A review by thatothernigeriangirl
The Heartsick Diaspora, and Other Stories by Elaine Chiew
4.0
Gifted by Myriad Editions
The Heartsick Diaspora is a collection of 14 short stories set across New York, London and Singapore, over multiple time frames. Most of the characters are subsets (Malaysian/ Singaporean) of a subset (Chinese heritage) of a subset (Asian) and these culminate their diasporic experiences.
Chiew is a bold and experimental author. In this collection whose stories were written over the span of 10 years, we see this in full display. She switches the themes of the stories, the experiences, age, sexuality of the characters and even the mode of narration of the stories. Some were written in first person, others in second person. There is even a story (Chinese Almanac) where she briefly shifts between a first person and third person narrative and not many author can write with so much freedom to experiment.
The heterogeneity of these stories of course shoots down the Western notion that “Asian faces are implacable, austere, not easily distinguishable” by using ‘faces’ as analogy for the characters’ experiences. Interestingly, “faces” as in “honor” (re: to save face) also came up a number of times in some of the stories like Mapping Three Lived Through a Red Rooster Chamber Pot and Love, Nude.
I enjoyed how many of the characters spoke in Singlish, a hybrid that is similar to Yorubanglish (Yorùbá + English) so that even when I didn’t understand some of the phrases, I felt like I did because I could relate.
The most outstanding feature of this book is Chiew’s punctuation usage!
I have not read any book that made such unconventional use of punctuation marks!
I’m talking about colons, semicolons, exclamation marks, hyphens, brackets, question marks, quotation marks— even italics!
Definitely recommend; a collection that’s worth every second you dedicate to it.
The Heartsick Diaspora is a collection of 14 short stories set across New York, London and Singapore, over multiple time frames. Most of the characters are subsets (Malaysian/ Singaporean) of a subset (Chinese heritage) of a subset (Asian) and these culminate their diasporic experiences.
Chiew is a bold and experimental author. In this collection whose stories were written over the span of 10 years, we see this in full display. She switches the themes of the stories, the experiences, age, sexuality of the characters and even the mode of narration of the stories. Some were written in first person, others in second person. There is even a story (Chinese Almanac) where she briefly shifts between a first person and third person narrative and not many author can write with so much freedom to experiment.
The heterogeneity of these stories of course shoots down the Western notion that “Asian faces are implacable, austere, not easily distinguishable” by using ‘faces’ as analogy for the characters’ experiences. Interestingly, “faces” as in “honor” (re: to save face) also came up a number of times in some of the stories like Mapping Three Lived Through a Red Rooster Chamber Pot and Love, Nude.
I enjoyed how many of the characters spoke in Singlish, a hybrid that is similar to Yorubanglish (Yorùbá + English) so that even when I didn’t understand some of the phrases, I felt like I did because I could relate.
The most outstanding feature of this book is Chiew’s punctuation usage!
I have not read any book that made such unconventional use of punctuation marks!
I’m talking about colons, semicolons, exclamation marks, hyphens, brackets, question marks, quotation marks— even italics!
Definitely recommend; a collection that’s worth every second you dedicate to it.