks [chuckles] because a lot of small magazines run on the smell of an oily rag and the enthusiasm of the people who put it together. Contributors don’t get paid. But those small mags actually lead on to other things.

For me, the thing that rescued me from these low-paying and soul-destroying jobs was actually a grant [from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts]. It was a small grant but it gave me the time to actually produce some work, and it’s true that if you don’t have the time, you can’t actually produce a big body of work.

Malaysian author Tash Aw has recently received tons of media publicity. He, like you, was published overseas before becoming known in Malaysia. Does that say anything about the lack of support within Malaysia for new or even established writers? What can we do about it?
I think it’s doubly hard to write in English here because the majority of the readership is not English in this country. Which is why I’m actually quite surprised there’s not much more translation happening between languages. Work in English, why isn’t it translated into Chinese or even Malay? I think there’s a lot more work to be done in that area. And I’m just quite surprised that people are quite happy to keep the categories almost watertight.

Do you know how many copies of Crocodile Fury have sold already in Malaysia?
Very few [chuckles]. Can’t remember. Pak Chong just told me. I’ve blocked it out from my mind already [laughs].

Do you think taking a writing course or enrolling in writing school helps someone become a writer?
I think it helps in the sense that you immediately become a part of a community. A kind of mini community of people who are interested in the same thing and who give each other support and are also critical readers of each other in a supportive but honest way.  I think that’s a major, major help.

I think the main thing that you learn when you go to a writing class or you take part in a workshop is that you are not alone [chuckles]. It’s actually very hard. I keep saying this but it is very hard to write in isolation.

The other thing that you learn, I think, through readings and attempting the writing exercises, is that you realise that it’s actually not very hard [laughs].

What are your immediate plans for the future? There has been mention of a second novel.
Hahaha, there’s always been mention of a second novel!

Is that close to completion?
No [still laughing].

What will it be about?
Well, I don’t know if there’s a second novel, actually. I mean, I’ve been working on various things, some of which haven’t been working that well, and then I think I’ve been moving around too much and perhaps it’s time to be quiet and kind of not be in the world as much as I have been.

How long have you been back in Malaysia for, this time round?
Since December of last year.

And why were you back here this time round?
Well, because last year I came back and it kind of struck me that it was possible to live here [chuckles] which it hadn’t seemed so to me previously. So, I came back really to try it out.