The Heartsick Diaspora by Elaine Chiew

Author:Elaine Chiew [Elaine Chiew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912408375
Publisher: Myriad Editions
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Heartsick Diaspora

i. Production History/Characters

Our ethnic writers group that used to meet weekly at a Caffè Nero in Bayswater upgraded itself to a Le Pain Quotidien in Notting Hill. Kevan (often mispronounced as Kevin) is our de facto leader because he takes care of all email distributions with a rather dictatorial leadership style, but he has such spiky long lashes, everyone else in the group, who is female, forgives him. He’s also an eccentric because he has us writing in strange places e.g. on a bus, while queuing at the post office, and once, at a chippie. To court our ethnically inclined muses, he says. To be at a crossroads, he says. Where flows and places interact. We’ve written while holding contorted yoga positions, or photographing bicycle racks and empty car parks with cars bisected half in, half out of the frame (hide-and-seek car, as titled). Once, at an art exhibit where the artist had an obsession for tiny animal penises as an investigation into male impotence. None of us could identify which animals were being featured—the photographs were very abstract.

There is Miranda, our ‘yogi’, with her intermittent mantrachantings, her downward dogs, her occasional dabbles into tarot card readings, and her immediate jump to alertness whenever anyone mentions their remembered dreams or personal psychological revelations. She’s Malaysian Chinese and she’s writing a story about an old woman with urinary incontinence, but can’t seem to make up her mind whether the old woman is Chinese from the old country—THE MOTHERLAND (Miranda even says this in a booming voice to emphasise)—or whether she ought to be Malaysian Chinese. Makes a difference, she says.

Well, not in Britain, it doesn’t, mutters Phoebe (who is Singaporean Chinese, hence ‘causeway’ rivalry, like Britain and France). Phoebe is the kind of touchy-feely who touches the inside of your wrist and it feels like a poke, the outside of your elbow, and it feels like a jab. She has a four-year-old daughter, and she’s writing a story about an Asian mother who raps when she’s upset. Little does she know that the old woman’s daughter-in-law in Miranda’s story is really Phoebe, and the four-year-old girl in the story is Phoebe’s precious drama queen, Priscilla (whom we secretly nickname ‘Prissy’, because she can’t stomach a single speck of dirt on her Mary Janes). Phoebe, on a typical day as she peers into your eyes: ‘May I ask how your project is going? Are you feeling momentum?’ She unloads harsh critique on an ill-written story like a case of stormy weather.

Miranda, bless her heart, has devised a code word for those of us on the receiving end of one of Phoebe’s blitzkriegs—MARLIN, as in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, when the marlin is devoured by sharks and the old fisherman is sinking into depression. MARLIN is an effective intervention protocol: a hastily gathered band of us converges upon the afflicted with chicken soup, Jewish bagels, or an array of baked goods to restore his/her ‘soul’. Miranda has an atavistic faith in the restorative powers of baked goods.

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