`Being so open about her sexual preference] is part of what made me a strong writer with the ability to find my own truth."– Amanda Kovattana

THE need to tell her story in her own words pushed Amanda Kovattana to pen her autobiography, Diamonds in My Pocket: Tales from a Childhood in Asia (RM86).

“If I haven’t done this, I felt I would have gone crazy,” says the 51-year-old writer who was in Kuala Lumpur recently to launch the book with her mother.   

Kovattana, who is based in San Francisco, started on the book when she was 29 but only completed and published it last year.

Hers is a story of East meets West. Diamonds in My Pocket traces her life as a child of mixed marriage (her dad is Thai while her mum is ­British) growing up in Thailand and the United States. 

She has left nothing out, bringing to light the skeletons in her family’s closet – the many feuds, her great-grandfather’s 13 wives, her parents’ rocky marriage and her ­homosexuality.

“I haven’t told my family in Thailand [about the book],” she says. “My publisher is not releasing the book in Thailand for fear that my family there will find out how much I have revealed.

“It is difficult because I ­myself want to be an open book. I was tired of being an ‘exotic enigma’. I was tired of explaining myself to everyone and then, after talking, still have them misunderstand me.”

The biggest challenge she faced in writing the book is learning how to write clearly about a part of the world most Americans know ­nothing about, and still ­manage to ­intrigue the American ­readers.

That was one of the ­reasons why it took her so long to ­complete it. In the end, she took a writing course.

“I wanted to step away from psycho-analysing my life,” she says, adding that she just wanted to recreate scenes from her life, so that her ­readers could see for themselves and come to their own conclusions.  

“The worse anyone had to say about my book was that I was unemotional,” says this part-time writer who explains that as a matured writer, she looks at her life more ­philosophically than emotionally.

Part of the reason could be her job as a professional organiser helping others get organised. “I strive for a ­balance between nurturing the creative and providing structure in a harmonious setting.”

Originally trained as a graphic designer, Kovattana also has a certificate in ­construction ­technology. These skills add to her ­organising services as a designer of ­storage systems, space organiser and general handywoman.

As to her sexual ­preference, she says: “I came to ­understand my sexuality when I was in high school. At the time, I believed that to be gay would mean a life of diminished ­opportunity, thus few avenues to be successful.

“This has changed, ­especially in the United States and that is actually something positive I can say about the US, and I am proud to have been a part of that cultural shift.

“It was helpful to ­understand my sexuality so young because it gave me a passion to be free from the expectations of society even if it meant that I would sabotage my success by being so open about it.

“It is part of what made me a strong writer with the ability to find my own truth.”

That’s why she prefers non-fictions because she wants to know how the real world works.

She cites Swedish writer Steig Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) as “a good storyteller who can vividly bring to life some very interesting modern characters, [and who] also packs a lot of information into his book about how the world works today and what makes it so corrupt”.

While she would love to see her first effort turned into a movie, Kovattana states that she would fictionalise it more to save her family ­embarrassment and to make it more visual.  She is next looking into writing about her struggle to live in globalised world that she is a product of, but which she feels is doomed.

“Doomed because our lifestyle is out of balance with the planet and with nature,” she says. 

“Because of that, I feel the world is spiritually bereft and will never be fulfilling to anyone who does more than scratch the surface of life.”

Kovattana ­intends to live life to the fullest ­instead of just scratching the surface.