5 Questions with Shu-Ling Chua
Essayist, critic and poet, Shu-Ling Chua was born in Melbourne to Malaysian-Chinese parents. Shu-Ling’s work focuses on image, femininity, connection, memory and self-narratives.
Her work has appeared in Peril Magazine, Lindsay, Meanjin, and Triangle House Review, among others. Her debut essay collection, Echoes, was published by Somekind Press in November 2020.
No.1
How did Echoes come to be?
Echoes was sparked by the Crazy Rich Asians soundtrack and a desire to better know my maternal grandmother. I was blown away when Mum said the song “Wo Yao Ni De Ai” 我要你的爱 was a favourite of Ah Ma’s. I thought it had been written for “bananas” like me, as the chorus could not be simpler:
我 – I, 要 – want, 你的 – your, 爱 – love.
Ah Ma and I are not close, as she lives in Kuala Lumpur and my Cantonese is basic, but I wish we were. I grasp at the things we share: neat handwriting, a certain stubbornness, and a love of fashion, music and dance. Mum’s offhand comment made me wonder what else I might have inherited unknowingly.
No.2
The book seems like a journey through self-actualisation, particularly when you mention [the song] “Wo Yao Ni De Ai”. Through recalling your familial lineage, then visualising a certain history through old Chinese cultural products, you attempt to reach a sense of self-acceptance. Can you speak more to this?
I have been describing Echoes as a collection about my relationship with Ah Ma and Mum, but it is also very much about personal joys and obsessions. I am interested in the idea of lineages—familial, cultural, literary, musical, visual and so on.
Growing up, I felt “closer” to Malaysia than to China, and tended to identify as “Asian-Australian” because this was how people labelled me and because it was easier to say than “Chinese-Malaysian-Australian”. It is only in recent years that I started thinking more about my Chinese identity. The epigraph of Echoes, for example, is a quote from Eileen Chang 张爱玲, one of the greatest modern Chinese writers. I read her fiction in 2017 and have been obsessed since. There is great comfort and strength to be drawn from acknowledging those who came before us.
On a personal note, I love fashion, lipstick, pop songs and photography, and want to make space for this in Asian-Australian literature. I want to write about family and migration on my own terms and in doing so, paint a fuller portrait of who I am.
No.3
How do you think you cohere different forms or modes of thinking—be it poetry, criticism or essay writing? Or are they entirely separate to you?
I am inspired by writers who combine and play with forms. My favourite essayists—to name a few, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Durga Chew-Bose, Nina Mingya Powles, Jennifer S. Cheng, Hanif Abdurraqib, Larissa Pham—are also poets or critics. I love lyrical essays and how drawing on poetry allows space for gaps and unknowing. I love essays that weave criticism with memoir because I am interested in how lived experiences shape interpretations of art and how art shapes identity. Michael Sun, Madison Griffiths, Timmah Ball and Jennifer Nguyen do this brilliantly!
No.4
In Echoes, there is a scene where you pull up the Facebook Memories function to show your mum a travel memory, to which she replies, “Don’t just look backward. Look forward.” This feels especially poignant, speaking to the rift between first- and second-generation diaspora. Where do you see a reconciliation, if at all?
“Memoir,” I once wrote, “is cold milk hitting hot tea—pale tendrils, little eddies twisting, tangling—past melting into present.” To understand our present and future, we need to consider the past without getting stuck in it. I was very conscious to avoid romanticising the past, or life in Malaysia and China as I have never lived there.
When we were children, Mum would tell my younger brother and me bedtime stories about our great-grandparents and grandparents. Ye Ye’s third brother, for example, was a talented illustrator and photographer. He painted a mural of a dragon and the Eight Immortals in the family home. When I interviewed Mum for a piece on growing up in a Kuala Lumpur shophouse, she sent me 13,000 words of notes! I think she enjoys reminiscing while also reminding me to let go of past regrets. Echoes is informed by many conversations, including one where Mum says, “I’m glad you enjoy these old songs. It means they will live on.”
No.5
Echoes is a document of memory too. Who did you have in mind as an audience while writing the book? What buoyed you while you were writing it?
I wrote Echoes for the children of migrants who, like me, grew up between languages, listening to songs they did not understand the lyrics to. As always, I wrote towards knowing, rather than trying to fully answer everything. Questions that guided these essays include: Can you be nostalgic for someone or something you never knew? And what is the difference between habit and ritual?
Echoes is a collection of small joys, from the hem of a new dress licking at one’s ankles to learning to sing old Chinese pop songs. In the closing essay, I write about seeking balm in drinking hot water (so Aunty!) and Chinese red date tea, as well as spending time by and in bodies of water. Such small joys buoyed me during this uncertain year. By recording and sharing them, I hope to buoy others too.
Echoes is a curious and lyrical collection of personal essays which references art and literature, pop culture and nostalgia. It gathers small joys, from a figure-hugging ‘disco dress’ to learning to sing Koo Mei’s ‘Bu Liao Qing’ 不了情 to the swish of washing machines. And asks: what does one unknowingly inherit?
Read ‘(im)material inheritances’ in Going Down Swinging here.
Buy a copy from Somekind Press, Paperback Bookshop (VIC) and Dymocks Werribee (VIC).
Register for the online book launch on Dec 16 here.