Agents of Dislocation

Review of The Heartsick Diaspora by Elaine Chiew (Myriad Editions, 2020 / Penguin SEA, 2021)
By Maggie Wang

In an interview given to the blog Endless Chapters to mark the publication of The Heartsick Diaspora, Elaine Chiew explained her interest in diaspora, geography, and culture as a product of “thinking about dislocation, alienation from homeland traditions, the metaphoric ‘return home’ … there’s a mythic odyssean element to [it].” The short story form allows Chiew to shine light on moments of subtle change and transformation in the lives of her characters. Chiew’s purpose, as highlighted in the interview, is less to instruct and more to open the reader’s mind to the often-unresolved nature of diasporic identity: “The best short stories are windows into lived lives,” said Chiew, “and neatly tied endings would, in the end, do the reader a disservice because they are gimmicky and not true to real life.” Each of the protagonists in Chiew’s collection confront their roles in the Singaporean or Malaysian diaspora through a different lens, but they encounter similar challenges and concerns. The diaspora, as Chiew aptly demonstrates over the course of the collection, confers on its members a deeply rooted yet elusive sense of belonging.

Though the stories range widely in style and substance, Chiew’s collection has a distinctive poise and insightfulness, one that breathes life into complex issues of home and selfhood. The stories in The Heartsick Diaspora span the globe, with some taking place in contemporary London and New York City, while others are set in mid-twentieth-century Singapore. The stories also encompass a breadth of genres, from historical fiction to contemporary realism to myth and fantasy. Chiew’s style is appropriately varied, often wry and sometimes cryptic and philosophical. In this sense, the collection is itself diasporic, an attribute that seems to draw on Chiew’s experiences as a Malaysian-born, U.S.-educated writer living in Singapore.

Notably, several key stories in The Heartsick Diaspora are rooted in Singapore’s history as a colony and as a major site of cross-cultural exchange in Southeast Asia. The story “Love, Nude” depicts a young artist’s experimentation with a Nanyang Style nude of a close family friend’s daughter, Yee Lan. The artist, Teck Hin, causes controversy at his art school when he submits the painting for his end-of-year folio. The examination board dubs the painting “too idiosyncratic,” too defiant of the traditional conception of the “glorious” nude:

With an unmarked oval for a face enframed by a square (could be a crate, could be a form of prison), and with her hands bearing up the weight of the frame, she is every orientalised woman that has ever been desired, and she is faceless, subject to many interpretations: conceived and yet she does not exist, unknowable and unrecognisable.

Teck Hin’s rebellion against the accepted norms of the art world is situated in the midst of Singapore’s formation as a nation: in 1963, Singapore joined Malaya and several other former British colonies to form the Federation of Malaysia, but the union lasted only two years. Teck Hin’s “unknowable” and “unrecognisable” woman perhaps taps into the anxieties and uncertainties of independence, as well as the lingering shadow of colonial rule in mid-twentieth-century Singapore. In painting this portrait, Teck Hin deceives Yee Lan about his feelings for her; in submitting the portrait as his end-of-year folio at art school, he appropriates her image to project publicly a message he has failed to understand at the personal level. Yet, in doing so, he demonstrates his willingness to depart from traditional artistic standards and creates space for the exploration of new techniques and meanings.

“Love, Nude” and its ‘homeland’ perspective are complemented by several stories that explore diasporic identity in the twenty-first century through interactions with and within the Western world. Chiew depicts one such interaction in “The Chinese Nanny,” in which the Malaysian-born Su Chin is tasked with caring for Gwenny, the daughter of a never-quite-present real estate investment consultant named Fiona. Fiona insists—for the questionable reason that “many of her clients were from Mainland China,” that her daughter must learn Chinese and that Su Chin must therefore speak to Gwenny exclusively in Chinese. Yet, Fiona’s dismissal of Chinese culture, a nebulous catch-all that includes Su Chin’s own Malaysian heritage, leads us to question her understanding of the world beyond her doorstep. As Fiona becomes increasingly consumed by professional preoccupations, Su Chin comes to occupy the role of a mother in Gwenny’s life. Thus, when tragedy strikes Gwenny, she seems like the natural person to blame, especially for Fiona’s circle of upper-class, white British women.

As Su Chin realizes at the end of the story, the lives of these women, blind as they are to their own exoticization of the titular “Chinese nanny,” are “fakery—pretend living.” They go through the motions of cultural exchange and dialogue but never care to see beyond Su Chin’s name, appearance, or language ability. Despite the long hours she dedicates to caring for Fiona as well as for Gwenny, Su Chin comes to stand for a one-dimensional notion of Oriental “otherness” in the imaginations of those around her. In the end, though, she does not allow herself to become entirely a victim; instead, having realized the meaninglessness of their lives, she leaves Fiona and her (all white) family and friends. Su Chin stands out for her humility, her consideration for Gwenny, and her realization that life is—or ought to be—more than simply a contest for status or material wealth. Her experience challenges us to humanize our conceptions of Asian women and try to understand them as complex subjects and, occasionally, agents of dislocation.

Crucially, Chiew complements the stereotyping and pigeonholing of diverse diasporic experiences exemplified by Su Chin’s story with the theme of intergenerational conflict between members of that diaspora. This theme emerges most prominently in “Face,” in which Karen and Qiang, a mixed-race couple, struggle to contend with the difficulties of caring for Qiang’s mother, Yun, and their daughter, Lulu. The winner of the Bridport Prize International Short Story Competition in 2008, “Face” is one of Chiew’s finest stories. At the heart of it is the elderly Yun, who struggles to teach herself English and quietly suffers an episode of violent racism before the start of the narrative. She wants Karen and Qiang to understand her and talk to her, but she is reluctant—perhaps scared—to be honest with them. After Yun has a stroke one afternoon and fails to pick Lulu up from school as planned, Karen lashes out at her, and Qiang doesn’t seem to show much concern, even though he senses something is wrong. Yun, like the Malaysian Chinese culture she represents, hovers in the background of their lives, shadowy and ghostlike, never quite fully there.

Yun recognizes that she is out of place in London. Yet, when she tells Karen she wants to return home, Karen expresses concern: “‘But who is going to take care of you back in Malaysia? You might fall down, or worse, die and get half-mauled by a farm dog before anybody discovers you.’” The irony, as Yun implies but never says outright, is that Karen doesn’t know how to take proper care of her in London. Worse, Karen doesn’t know how to take care of Yun’s culture—the culture that Qiang doesn’t know how to express and that Lulu, as much as Karen wants her to learn it, is struggling to grasp. Despite Karen’s best intentions, she and Yun struggle to bridge the gulf in their lived experiences:

When she first arrived, Yun had brought White Rabbit candy and haw flakes for Lulu. One look and Karen snatched away the candy and said it’d give Lulu cavities, her granddaughter’s bereft expression notwithstanding. Haw flakes? Look at the nutrition label. Full of processed sugar. Yun doubts she has anything else Lulu will want to have.

Though her intentions are not altogether bad, Karen’s unrelenting insistence on Western notions of health and family, cause more pain for Yun than anything else. Midway through the story, Karen asks Yun to pick Lulu up from school in the afternoons, thinking that grandmother and granddaughter should spend more time together. What Karen does not realize, Chiew implies, is that she has pre-emptively threatened such bonding by convincing Yun that she doesn’t have anything worthy to offer to Lulu.

Indeed, Karen’s response to Yun’s presence might be interpreted as a kind of cultural impersonation, or perhaps the forced surrender of their ‘homeland’ culture by members of the diaspora into the hands of the mainstream. This struggle is made even more tangible in “Chronicles of a Culinary Poseur,” which also touches on perhaps one of Singapore’s most important cultural domains: food. Kara Hsu, the story’s protagonist and executive chef of a new French restaurant, is forced to hire a Frenchman to pose in her place because “in this world of ours, Asian people can’t cook French gourmet.” The Frenchman’s presence attracts significant publicity, and Kara’s restaurant turns into an overnight financial success. Though she feels deeply uncomfortable at having sold her image to a white man, “amidst all the trickery and fraud, Kara had never been more undilutedly herself.” Not only does she prove to her mother that she is capable of providing for herself, but she also earns the freedom to pursue her culinary visions as she pleases. Underlying these developments is the conviction that, ultimately, her leadership will be recognized.

As exemplified by Kara’s dilemma, The Heartsick Diaspora is an attempt to reclaim identity from the shadows where it often hides in diasporic communities. Chiew’s stories bring together different stages of the diasporic experience and encourage us to look beyond misguided conceptions of any given identity or culture. The stories are often ambiguous, and most of them end unresolved, but this, too, is intentional: by declining to impose fates or decisions on her characters, Chiew allows us to imagine agency for them. Her work shines where she delves most boldly into the interstices of culture to pick apart pervasive but ill-understood representations and generalizations. Throughout the collection, she creates spaces for us to envision the ways in which contested identities may flourish in otherwise hostile surroundings. She challenges us to consider what lies beyond stereotypes and to connect past and present in our conception of what it means to be Asian. The Heartsick Diaspora is an intelligent and touching collection, and well worth a read for anyone interested in a breath of literary fresh air.


Maggie Wang studies at the University of Oxford, where she leads the Oxford University Poetry Society. Her writing has appeared in Not Very Quiet, perhappened mag, The Perch, and others. She is a 2021 Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critic. When not writing, she enjoys playing the piano and exploring nature.