5 Questions with Mirandi Riwoe
Mirandi Riwoe is the author of The Burnished Sun, a collection of short stories and novellas. Her novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain won the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction and the ARA Historical Novel Prize and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award.
Her novella The Fish Girl won Seizure’s Viva la Novella and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Mirandi has a PhD in Creative Writing and Literary Studies (QUT).
No.1
How did the stories in The Burnished Sun come together? In your acknowledgements, you write that you ‘have written these stories over several years now’. I know that the last story in the collection, The Fish Girl, was your first book, a novella which won the Seizure Viva La Novella Prize in 2017, and that some of the other stories have appeared in places such as the Griffith Review and Best Australian Stories too. What was the point in which you started thinking, “this is a collection”?
Over the past few years I have concentrated on writing novels, and my short story writing or novella writing has been more sporadic. By the time I had written enough stories to form a book, it was quite easy to collate them into a collection because my writing reflects what I am preoccupied with: themes to do with racism and feminism, children, loss, belonging. Also, we hoped that works like ‘The Fish Girl’ and ‘Annah the Javanese’ might reach a new audience as part of The Burnished Sun.
No.2
When it comes to writing short stories, how does something sow itself as a seed of inspiration in your mind? And how do you continue drawing from that seed, taking the story to completion in a way that feels creatively satisfying?
Usually most of my short stories are inspired by something that has happened in my life or that I have observed, such as when my son and his friends were on the receiving end of racist behaviour, or when an Indonesian friend’s daughter had to go overseas to work, leaving her young child behind. ‘Seed of inspiration’ is a good way of putting it, though, because by the time I write the story, after a lot of note-keeping and pondering about the characters and the arc of the narrative, the story is no longer about those original individuals.
The story that is probably most outside my own experience is ‘Growth’, which was inspired by a newspaper piece about a young man in India who had a fetus in fetu removed, which made me wonder about how a mother might feel if she thought she was losing a child (the twin). Over time I developed a story around this mother and her circumstances here in Brisbane. So even though the subject of the original article was outside my lived experience, I was able to develop a story that dealt with themes that interest me.
No.3
When I interviewed you about your novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain in 2020, you mentioned that you like to ‘write back against established beliefs or generalisations depicted in existing fiction or historical texts, such as that of the “sinister Oriental” or the “wanton” Asian woman’. The stories in The Burnished Sun, while more contemporary, often revolve around a woman and speak to this idea too, as they try to chart a path in life despite difficult or uncomfortable circumstances. Do you consider your work to be “feminist”? Why/why not?
When I was writing Stone Sky Gold Mountain, I thought of the book as a reflection on racism—I guess that’s where my attention was concentrated when drafting the novel. I remember even thinking that it was a pity that it wasn’t also a feminist book. But of course it is! A writer friend of mine said, ‘Yes, of course your book is feminist. You’re a feminist, your book is feminist.’ I think maybe it goes back to preoccupations—whether on purpose or just instinctively, my work will gravitate towards a reflection on how women are treated or represented.
No.4
In terms of writing, what do you think your relationship is with success and failure?
I was just speaking to another writer about this at a recent festival when we were watching a really lovely, inspiring panel of emerging writers. We discussed how people assume that because you are published that you don’t experience ‘no’s’ anymore. I think ups and downs are the nature of this profession. Also, for me personally, I tend to move my professional goal posts, which is probably not helpful. What is helpful, though, is when writer friends and I remind each other to ‘just keep writing’ (Dory style), when we receive that dreaded email that says, ‘thank you for your submission but unfortunately…’ or something else similarly disheartening.
I also really love Nigel Featherstone’s writing advice: When something good happens with your writing practice, you have 24 hours to celebrate: drink champagne, eat French camembert, dance naked to terrible pop music in the lounge room—but then you have to keep going. When something bad happens with your writing practice, you have 24 hours to commiserate: drink whiskey, kick furniture, cry—but then you have to keep going.
No.5
Finally, I wanted to ask you more specifically about ‘The Fish Girl’ and ‘Annah the Javanese’, which I personally think are two of the best stories in the book. Incidentally they are works of ekphrasis, as you respond to the image of the “Malay trollop” in W. Somerset Maugham’s ‘The Four Dutchmen’, and to Paul Gauguin’s painting of the same name. Can you speak more to this? Why these works, and what other works would you like to respond to in this way in the future, if given a chance?
As part of my PhD I researched the Asian population of Victorian London. As well as reading historical non-fiction, I also read fiction that featured Asian characters or countries in order to get a feel for attitudes and atmosphere in the colonial period, which is how I came across Somerset Maugham’s short story ‘The Four Dutchmen’.
The story is an account of how the Dutchmen’s friendship is ruined by a ‘Malay trollop’ (a Javanese girl). I think when we read fiction from long ago we might shrug off some of the racism or sexism because, of course, it was written in the context of the time. But I think because my father is from Indonesia, I felt I could relate to the Malay or Javanese girl and was incensed by the callous treatment with which she was dealt. I knew there would be a reason she was in the position she found herself, just as there is for so many other women, especially from South East Asia, then and now. So I decided to write a short story—based on Maugham’s original story—but from the young woman’s point of view. Eventually this short story became the novella.
When I began looking into the story of Annah the Javanese, who was a model for Paul Gauguin, I was struck by the fact that what we do know of her is informed by white male artists of the time: that she was Javanese, that her name was Annah, that she was thirteen years old, that she cleaned out Gauguin, that she had a pet monkey and so forth. I also read correspondence and biographies of Gauguin himself. My own re-telling of Annah’s story is from a feminist, more contemporary mindset. I surmised some points, such as: perhaps the monkey wasn’t so much her pet as it was a boon to Gauguin’s determination to appear ‘exotic’; that when they said she ransacked his studio and vanished, perhaps instead of being of a criminal disposition, she was actually not paid by Gauguin and that taking from him was the only way she could leave him.
I see this kind of writing as a kind of reckoning of what we are told by a specific cohort in history (mostly white men of a certain class). Perhaps I am taking her story somewhere closer to the truth. However, I have come to reconsider this notion of ‘giving voice’ to those who are marginalised or ignored, because of course, I am not her and do not know what truly happened or how she felt or lived. I now consider this process as a ‘giving voice to other possibilities’ or a recontextualization of what we know of these characters’ experiences.
I don’t really have a list of works I’d like to respond to. I just stumbled across Annah and Mina’s stories, and I’m sure I’ll come across more in the future. I’d love to explore the background of Eurasian families here in Australia in the 1800s. I want to write about that idea of living here, in Australia, but always looking back (to either China or Ireland). Probably because I am Eurasian, I’ve always been fascinated with how these families dealt with racism and discrimination, but also the communities in which they thrived.
(Credit: Red Boots Photographic)
Find out more
From the award-winning author of Stone Sky Gold Mountain come these superbly crafted stories that explore the inner lives of those who are often ignored or misunderstood.
We follow a migrant mother who yearns to feel welcomed at a kids’ party in a local park; a young skateboarder caught between showing loyalty and being accepted; and an Indonesian maid working far from home who longs for the son she’s left behind. Bookending this collection are two stunning novellas: Annah the Javanese re-imagines the world of one of Paul Gauguin’s models in nineteenth-century Paris, while the highly acclaimed The Fish Girl reworks a classic W. Somerset Maugham story from the perspective of a young Indonesian woman.
With rich emotional insight and a light touch, these wide-ranging stories reveal hidden desires and human fragility.
Get it from UQP here.