5 Questions with Su-May Tan
Su-May Tan was born and raised in Malaysia but is currently living on Wurundjeri country in Melbourne. Her debut short story collection Lake Malibu and Other Stories was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards 2022.
Her debut YA novel, Katie Goes to KL was published by Penguin Random House (Southeast Asia) in November 2023 and will be available in Australia in March 2024.
Su-May is interested in the modern Asian diaspora. She works at an international not-for-profit as a copywriter.
No.1
Your first book, Lake Malibu and Other Stories, was a collection of short stories that went on to be shortlisted in the 2022 Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection, amongst others. What resulted in the decision to write a YA novel after that?
I actually had this YA manuscript on the go even before Lake Malibu was published. I started writing it about five years ago and it follows a similar theme (to the collection) of people trying to find their place in the world. In this case, it is about 16-year-old Katie Chen who goes back to Malaysia and embarks on a quest of sorts to reconnect with her roots.
No.2
Katie Goes to KL is a coming-of-age story about a Malaysian-Australian teenager who returns to Malaysia after more than a decade for her grandmother’s funeral, and who goes on to discover her cultural identity along the way. It is a refreshing inversion of your own biography as an adult migrant to Australia. How did your migration experiences influence the book’s narrative, if at all?
This story was inspired by my children who came to Melbourne when they were three and one. I always wondered how they would view Malaysia if they went back—how would they fit in?
To them, Malaysia is hot, smelly and dirty, but for me, Malaysia is this wonderfully eclectic place. There is so much nostalgia, as well as memories in the food, the people, the smells. It may seem messy and haphazard but there is a certain beauty in all that chaos.
Ultimately, Katie is about a search for identity. As an Asian Australian, she feels displaced in Australia. But when she goes back to Malaysia, she finds herself even more out of place.
No.3
In a previous 5 Questions we did with you on your debut book, you said that you taught yourself creative writing. How do you think your writing has evolved since Lake Malibu?
Lake Malibu taught me how to craft literary fiction, focusing on the nuances of setting, character and metaphors. In Katie Goes To KL, I learnt to focus more on the bigger picture, paying more attention to plot and structure. Being a longer piece, I needed to make sure the multiple story arcs built up to a proper climax. It’s like going on a longer, more arduous hike as opposed to walking around a park.
No.4
What are some of your favourite YA books published in Australia in recent years?
I loved Vivian Pham’s The Coconut Children for its immigrant themes and lyrical style.
I also like other realist YA fiction such as Tiger Daughter by Rebecca Lim and books by Vikki Wakefield.
No.5
The YA genre, while popular amongst readers, is often not taken as seriously as adult fiction in the wider publishing world, even if there are so many novels that are written with depth and rigour and which tackle important sociopolitical issues. There seems to be a massive chasm between the two. What do you think distinguishes the YA genre from “adult fiction”?
That’s an interesting question. During the submission stage, I was told that the writing style of Katie Goes To KL seemed like literary fiction but because of the protagonist’s age, it was positioned as YA.
A lot of YA books have snappy dialogue and a fast pace, but I think there’s a wide spectrum of other books that can fall under the YA umbrella [too]. I think a book is YA if it interests a YA audience and usually that means coming-of-age themes and having a protagonist of similar age to the reader.
When I was a child, children’s book writing was epitomised by the clean and wholesome stories of Enid Blyton. But then writers like Roald Dahl came along, writing in a very adult way and yet still appealing to children. In fact, I think modern writers like David Walliams write in a similar way.
The YA genre may seem trite [to some], but even before YA was a category, ‘YA’ books were being used [as teaching aids] in school such as The Outsiders or The Catcher in the Rye, which suggests that YA can rightly be used to convey serious and important issues, especially to a younger audience.
Find out more
Katie Chen, 16, lives in the unremarkable suburb of Narre Warren in Australia with her somewhat reclusive Malaysian father. Coming to Australia when she was 5 and losing her mother at 7, she has always struggled with issues of identity.
One day, she goes back to Malaysia for her grandmother’s funeral and discovers that her mother—long-thought-dead—is alive. Set in a fictionalised Kuala Lumpur (KL), Katie struggles to reconnect with her mother whom she discovers is Malay.
Navigating KL’s underground music scene and the underlying tensions of a country she doesn’t understand, how far is Katie willing to go to find a place to belong?
Get it from Penguin here.