Author Interview: Melanie Cheng
‘After all, she had only looked to Cambodia when the hospitals in Melbourne failed to provide the validation she’d been searching for. At the idealistic age of eighteen, she had chosen a career in health to make a difference, save lives, change the world, and Cambodia, with its reputation for tragedy, seemed like just the place to do it.’ (page 72)
This is part of the story ‘Hotel Cambodia’, one of the
stories in the middle of Australia Day by Melanie Cheng. I caught up with Melanie via email this past weekend to ask her all about this collection, and about the short story as a form. 'Hotel Cambodia' is the story of Melissa, a young
Australian woman who goes to Cambodia to ‘make a difference’. There’s a sort of double awareness in
Melissa’s point of view. On the one
level, she’s there to save lives, to help the less fortunate. But on a deeper level, one which the reader
sees through the third person narration, but Melissa doesn’t really say out
loud, she’s aware of the hypocrisy of going to a very poor country for the sake
of validating her own need to feel helpful and selfless. This is one of the ideas in Australia Day which was striking to
me—the myth of the Western Saviour. Do
you think there’s a tendency in Australia to think that the traditional, White
European way of live is ‘better’ than the way of life lived by some of the
people living in neighbouring countries, or of those who migrate here from
different backgrounds? Was this
something you were intentionally trying to explore in your work?
Melanie Cheng: In 2006 I lived in
Cambodia for 5 months doing volunteer medical work with an NGO, and so to a
great extent Melissa’s revelations are my revelations. When I arrived, a few
people told me Phnom Penh was an NGO Disneyland because there were just so many
different charities and organisations operating with little to no regulation.
Most people I met had noble intentions but the Western Saviour phenomenon you
refer to was a definite driving force. Once there, I felt ashamed for imagining
that I—a junior resident with little experience—could have anything to offer
the local Khmer doctors. Like Melissa, I was forced to acknowledge that my true
motivations were more selfish and naïve than I was originally willing to admit.
I don’t think the Western Saviour myth is an Australian construct, but rather a
Western, developed world phenomenon. And it’s hardly surprising when the
mainstream media and much of our popular culture perpetuates and celebrates these
myths.
Your author biography states that you grew up in Hong Kong
but you were born in Australia and live here now. I know questions of identity are often
complicated, but do you think of yourself as an Australian writer, a
Chinese-Australian writer, or something else entirely?
Melanie Cheng: Funny you should ask
that. I think perhaps the identity I’ve had the most trouble accepting is actually
that of “writer”. When I was growing up, I had the perception that writers were
fiercely intelligent people who suffered for their art. They weren’t people
like me who worked a day job and spent their afternoons cooking and watching
ABC Kids and hanging out endless loads of washing. I now understand that actually
many writers are just like me, juggling multiple occupations and roles. As for
whether I’m an Australian writer or a Chinese-Australian writer, I’m at peace
with being identified as either. I remember hearing Christos Tsiolkas say that sometimes
he wished he was described as the Australian writer who just happened to be
Greek, rather than the Greek-Australian writer. I feel similarly, but until we
get to the point that my heritage can be an incidental thing, I’m happy to be
the Chinese-Australian writer.
Is there any one character in this book that you identify
with the most?
Melanie Cheng: As mentioned already, ‘Hotel
Cambodia’ is drawn heavily from my own experiences and so I do relate to
Melissa a lot. During my medical training I frequently travelled to country
Victoria and I can sympathise with Stanley’s feeling of dislocation and longing
for home. The burnout and burden felt by some of the medical professionals in
the book is also an experience very familiar to me.
Your characters are often outsiders, and that gives you the
perspective you need to make comment on things about Australian life in a way
that allows the reader to stop and think about them—usually things that just
are, that aren’t questioned. A strong
example for me was in ‘Big Problems’, when Leila is thinking about the fact
that her surname is Ayres—the same as the name that was imposed on Uluru before we returned to using
its traditional name. I was struck by this passage:
‘He pointed a finger at the rock. “See that white line?” Leila looked at the chalky streak on the rock’s orange face. “That’s the mark left by people’s footprints.” “Like a scar,” Leila said. Ellen glared at her.’(page 31)
I admire the really gentle way that you worked this analysis
into your work—was it hard to achieve the balance? Were you worried at all about how the views
of some of your characters might have been received?
Melanie Cheng: I don’t feel responsible
for the behaviour of my characters. If stories are going to be true to life
then there should be likeable characters and some less likeable, or indeed
detestable, characters. Just because a writer includes a character in their
book doesn’t mean they condone that character’s views or behaviours. Ellen’s
character and much of her dialogue is based on things tourists and locals said
to me during my visit to Uluru. I was horrified. Perhaps the most horrifying
thing about it was the way people assumed, because of my Caucasian appearance,
that I would agree with their racist views. Many of my stories centre around a
moment of shock or personal epiphany such as this. I hope this gives the work a
certain authenticity.
Another very strong theme which stuck out to me was the
nostalgia a lot of your characters attributed to home. But for many of them, the longer they stay in
Australia, the less clear it becomes where home actually is—these characters
exist in an in between space, where they exist in two cultures. I’m sure that’s something a lot of people
living here today feel. What sort of
things were you hoping your readers would take away after reading this book?
Melanie Cheng: As someone of mixed
race who has spent half my life in Australia and half my life in Hong Kong, identity
is never something I have taken for granted. I see this conflict everywhere, in
my parents’ nervousness about returning to Australia for retirement, in the way
many of my patients still pine for their countries of birth. The recent census
tells us that almost half the population are either first or second generation
Australians. I hope they see themselves reflected in the book and in doing so,
feel a little less alone.
I want to talk about story craft here a little bit—at every
writer’s festival I go to, there’s always one audience question about the
writing process, or how one becomes a writer.
But there’s less understanding out there about how one becomes a short story writer. When you sat down to write Australia Day, did you write it in
order? How long did it take you to get
all of the material for the book?
Melanie Cheng: Some of the stories in
the book are almost ten years old, but I did not have a collection in mind when
I originally started writing them. They were written as stand-alone stories,
initially for my own amusement, and then for journals and competitions. The
themes emerged in an organic rather than a deliberate way, and reflect my
natural preoccupations with identity, belonging, family, and chance encounter. Order
was something my editor and I spoke about a lot. While a lot of short story
readers dip in and out of collections, I wanted to appeal to the traditional
novel reader who would likely read the book from start to finish. We went for a
light and shade approach in the end, varying the voices and settings rather
than keeping similar stories together.
How different is the book that has been published to the
manuscript that won the Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award?
Melanie Cheng: My editor and I cut
about four stories from the original manuscript and I wrote four new, much
longer, ones to replace them. ‘Australia Day’ and ‘Fracture’ were lengthened
and altered quite significantly. Most of the other stories appeared in a pretty
similar form in the original manuscript.
What publications do you look to as being the most important
ones for emerging short fiction writers?
Who gave you your earliest publication credits, and what did you learn
from them?
Melanie Cheng: Peril was my first
break. They published a short non-fiction piece I wrote about my Chinese
grandmother. Julianne Schultz and the
team at the Griffith Review have also been a wonderful source of support and
encouragement. Over the years I’ve learnt to submit widely. Sometimes an
article, especially a non-fiction piece, might not be picked up simply because
the timing isn’t right—the journal may have just run an article on a similar
topic, or the news cycle may have moved on since the article was written.
This one is a question that comes up again and again in
writing groups. You’ve got a range of
different sized short stories in this collection—I think the story ‘Muse’—which
is one of my favourites, by the way—is probably the longest? Are there any hard and fast rules about the
lengths of short stories in Australian publishing?
Melanie Cheng: Obviously when you
write for competitions and journals there are certain restrictions. For some
reason a common word limit seems to be 3000 words. I remember Michael Heyward
at Text giving me permission to make my stories as long as they needed to be,
and how freeing this felt after being restricted for so long. I think word
limits are arbitrary and can ruin a good story by forcing the writer to bring a
piece to an end before it is ready.
What has the reception of the book been like so far? What sorts of bookish events and promotional
activities are you looking forward to now that the book has come out?
Melanie Cheng: I’ve been just blown
away by the way booksellers have got behind it. In fact I feel very grateful
and humbled by the whole experience. Readings announced ‘Australia Day’ as its
Best Fiction book for the month of July and Librarians’ Choice included it in
their top 10 books for July. It was also one of iBooks best books of the month.
I still pinch myself regularly. In terms of bookish events, I’m doing the
literary luncheon with Antipodes bookshop next week and then it’s Melbourne
Writers Festival where I’m doing three events: a library event with Tony Birch,
Asia What? - a day of free discussion
and workshops exploring Asian narratives, and a Readings Recommends event with
Jennifer Down and Ryan O’Neill, all of which I’m extremely excited about.
Is there anything else you would like readers of your book
to know?
Melanie Cheng: My great hope would be
that people read the stories and find themselves relating to characters who are,
at least on the surface, very different to them. One thing I’ve learnt from
working in diverse communities is that we are all much more alike than we are
different.
You can pick yourself up a copy of Melanie Cheng's amazing book, Australia Day from all good booksellers. Australia Day is also the next book up for discussion in the Short Story Book Club at the Centre for Stories-- you can book in to join us here (and please do!)