![]() ![]() The time had come to rediscover my roots. In 2010 while recovering from breast cancer, I remembered a dream I’d once had – of writing a novel loosely based on the life of my mixed-race great-grandmother. It seemed easier to ignore my heritage instead.īy rejecting my own culture, I cut off a large part of myself, though it took time for me to realise this. There was another reason for this: I knew quite early on that I was gay, and I had no idea how to reconcile being gay with being Asian. This makes our ancestry incredibly rich, a fact which should be a source of pride, yet is not fully acknowledged in my family.Īfter I came to school in England, it was easy to turn my back on my culture. ![]() Also, I’m not wholly Chinese: my maternal great-grandmother came from Siam and is known to have Minangkabau blood. I rebelled against his arrogance, and refused to commune with my heritage. We are Malaysians of Chinese ethnicity, and I grew up listening to him expound the superiority of Chinese culture. What he sensed was the ambiguity I felt about my roots. ![]() ![]() He was wrong, as I hope my novels demonstrate. There is a cruel Chinese saying: ‘Yellow on the outside, white on the inside.’ It’s derogatory, intended to mean that a person is more Western than Chinese and has lost her way. ![]()
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