Short story “Neighbours” used as an e-couse assignment!

This is for those who have always wondered how their short story would look like as an exam question, or in this case, as an assignment worth 40% of their TESL mark!  I’ve been fortunate that quite a few of my stories from Lovers and Strangers Revisited have been taught throughout Malaysia in various universities, private colleges and even SPM literature (secondary school), and one story was even picked up by the University of Cambridge International Examination (CIE), an excerpt from an earlier version of “Waiting for My Father to Crash” from 25 Malaysia Short Stories, Best of Silverfish new Writing 2001-2005.  A check for £170.00 is now on the way, thank you.  (It was supposed to be three times that amount, but I just found out today that the exam question was never used electronically - on the web or for CD's - just as a printed examination paper.) 

 

Yet, in all this time, I’ve never actually seen the exam question of any of my stories or how it appeared in the actual examination until today when I stumbled upon an online link for an e-course via Asiaeuniversity, out of Kuala Lumpur that used my short story “Neighbours” in their TESL Masters program.  This is the same story that was taught in SMP literature 2008-2010, published in Thema in the US, adapted as a play, and the subject of the 2010 New Straits Times article, “Are you Mrs. Koh?”   Here is the Story Behind the Story link, too. 

ASSIGNMENT 2 MAY 2011 SEMESTER
SUBJECT CODE	:	ETL642
SUBJECT TITLE	:	Teaching Literature in English As A Second Language
LEVEL	:	Master

INSTRUCTIONS TO STUDENTS

1) This assignment carries a 40% weightage towards the final grade.

2) Your answers should be typed on A4 paper using I Times Roman, 12 font sizes and 1.5 line spacing.

3) Your answers must be submitted to your Academic Facilitator before / on EXAM WEEK.

4) Online students to submit as attachment to email: secs@aeu.edu.my

A. THE TASK

This assignment is based on a practical experience where you are required to plan, teach and reflect upon a literature lesson. To fulfill this requirement, submit a bound portfolio to your facilitator based on (a) planning, (b) teaching and (c) self-evaluation of a single lesson based on a given short story. For this assignment, you are required to read the following:

(a) The short story Neighbours by Robert Raymer. [attached]

(b) Material in reading package assigned for the course, as well as other reference texts on teaching short stories to ESL students e.g. Benefits of Using Short Stories in the EFL Context by Erkaya (2005).

As you plan your work you are encouraged to think about the Malaysian ESL learner and how you, as a teacher, can facilitate students’ interactions with the text. You may draw ideas from reference texts on the literature instruction, discussions with colleagues and your own classroom experiences. [40 marks]
 
B. GUIDELINES FOR ASSIGNMENT Use the following guidelines to complete this assignment. The portfolio that you are required to submit should include all of the areas listed below (1-5) and there is no page limit. Organize your portfolio using appropriate headings and section markers.

1. Identify a group of students

To begin, identify a group of ESL students (minimum 4) whom you can teach for a period of 40-60 minutes. They may be students from your class or young adults who live in your neighbourhood. Write a detailed description of these students, including language proficiency (their grades for UPSR/SRP/SPM), family/socioeconomic background and reading interests.

2. Write a lesson plan

Write a lesson plan to teach the short story Neighbours by Robert Raymer. You can either use the whole story or part of it for the lesson. The plan is for one 40-60 minute lesson, inclusive of one or two activities. Organize your written lesson plan according to the (i) objectives, (ii) steps and (iii) assessment format. Remember to cite references for photocopied or downloaded material.

3. Give a rationale for selected activities

Using your knowledge of the pedagogy of literature and your students’ background, give a rationale for your choice of activities included in the lesson plan.

4. Teach your students

Teach the students using the lesson plan you prepared (as in 2 & 3) above. You are required to make an audio/video recording of the lesson. (Reminder: you are required to use the short story Neighbours for this lesson.)

5. Evaluate your lesson

Write an evaluation of your lesson based on the audio/video recording. Remember that this assignment is based on experience and learning, and that you will not be penalized for having conducted a lesson that has a few flaws. Listen to yourself in the taped recording (audio/video), concentrating on your instructional language, interaction with text, student response as well as pacing. Focus on what happened, and not on what you wish you had done. Present your evaluation in the form of a reflective personal account using the structure below. 

(i) Teaching Effectiveness: What did you do to find out if objectives of the lesson were achieved? What was the most effective part of your lesson? What did you plan or do that worked particularly well for your students? What went wrong? Was the short story appropriate for the students level of English proficiency? What did you do to help students understand the story? Did you explain literary elements well? What did the assessment show?

(ii) Assessment of Learning and Student Response: How did you ascertain that students understood and were able to apply what they have learnt in the lesson? Which literary elements of the story did they understand/not understand? What did your students think or feel about the short story you chose? Did you plan activities that were interesting for your students? How did they respond to the activities you had planned?

(iii) Improvement: If you were asked to do the lesson all over again, what would you do differently? How would you change or improve upon your approach to the teaching of the short story your chose? What advice would you give a colleague about teaching short stories to ESL students?

C. SOURCES OF INFORMATION

It is important to always cite the sources of your information in your assignment. Note that if your work is found to be a result of plagiarism and/or copying, it will be rejected and you will be given zero marks (0) for this assignment.

                                                  END OF QUESTION FOR ASSIGNMENT 2

"Neighbours" A short story by Robert Raymer  (New link to the story.  The MPH version has been revised and is now present tense.)

                                                   #  #  #

With the new French version out any day now, should be interesting if any of stories from Trois autres Malaisie gets used in an exam. Just remind me to charge them!

*Update, the 20th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

Autographing Books at Tun Jugah and Country Number Twelve!

This just came up at the last moment, but Borneo Tom and I are autographing our books at Tun Jugah here in Kuching today (Saturday) and Sunday 11-4. So if you know anyone in the Kuching area that may be interested, please have them drop by. Next week, I’ll be conducting two workshops in KK and signing more autographs.  This is the best part about being an author, signing those autographs.  Of course, cashing that royalty check is pretty nice, too.  Right now the sums are in Malaysian Ringgit, later this year I’ll be earning them in Euros and that’s a nice feeling.  Of course a mid six-figure to seven-figure advance on one of my novels would look pretty nice in my bank account.  It has happened to some of my friends and to other writers that Tom knows.   

“Home for Hari Raya” has just been accepted in Istanbul Literary Review, making Turkey the twelfth country that has published at least one short story from Lovers and Strangers Revisited.  I had suggested that they use the link to The Story Behind the Story. That’s the 80^th publication of one of those stories, which I find absolutely amazing! “Home for Hari Raya” a sentimental favorite of mine finally breaks out of Malaysia.  Since I recently rewrote all of the stories for the French translation, I want to start submitting them again.  Hey, you never know.  

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

“On Fridays” from Lovers and Strangers Revisited—my 100th Short Story published!

“On Fridays” from Lovers and Strangers Revisited—my 100th Short Story published!—will be reprinted in Hong Kong-based Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. Cha is also providing a link to my blog “On Fridays: The Story Behind the Story” sending the Story Behind the Story blog series international with its first literary magazine connection. “On Fridays” has now been published 13 times!

Amazingly this is the 78th (now 81) publication of one the *17 stories in Lovers and Strangers Revisited. Recently I reconciled all of my short story publications, discarding those that were previously accepted but never published (I had several from LSR, including “Mat Salleh” in the US, a big disappointment). I thought the LSR number was somewhere in the mid-to-high 60’s, maybe higher since I added in those last two stories for the MPH collection, but then I had overlooked “The Stare” which I had added to the Silverfish version (replacing “Moments”), so those three stories added 9 more LSR sales. I cross-checked the total with a separate year-by-year LSR sales and sales of each individual story to make sure they tally. It’s official, 78!

The biggest year for Lovers and Strangers Revisited was 1992 when I had 18 sales followed by 1991, with 11. The years 1988-1993, prior to the publication of the first collection by Heinemann Asia, I had 48 sales, a pretty strong testimony, especially in light of so many collections being pushed out the door or even self-published by teens without any prior publishing track record. Beginning with the year 1986 when I had my first three sales (“Mat Salleh”, twice, and “The Stare”), a story from Lovers and Strangers Revisited has been accepted for publication at least once every year—except 1998, 2000 and 2002—for the past 25 years! And Hong Kong is the 11th country where a story from Lovers and Strangers Revisited has been published.

The only story from the collection that has not been published remains “The Watcher” though it came awfully close in the US, when another story of mine from the collection beat it out for a place in Thema. “Moments”, which I had dropped, was published once in Malaysia.

Important milestones for the collection, after its initial publication in 1993 in Singapore, was in 2005 when a professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia contacted me about including the collection in his course on postcolonial writing from Malaysia and Singapore, which prompted me to contact Silverfish and they agreed to republish the stories after I insisted on revisiting them. In 2006, “Neighbours” was selected for SPM literature (and taught in UKM, where they set up a discussion forum for the story on the MELTA website), introducing the story (and hopefully the collection) to countless teachers and students. The first story from the collection to be taught (as far as I know) was “Teh-O in KL” from the original collection in a high school in Canada.

2008 was also important when I switched to MPH to make the books available in Sarawak where I now live (which prompted several more rounds of editing, an addition of two stories, and a really cool cover!). In 2009, Lovers and Strangers Revisited won the 2009 Popular-The Star Reader’s Choice Award in fiction, validation and testimony to the longevity of these stories that I first began to write in the mid-80’s—now being taught in universities and private colleges throughout Malaysia.

Here’s the publication breakdown by story with a link to each The Story Behind the Story (except for “Moments” which was dropped for the revisited collection).

13 – On Fridays
8 – Neighbors/Aftermath (link to the story)
7 – Teh-O in KL
7 – Sister’s Room
7 – The Future Barrister
6 – Dark Blue Thread/The Watermark
5 – Waiting
4 – The Station Hotel/Joking
4 – Smooth Stones
4 – Symmetry
4 – *The Stare (added to Silverfish version, replacing “Moments”)
3 – Only in Malaysia (added to MPH version)
3 – Transactions in Thai (added to MPH version)
2 – Home for Hari Raya (and also filmed by Ohio University)
2 – Mat Salleh
1 – Lovers and Strangers
0 – Watcher (blogged it)
1 – Moments (dropped after original Lovers and Strangers collection)
81

In addition to these 17 stories, I have also published 13 other short stories 22 times (most are set in Malaysia) including “The Merdeka Miracle” that I wrote with Lydia Teh and Tunku Halim.

* Update, the 20th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I

Getting Known through the Media and Anyway that You Can!

Georgette, Robert, and Sharnaz

“I’d like to invite you to be my guest on my TV talk show” read the SMS from Regina Ho from RTM Kuching, the producer of Kuppa Kopi, the only talk show from Sarawak on National TV. She asked me to bring along my books Lovers and Strangers Revisited and Tropical Affairs: Episodes of an Expat’s Life in Malaysia to the shooting (aired on 31 May).

When writing a book or even thinking of one, you need to get known by as many people as possible. One obvious way is through the media, where you can reach a wider audience, as I did as a recent guest on TV1. In the past year, I’ve been fortunate to have been on TV twice, the radio once, and featured and reviewed in several magazines and newspapers. Some of these interviews came looking for me, others found me by accident.

A good place to start your career-launching, getting-to-be-known platform is to have your own blog and/or website, so people, including the press, can find you. That’s how I met Georgette Tan of the Borneo Post three years ago when she stumbled upon my website. No doubt thinking, hey, who’s this American writer in my back yard? She contacted me, arranged for an interview, and reviewed my book.

Steenie in Ireland, from International Living, was actively looking for expats in my part of the world, when she came across on online piece from Expatriate Lifestyle naming me in their January 2010 issue as one of the “50 Expats You Should Know”. This is a good example of how one interview/profile can lead to another. She found my website, contacted me, and within a week, she’s at my door in Sarawak, and her first question was, “What in the hell is an American doing in Borneo?”

If the media do come a-calling, always treat them with respect. Never act high and mighty, like you’re doing them a favor by “allowing yourself to be interviewed”. To be honest, the media don’t need you; they need a story and there are plenty of good stories out there (and better writers, too). So be grateful for the opportunity.

For Steenie and her publication, I was newsworthy. The fact that I had authored two books and won an award was a big plus. She could also check out previous interviews and book reviews to see if I’m worth her time and effort. That’s another big reason why it’s important to have a website, so people can find out more about you and what you have to offer since you’re competing with a lot of other potentially news¬worthy people.

By the way, what makes a writer newsworthy? Besides what’s written in your books (and any sensational tabloid rumors about you), a good question to ask yourself is, how are you helping others? Me, I give advice to writers based on my personal experience, which I do in such publications as Quill and The Writer (May 2010), and during my workshops and seminars. I give plenty of advice on my website and in my writing blog. Plus I take writers (and readers) behind the scenes of my short stories in my blog series, The Story Behind the Story, a great learning tool used in several universities to complement my short stories.

The more you give or help others, the more the media will be interested in you and that’s good news for you, your writing, and your books! So, again, what do you have to offer others? The more you have to offer, the more newsworthy you are.

Instead of being totally dependent on the media, which at times can be quite fickle, you can also promote yourself and your books via the ever expanding social media. This was the very reason I joined Facebook (after being advised – arm-twisted – by several writing friends). For my face, I use the cover of my book, Tropical Affairs, nominated for the 2010 The Popular-The Star Reader’s Choice Award for non-fiction. I’m also apart of LinkedIn, have experimented with Twitter, been on You Tube, and have joined in on dozens of threads on other peoples’ blogs. Each time I connect with someone on Facebook or post a comment on someone else’s blog, or write a new blog post, I introduce myself to others (and others introduce them¬selves to me). Of course, this is virtual networking.

Another way to get your work known (and published) is through physical networking, whereby you meet people in the real world, like at a conference, seminar or workshop. Before you go, have your business cards ready! In addition to the normal details, I add the titles of my books, my website and my writing blog. This may not be of interest to the person I’m meeting, but very interesting to someone they may know.

Other than your business card, two things need to happen when you network. One is you have to listen. Then you need to act upon what you hear. For example, three years ago, I was giving a creative writing workshop at a conference in Penang, and while standing in the food line, Lee Su Kim, author of the very successful Malaysian Flavours, introduced herself and had nothing but praise for Eric Forbes at MPH and urged me to contact him.

The following day, back in Kuching, I took action. I googled Eric Forbes, read his blog, and emailed him about republishing Lovers and Strangers Revisited and Tropical Affairs. Naturally, I directed him to my website and my media section – it really does come in handy. The fact that LSR went on to win 2009 The Popular-The Star Reader’s Choice Award for fiction brought in plenty of media attention and may have been a factor for getting me on Kuppa Kopi!

As for being a guest on the show, I had a great time and met several other writers, including Margaret Lim (Payah) and my friend Georgette, who had recommended me to Regina. Ah, the advantages of having a website and networking. I also got to meet the lovely and very talented Sharnaz Saberi who wanted a photograph with me (and an autographed copy of my book). Of course I blogged about it, put it on Facebook, wrote an article about it, and will soon put it on YouTube and on my website.

I also make a point to state in the interviews or profiles that my blog on writing, my interviews, and book reviews can be accessed from my blog – to attract future interviews, because you just never know who will be reading it, do you? In fact, I'm expecting a call from an interviewer any minute now and I'm going over my answers.

So, what are you doing to get yourself (and your book) better known by the public? Robbing a bank may help get you into the papers, but I wouldn’t recommend it . . . unless your book is about robbing banks!
                                                                                                    -Robert Raymer, Borneo Expat Writer

* Update: And now I can be found on Wikipedia! 

**Update, the 20^th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited 

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

“Dark Blue Thread”: The Story Behind the Story of Lovers and Strangers

For “Dark Blue Thread” I thought what if an expat writer found out that his Malay wife was cheating on him? Although my ex-wife, whom I loosely based my character on, as far as I know never cheated on me, the idea stuck. The story went on to be published four times (while we were still married), under its original title, “The Watermark”.

I used the Penang terrace house that I was living in back then as the setting, which made it easy since it was familiar territory. When it first appeared in The Her World Annual 92, the main character’s name was Dennis. A year later, when it was published in Singapore, I had changed the name to Eric, then to Eric Heywood in the first Lovers and Strangers collection, and back to Eric in London Magazine (January 1995). Although I liked the name Eric, I felt that the name Alan better suited the character, so I took the opportunity to change the name once again for Lovers and Strangers Revisited.

Alan’s wife also went through several name changes. She started out as Fatimah, then Sheela, and finally Salina in the original collection. Thankfully, Madison, our cat’s real name, remained the same.

The story was first published in the present tense, but soon afterwards I switched to past tense, which I felt worked better for this story. The biggest change was the ending. After cutting back on the various excesses in the early versions, for Lovers and Strangers, I settled on:

“Although he knew it was time to ask her about the letters, he was afraid of the answers. Afraid she might leave him. His crying woke Madison and she began to stir. He tried to hold her back, but she bounded over him and rushed for the opened door.”

While I was revisiting the story, I felt I needed a final confrontation with the wife. So I had her return to the house on the pretense that she had forgotten her office desk key. To set up this final confrontation, I added a lot more details about their backstory, their life in Malaysia, the financial sacrifices he had made, and the options that he was now facing.

It was becoming clear to me that the story wasn’t so much about “the watermark”; it was the dark blue thread, the main symbol of the story, too, which I felt would make a better, less confusing title. In Malaysia, bond paper isn’t all that common. The thread had also served as a constant reminder as to how fragile his life had become. Once he severed the thread with that knife, he was ready to face reality, no matter the consequences.

When the wife did come back, I had him slap her, which had not only surprised him, but also me as the writer. Until that very moment, I never thought he’d slap her. It was not something I was capable of doing, or would do, but for Alan, it was something he had to do. He had to make a point, even if that point backfired by losing his wife for good. But he had to take that risk. At stake was his very existence in Malaysia. Then in that final dialogue, he finally said what he had been holding back for the past two weeks.

The new ending thus became:

“He walked past [Madison] and went up to his office. He grabbed the paper. He didn’t care which way the watermark went. It really didn’t matter.”

With the expanded ending and all the additions I made, the story nearly doubled in length. For the MPH version, I added a couple more lines at the ending. I didn’t want the emphasis to fall on the watermark, but on him, as the writer and on his marriage:

“He began to type, but when he came to the letter p, he paused. Who in the hell was this P? Was it someone he knew? He decided right there and then that he didn’t want to know. It didn’t matter. He wanted to put these last two weeks behind him. He typed some more. Tears began to fall, but he kept on typing.”

This was the effect I was going for; he didn’t know what was going to happen to their marriage, now that she knew that he knew. It would all depend on her. She may leave him for this other man, or she way give up her lover and stay with her husband, and somehow they would work things out, whether returning to America or remained in Malaysia.

Note, I had now written in that final paragraph “It didn’t matter,” twice, knowing full well, the opposite was true.

As a footnote, I saw hope in this story. Hope in my own marriage, too, but alas that too came to an end, and it was time to move on. Unlike the character in the story, who was contemplating returning to America, that was never one of my options. I had decided to stay put in Malaysia. In real life, we had another factor to consider, a child, who came after the story was written. After our divorce, we shared raising our son (I had him during the week and she had him during the weekends) until my new job took me to Sarawak. My ex-wife got Madison, who was seventeen when she passed away, but in “Dark Blue Thread”, she still lives on, waiting to be fed.

Lovers and Strangers Revisited is now getting translated into French as Trois autres Malaisie.

*Update, the 20^th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited


Here is a review of Lovers and Strangers Revisited: The Star (MPH) and a link to the other story behind the stories for Lovers and Strangers Revisited.

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

“Waiting”: The Story Behind the Story of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

I was attending a Chinese funeral at someone’s house with several Malaysian Toastmaster friends, when my friends started swapping “death” stories. One lady told about the time that her father had died; for several days afterwards, out of habit, she would wait up for him to come home from work, only to remember that he was not coming home anymore.

In the back of my mind, I played with that idea.

Earlier that evening, I had been fascinated by a lionhead goldfish, having never seen one before, so I worked in some details about the fish into the story and added some additional details about another Toastmaster friend who, on another occasion, told me about the goldfish that he used to raise and sell as a boy.

Also, around the same time, there was a construction site close to where I was living and there was this constant metal hitting metal sound that was driving me crazy, so I incorporated that into the story as well.

Sometimes that’s all you need to get a story going: a few random details, a few elements of truth to anchor the story, and then you’re off...

Shortly after “Waiting” was written it was published in 1988 (the fastest that any of my stories had been published, except for maybe “The Stare”), not once but twice, in Her World in Malaysia and Hot in Singapore. It was published twice again in the 1990’s in the UK and Australia, and then twenty years after it was first written, it was published in the US, in Thema (Autumn 2008).

Maybe because it got published so fast, I didn’t make a lot of changes in the story, compared to all the others in this collection; some having undergone massive rewrites where I introduced new scenes, backstories, and totally revamped the endings by adding several additional pages! I did change the main character’s name, which started out as Miss Lai and remained so in the original Lovers and Strangers. Since she needed a suitable, “important” job, I made her a secretary for a legal firm.

An editor in the UK made a comment about the “Miss” part of the name, which he felt sounded a bit dated; however, it’s very common among the working class in Malaysia. Either way, I dropped it for Lovers and Strangers Revisited, since I was using Miss Valerie as a title of one of the stories. So I changed Miss Lai’s name to Agnes Chen.

I also revised the ending of “Waiting”, which hadn’t changed all that much from the Her World ending. Below is how it appeared in the original Lovers and Strangers collection:

Why doesn’t Dad come in? Why is he making her wait? Edward made her wait. Doesn’t dad know? Doesn’t he know she hates to be kept waiting?

When I revisited the story for Silverfish, I wanted to break up her thoughts with some action. I also wanted her to say exactly what she was thinking about Edward all along. I kept this same ending for MPH and also Thema:

Why doesn’t Dad come in? Doesn’t he know it’s raining? Agnes waited a little longer. She got up and went to the door, but Paul stopped her from opening it. “Sis, you have to accept this.” “But we made plans. We planned to get married. Edward promised me. He promised me!”

As a footnote, 21 years after I wrote “Waiting”, I got an email from a Toastmaster who, coincidentally, read my story at a recent Toastmaster meeting in Shah Alam as part of the Interpretive Reading module that she’s doing, thus bringing the story full circle. She also said, “The tingling tone of suspense and Agnes' helplessness and waiting in vain kept the audience focused on the story from start to finish.” For a writer that’s quite an honor to have someone (who I don't know) not only read your story but also to present it a way that I had never imagined.

Lovers and Strangers Revisited is now getting translated into French as Trois autres Malaisie.

*Update, the 20^th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited


Here is a review of Lovers and Strangers Revisited: The Star (MPH) and a link to the other story behind the stories for Lovers and Strangers Revisited.

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

“The Stare”: The Story Behind the Story of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

Every Hari Raya the Malays would visit the family graves, clear them of debris, and say their prayers. After that first kampong Hari Raya, I thought, what a great location for a story! Later I attended a funeral of an uncle and was fascinated by how the body was wrapped in white cloth and turned sideways (without a casket) to face Mecca. The Malays bury the dead fast, often the very next day. For relatives living outstation, including sons and daughters who have to travel by buses and trains, many don’t make it home in time for the burial.

The kampong graveyard in Parit, Perak (and the path from the road that led to it) was often overgrown and you would have no idea you were in one until it was too late since many of the graves were scattered among the shrubbery and trees. The older graves were even harder to find unless you stumbled on a large rock from the river or an inverted bottle, often used for the head and foot markers during the Japanese Occupation, when money was scarce.

After the prayers I would linger, make notes and ask questions: Who digs the graves? Whose land does this belong to? Who gets the fruit from the trees? Why were the graves with rocks or inverted bottles never replaced with proper minarets, even the simple, inexpensive ones?

My imagination would then take over as I search for a story. I pictured in my mind a lonely old woman, reminiscent of my former mother-in-law. I didn’t actually describe her as such. It just helps me to get a fix on a character, especially when I’m fumbling my way through an early draft trying to put disparate pieces and ideas together. I thought, what if this woman was the daughter of the man who lived in the adjacent property, someone who would help to dig the graves, and what if she were blind?

“What-if” questions, by the way, are a great way to get the creative juices flowing. So I tried to picture this woman sitting at her mother’s grave, running her hands over the coarse minaret headstone, wondering why her own mother had to die so she could be born.

To make this story effective I had to rely heavily on sensory details. Since I had no other characters other than her father in flashbacks, I had to put myself in Matemah’s shoes, imagining I was old and blind, and all I had to work with was what I heard, smelled, felt and tasted – plus the cemetery and the nearby river, which I could hear only if I came closer to it. Or was that my imagination giving me an idea, a possible ending, too, rare for me. The story itself, through the writing process, usually dictates an ending, which is often revealed at the last moment as I work my way through the story. But this idea stuck – and it gave me a goal to work toward.

“The Stare” was the second story from Lovers and Strangers Revisited published (though the fourth one written), back in 1986 after it won a consolation prize in The Star/Nestle contest and appeared in The Star. It's also the only story that I wrote that got published the very same year that I wrote it. Despite being published three times I was talked into leaving it out of the original Lovers and Strangers collection by an editor in favor of a new story, “Moments”. Later in 2005, while revisiting the stories, I had assumed all along that “The Stare” was in the collection, so I ended up dropping “Moments” and putting back “The Stare” as I had originally planned.

In the early versions, the main character was named Rubiah, but after consulting with a proofreader before sending it in for the Silverfish collection, the proofreader felt the name wasn’t appropriate (either it wasn’t pure Malay or it was too modern); she felt an older, more traditional name would be better. After giving me several options to choose from, I settled on Matemah because of how it sounded. This was critical to the ending of the story.

The arrangement of the paragraphs had always troubled me. Maybe it was because I was jumping back and forth to various flashbacks. Either way, it was affecting the flow, as well as the pacing, of the story. I needed to move the present action of the story along and get to the actual stare in the story and Matemah’s reaction to it sooner, to help break up all the flashback and backstory that this story required.

I didn’t notice until after I began to re-edit the stories for the MPH collection that something wasn’t right in the Silverfish version of Lovers and Strangers Revisited. Several paragraphs that were supposed to have been shifted a lot sooner, didn’t get moved. This was an oversight by the publisher, but admittedly this was a late change in the proofs, which I got while I was on vacation in the US. We were rushing to get the stories out in time so they could be used at USM where the collection was being taught (and we had to beat the Chinese New Year when everything shuts down in Malaysia for two weeks).

I then reversed paragraphs three and four so it would be a better transition for these now shifted paragraphs and smoothed out the rest of the transitions, too. Some writers actually use scissors and cut out all the paragraphs in strips to try and find the most effective arrangement. That never made much sense to me until I came to “The Stare.”

Lovers and Strangers Revisited is now getting translated into French as Trois autres Malaisie.

*Update, the 20^th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited


Here is a reviews of Lovers and Strangers Revisited in The Star (MPH) and a link to the other story behind the stories for Lovers and Strangers Revisited.

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

“The Station Hotel”: The Story Behind the Story of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

When I entered my room at The Station Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, I had this overwhelming feeling of déjà vu; I was sure that I had stayed there before, in the same room. I can’t actually recall ever staying at the hotel before that (although I may have), but I did transfer that strong feeling I had to my character Michele Yeap. (I gave her my groggy feeling of spending a night on the train, too!) Right away, I knew that the hotel would make a great setting for a short story and began taking photographs and describing everything inside the room.

My original characters were a married couple who had stayed there years before, but now their marriage was falling apart. The story wasn’t working. I hated the characters and tossed them out, but I kept the setting! So I brought in two more characters, one of whom had spend a night there en route to her honeymoon in Hong Kong; this time she’s here with her lover from Penang. She was only joking when she suggested they stay at The Station Hotel but the joke backfired.

Although my original working title was "The Station Hotel", I switched it to “Inevitable" and then to "The Joke” which was the title of this story when it appeared in Her World (Oct ‘89). Back then Michele’s last name was Loo. I changed the title again to “Joking” when it appeared in Northern Perspective (Australia, 1992) and kept it for the first Lovers and Strangers collection (but dropped the name Loo – it reminded me too much of a toilet! Names, and their connotations, are important.) Later, while revisiting the story for the Silverfish collection, I changed the title back to “The Station Hotel” (and added Yeap to Michele’s name).

This story was about contrasting moods and I was careful in choosing the details to highlight this: Michele’s mood when she first entered the hotel with her lover and then later, when she returned to the hotel that evening. It was the same physical place but she saw it all differently because her mood was totally different. Everything that she saw was no longer the same: the bell desk clerk, a young man eager to please, and then the grumpy old woman; the long, high-ceiling corridor, and then an endless tunnel; the spacious room and freshly painted bathroom, and then the dull, simple room and the poor paint job; a flock of swallows and palm trees, and then the cluster of cars and trash strewn everywhere).

To make the characters seem more real, I modeled Michele and Lee on a pair of friends from Penang, neither of whom were married. Recognizing themselves in the book, they brought it to my attention. They were ok with it, but felt odd – like, how in the world did I know so much about them? Several other friends thought I was writing about them, too, and I couldn’t convince them otherwise, so I must’ve done a really good job!

One couple thought I wrote about the husband because he wore glasses, hid behind his smile and his name was “Lee”. He’s American, and in the original version it was clearly stated that Lee was Chinese. (Later, I dropped the reference so readers could picture him as they wished.) The wife was quite upset with me (and suspicious of him!) until I dug up the original Her World story written years before I had met them (to the relief of the husband!). Another lady, whom I didn’t know very well, thought I was writing about her because she fit the general description and worked in the hotel line. So did another woman, also in the hotel line. Since this was a story about a woman having an affair with a married man, I kept wondering, oh, so who are you having an affair with?

While revisiting the stories for the Silverfish collection I had to go to KL for a book launch/reading at Silverfish, and I thought it might be interesting to stay at the refurbished (and renamed) The Heritage Station Hotel, Kuala Lumpur. I hadn’t touched the story, “The Station Hotel”, in a dozen years and was having some problems with it, so I brought along a working draft of the story. After wandering around the hotel and taking copious notes to give the story more depth, I began to edit it. There’s nothing like being at the physical setting of a story to get the juices flowing. In fact, the ideas were coming fast and I stayed up half the night scribbling away, adding all this new material.

I had always felt that the ending was rushed, and it needed to be a bigger moment. So I played with it and expanded the last two paragraphs to two and a half pages! Throughout the story, I added in more details about Michele’s first marriage to Barry. This was an important counterpoint to Lee, whom she was having an affair with. By the end the story, and rather ironically, Barry was becoming the solution. In order for this to be convincing, I needed to introduce a lot more backstory about this early marriage, how they had met, why they got married, why they separated and why they remained close friends. Prior to this, the marriage had merely been mentioned a couple of times in passing.

After I had given my reading at Silverfish, I woman came late and when she found out that I had already read, expressed her disappointment.

“I do have another story with me that I’ve been rewriting,” I said, but added that it’s full of handwritten notes. The others also wanted me to read it, so I did. I was taking a big risk because the story was getting to be rather long and my hand-written notes, squeezed in here and there, with arrows all over the place, were hard to read. Nevertheless, I persevered.

The reception was much better than I had imagined. In fact, one woman I didn’t know gushed, “Oh, I wish my friend was here. She stayed at the Station Hotel for six months and she would’ve loved it! Is this going to be in your book? I’ll make sure she gets a copy!”

I knew I was on the right track. With all these new additions, I ended up doubling the length of the original story. I was glad that I had decided to stay at The Station Hotel that first (and possibly second) time and definitely while revisiting the story!

Lovers and Strangers Revisited is now getting translated into French as Trois autres Malaisie.

*Update, the 20^th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

Here is a review in The Star (MPH) and a link to the other story behind the stories for Lovers and Strangers Revisited.

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

“Home for Hari Raya”: The Story Behind the Story of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

After experiencing Hari Raya several times in Malaysia, I decided to write a short story about it, so I took my writing notebook with me to Parit, Perak and immediately started taking notes, describing all that I could, and observing my relatives, particularly my nieces and nephews. Since there were nineteen of them, spread between two houses across the street from each other, it wasn’t easy. I didn’t know what the story was going to be about; I just wanted to capture the whole experience, the essence of a traditional kampong-based Hari Raya. I also wanted to leave me completely out of the story (though years later, after a request from a magazine, I was asked to write about my own personal Hari Raya experience).

Then I got the idea to focus the story on three sisters, the elder two loosely based on my nieces, who were in fact cousins, and at the time, none of them were married. The younger, Ida, who I made the viewpoint character, would be a USM student where I taught creative writing. I made her embittered over the fact that her father, who had recently passed away, had taken a second wife. This was the heart of the story, an unresolved issue among the sisters that was threatening to tear the family apart.

I wanted to show how the three sisters viewed their father differently, and how the youngest, know-it-all-Ida couldn’t accept her sister’s views, let alone her mother’s complacency with the whole situation. Since Hari Raya is a time for asking for forgiveness, I knew this would play an integral part in the story and in its resolution.

In my ex-wife’s immediate family there were no one (at least not verified) who had more than one wife, although when my ex-wife was in primary school, another girl saw a picture of her father and told her, that was her father, too, and this deeply disturbed her. She also told me about a neighbor, who would bicycle back and forth between his two wives, and her classmates whose father’s had taken more than one wife. Among Malays, who are Muslim, this is quite common, an acceptable fact of life, but still problematic and often leads to divorce. My ex-wife, who was a reporter, was often involved in court cases and women forums, and she would tell me what was going on in these-multiple-marriage-gone-wrong cases.

Having a setting that I was already familiar with, and having first hand personal experience helping with the chores of cleaning up the house and the various rituals of preparing for Hari Raya year after year was a bonus. Also it’s an advantage to have real people to act as models, like my describing the antics of my nephews who were a lot younger than my nieces and who would go out of their way to irritate the girls. The scene with the three sisters on the motorcycles and bicycle happened, though I had no idea what they were discussing since they spoke in Malay. I felt the scene would work in the story by showing another side of their character, that although all three were young ladies, they were still close to being children.

After the story was originally published in Her World, but before it came out in Lovers and Strangers, I switched the names of the two elder sisters. I felt the name Sharifah seemed more mature than Mira, who at times in the story acted immature.

Later, while revisiting the story for the Silverfish collection, I showed it to a lecturer at USM who was the second wife of my colleague and, after she read the story, agreed to answer my questions as to why she decided to be a second wife. Her answers were quite helpful and gave me the confidence that I was on the right track.

It was important for Ida, as a strong-willed, independent, modern university student, to keep bringing up the unfairness of men taking a second wife. But the other sisters didn’t see it that way and I wanted their views known, too, to give the story balance. In the original version, Sharifah said, “Lots of men take second wives.” This I expanded in the first revisited version by adding, “It’s a fact of life. It’s better than them sneaking around and having affairs or visiting prostitutes, isn’t it? At least you know where they are.”

This only makes Ida more frustrated, who saw nothing except the men’s double standards. In the MPH version, I added in her mother’s typical kampong view, which I’ve personally heard countless times over the years. As if to defend her husband, she reminded Ida that Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him, had four wives. But Ida quickly countered, that it was only after his first wife had died.

A pivotal scene was having this second wife visit them during Hari Raya. This was a big moment, but I didn’t want to overdo it. What I was trying to avoid was a come-to-realize-that-the-second-wife-wasn’t-a-bad-person-after all end to the story. I needed a stronger, more emotional ending, a bonding among all three sisters which I was able to achieve in the revised story, where I purposely underplayed it.

I tried different versions before I settled on just the right ending. Since the story is about asking for forgiveness, it was important for Ida to go to the graveyard to be at her father’s grave, an important part of Hari Raya, which she had refused to do earlier in the story. She wanted to sneak off on her own, but she needed her sister’s car, so she reluctantly agreed to let her sisters join her. Putting their differences behind them, at least for now, Ida instinctively reached out for sister’s hands. From the comments I got from readers, including expats, it works.

In May 2011, "Home for Hari Raya" was published in Istanbul Literary Review.  By then I had already changed Ida’s name to Rina; it seemed to fit her better, after meeting some outspoken Rina’s while teaching and several quiet Ida’s.  In December 2011, Frederick Lewis, professor of film/video at Ohio University contacted me about turning “Homefor Hari Raya” into a film.  Initially, he was interested in “Mat Salleh” because one thing he was looking for was a strong Muslim female.  Thinking of the Rina/Ida character, I suggested “Home for Hari Raya” and sent him the Istanbul Literary Review link since his reference was the 1993 Heinemann Asia version of Lovers and Strangers.   

His team loved the story and after they got the financing approved by the university, they began putting together a screenplay.  In December 2012, Lewis led a team of 14 students to Malaysia who liaised with the Faculty of Film, Theatre and Animation at UiTM Shah Alam to turn "Home for Hari Raya" into a film.   

I find it fascinating that a short story I wrote over twenty years ago and first published in the May 1993 issue of Her World about three Malay sisters is now being turned into a film.

*Update, the 20^th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I