Fiction Writing: Shorts Stories 2023 (resulting from ‘Words on Fire’ Workshop with Sharon Bakar)

Jas, they’re beautiful! My Black Hair (I Remember) made me sad happy wistful all that in one go.

*Aunt Jenny’s Room*

Aunty Jenny’s room is a bittersweet freeze-frame of a more innocuous time. Captured in the vivid depiction of a protective relative is an ominous subtext that, for anyone who have had a lived Asian experience, is normality personified – the tiger mum. Against that backdrop of the disapproving mother figure is the benevolent one, here pushed to the foreground in the shape of Aunt Jenny. You write as if for a journal, and for an audience of one – yourself. It is, for all intents and purposes, written in the raw, both in the outpouring of emotions onto paper (or docx) and the prose style. Overall, I, as the reader, would love to read more about Aunt Jenny. The story is a good start for world building, and serve as a decent entry point for a novella about the Lows.

*Tsunami Dream State*

A theme emerges. Mum appears yet again, this time in verse. The ending reveals it to be a dream before attending a familial event. Family is firmly at the core of your writing. I like the meter, and how enjambment is used, much like the metaphors of water and tsunami. An undercurrent of turbulence swirls here as you write under pressure. I hope it feels as cathartic as it reads.

*A Rambutan Tree House & Sales Executive Weds Teacher & Townhall Day*

I enjoy the Manglish dialogue throughout. It adds authenticity and is fit for purpose, at least where the evocation of Malaysiana is concerned. The prose is less hesitant here, unlike “aunty jenny” and flows more freely. It reads almost like a New Yorker piece, but more to the point, it has glimmers of Tan Twan Eng. The dialogue style works more effectively on “Sales Executive”. It posits the reader in the middle of a casual family banter. The description of prawn mee in “Townhall Day” is so lucid I can smell it through the screen. I feel that you will only gather strength the more you write, and I look forward to your future output.

*Love, all*

I like “Love, all” because it works on several levels: it subverts expectations, it is a creative take on the theme and leaves the audience wanting more, all on a platform of familiarity – the somewhat saccharine and maudlin template of young love.