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have been a completely different book why didn t you write about your marriage or the birth of your children chauly has two daughters i saw that as a part of my life that was separate from my personal history my self that those were issues of a different nature that related to me more as a woman a mother a creative person my personal politics someone struggling to find her voice her art make sense of the world i think my poems reflect this more and that is what my poetry is for this book was about me coming to terms with my personal history of being the product of two distinct cultures of coming to terms with who i am first and foremost what appeal do you feel the book will have for those who are not part of your family or close friends of the family i think it s a universal story a search for bloodlines so many of us come from different places it s the search to find roots one s place in the larger scheme of things to acknowledge that we share similar histories to study the punjabi and chinese diasporas and how we came to be where we are it s acceptance of who we are and to not forget where we came from what are your plans now that this book has been published what are you working on at the moment i had plans of wanting to adapt it to a one woman play to have it staged the australian writer photographer performer william yang has done something similar with his own family stories silence which was a multi media performance with slides and film it was very inspiring when i was grappling with this work but i think the weight of the book has now been lifted i want to let it go and move on i am currently working on curating a writers festival in george town see story above and doing research for a novel i have also started work on a new collection of short stories and a collection of poems growing up with ghosts by bernice chauly isbn 978 9834484583 is published by matahari books and is available in most malaysian bookstores and from amazon online post taken from the star posted by bernicechauly filed in interviews prose tagged bernice chauly daphne lee growing up with ghosts the star 1 comment well lit a fiery furious love by umapagan ampikaipakan september 18 2011 growing up with ghosts by bernice chauly memoirs are by definition works in progress they should for all intents and purposes take a lifetime to write they should communicate change they should symbolise growth they should be reflective in an age where everyone is looking for their 15 seconds of fame we have come to expect so much more from these sorts of things we want revelation we want honesty and candour we want to be surprised for what is the point indulging in such reading if we didn t actually learn from it something new something that would god forbid further enrich our reality suffice to say that bernice chauly does not disappoint it has taken her over two decades to put this book together and it is an absolute masterpiece a magnum opus about family love death the plight of star crossed lovers the diaspora of all those displaced by time and by space it will tear your heart out it will make you bleed it will likely be the most malaysian thing you read this year why simply because this story of chauly s parents of their forbidden love steeped in passion and punctuated by tragedy is as much hers as it is ours also because we have all had startlingly similar experiences be it in our own lives or in those lives close to ours and this quest of self discovery coming to terms with one s sense of self dealing with those complex questions of identity is something we ve all undertaken or likely will at some point in our lives why is that well very simply because it comes with the territory it is our tendency the inescapable consequence of our curious living arrangements this book is nothing short of a labour of love it is a work suffused with so much blood sweat and tears every sentence is steeped in sentiment in emotion so raw so natural and instinctive that its appeal is nothing short of universal there is a wonderful quality to chauly s prose it is a style that stems from her well established poetic roots it is lyrical there are moments when it borders on verse arranged with an almost metrical rhythm like when she writes of her origins i am punjabi a sardarni of the khalsa of the pure from the tenets sprung from the loins of guru nanak from the plains of the punjab and the wheat fields of amritsar i am chinese from the port city of canton from fatshan from lam soy chea from the village of fishermen and of joss stick makers it possesses a choral character that demands to be read and read out loud this is because chauly has written more than just a memoir she has compiled more than just a poignant catalogue of letters and diary entries and personal observations and scrapbook excerpts growing up with ghosts is an inadvertent play for voices growing up with ghosts is many things it is a biography a diary and a history it s also a love story a searching journey into the heart of the punjab and into the guangdong province and the story of an ancient curse but most of all it is the story of a little girl just looking for her father leave my mother alone take me this space is dedicated to publishing new writing from local and foreign writers this month we re highlighting growing up with ghosts by bernice chauly here an excerpt of the memoir loh siew yoke jelapang ipoh 1944 they were older than me actually and i must have been about four when they died i don t even remember their names they were always sick so they had to be sent away my mother never talked about them at all my dead sisters when the war broke out i was sent to live in jelapang i lived with my eldest sister third aunt and my grandmother ah ma my mother lived in the shophouse called ying woh on leech street with my father and ah yeh my grandfather third aunt was quite sickly as well i think she suffered from heart disease my grandparents favoured boys so my father and uncle were treated differently third aunt was very good to me took care of me and she used to sew me clothes she was a good tailor i remember she had to eat raw liver all the time we believed that you had to treat blood with blood you see so ah ma would chop raw liver very fine pour boiling water on it swirl it around with chopsticks and third aunt would have to drink the liver water she died when she was 28 or 29 she was so young her body was so swollen when she died i remember touching it she was cold swollen and cold we lived on sweet potatoes for almost two years there was nothing else to eat during the war the shophouse sold pork but there wasn t much meat then i remember my stomach got so big once and ah ma said i had worms it was from the sweet potatoes maybe because it wasn t cooked long enough maybe the water wasn t clean enough i don t know maybe it s because i was barefoot all the time i had sores on my feet and had to soak my feet in hot water every day for hours just sitting there for hours with my feet in a tub of hot water then one day they came the japanese came the house was old wooden and in the back there were jambu trees and then there was the jungle i loved to climb the jambu trees so one evening they came there was a commotion outside i thought it was from the neighbour s house there was a lot of noise outside the door they barged in two or three of them they had guns they were talking very loudly and one of them went into the bedroom and started ransacking the drawers i shouted at him in cantonese what are you doing he turned around and slapped me i ran to hide they found nothing they must have thought we were rich because we had a horse cart we went from jelapang to ipoh in a horse cart in those days then they dragged ah ma by her hair out the door and third aunt said she s old leave my mother alone take me but they were already out the door we were crying hugging each other not knowing what to do somehow the news got to ying woh and then the rest of the family came my father had to make a police report and the policeman came to ask us questions ah ma had been kidnapped by the japanese i cried and i cried we could not sleep that night the next morning i got up very early i went to the window to look out and i will never forget this for the rest of my life i saw her running ah ma looked as if she was flying she was running through the air through the back of the house through the jungle and the jambu trees her hair was wild she ran into the house and collapsed onto the floor her feet were swollen and torn she told us that she had escaped in the middle of the night when one of the japanese soldiers went off to urinate she had started running and ran and ran until it was dawn she said she was guided out of the jungle by a white butterfly post taken from new straits times posted by bernicechauly filed in prose reviews tagged book growing up with ghosts review leave a comment exorcising her past august 22 2011 it has taken 23 years for author poet actress and filmmaker bernice chauly right to complete her memoir growing up with ghosts it s the story of her parents and her ancestors her mother a chinese and her father a punjabi fell in love and got married despite fierce family objections their first child brought peace to the family but then tragedy struck the 43 year old author shares some intimate details of how the memoir came about here what motivated you to base this memoir on your parents this book is not just about my parents it s about the chinese and punjabi diasporas and about how my ancestors from china and india came to this country it is 100 years of my family history set against the history of this region i managed to trace five generations of my family from both sides and i have taken some creative liberties in telling their story i call it fictive autobiography the book is told in six different voices so it has many narrators i wanted to give voices to my ancestors i have also used existing documents to tell this story my parents left everything behind almost as if they were saying bernice here are our letters our journals our scrapbooks our photos so tell our story and that is what i did what is the appealing factor of this book i think many malaysians will be able to relate to this memoir because so many of us come from mixed marriages it s a very malaysian story it is about the history of malaysia told by ordinary people it is about knowing that your ancestors lived through great difficulties how they had struggled and survived it is about coming to terms with who you are and about bloodlines it is also about love death grief and acceptance tell us the process of writing this book i knew i would have to write this book since i was young i started collecting my family stories and writing them down when i was a teenager in university but the actual writing and structuring of the book began about fours years ago it was my mother s death in 2007 she died at the age of 66 from cancer which propelled me to finish it after her death i went to verka in punjab india where my father came from to get answers that i needed for the book i spent two weeks in india and i came back a different person what motivated you to be a writer i lost my father when i was four we were swimming in the sea at miami beach in batu ferringhi penang he drowned in four feet of water he was a good swimmer and he was only 33 death does many things to you it takes away the people you love and mortality hits you in the face and you really don t take time for granted my dad s death made me a writer his death evicted me from the world i had to find myself in the world again and words were all i had i had to make sense of what s happened i had to confront myself in many ways it was not easy but i had to do it all my writings my poems my short stories and even this memoir were a part of this process since you are a filmmaker too do you plan to turn this book into a movie we shall see she smiles growing up with ghosts priced at rm40 will be launched on aug 23 after which it will be available at all major bookstores and amazon com post taken from thesundaily posted by bernicechauly filed in interviews media prose tagged book growing up with ghosts 3 comments writing the truth fact or fiction july 3 2011 http www dotdotdot my assets files ddd17062011_writingthetruth factorfiction mp3 we were fortunate to have four touring writers from the netherlands turkey egypt and the us together with five malaysian writers during the recent writers unlimited tourkl makassar 2011 umapagan ampikaipagan moderated a panel discussion during the tour he walks us through the provocative theme writing truth fact or fiction how fiction helps us get to the truth and how fact can sometimes fictionalise truth post taken from dot dot dot posted by bernicechauly filed in media tagged writers writers unlimited tour kl makassar leave a comment writers unlimited writers tour to indonesia and malaysia july 3 2011 connecting writers with each other and with audiences across borders of cultures and countries that is the mission of writers unlimited formerly known as winternachten the international literature festival in an annual event in the hague and in tours across the world writers unlimited brings together writers and poets during those encounters they exchange before an audience and amongst each other their literary work their experiences dreams and ideas in all langagues and in all their cultural diversity from 9 to 17 june four authors will travel with us in a combined tour to indonesia and malaysia writer and columnist gündüz vassaf from turkey poet rodaan al galidi from the netherlands writer and storytaller abeer soliman from egypt and writer maaza mengiste from ethiopia usa in malaysia we perform in kuala lumpur for a general audience and for students our partner in kuala lumpur is the writer bernice chauly who last year joined us in tours to cape town suriname and the antilles she inivted four authors from malaysia to perform together with our writers dain said kee thuan chye chuah guat eng uthara sankar sb and the indian writer dipika mukherjee from kuala lumpur we fly to makassar on the island of sulawesi indonesia here we co operate with the newly opened cultural center rumata art space the director writer liy yuianti farid was one of our participating writers in the january 2011 festival in the hague our four writers will perform in makassar with local writers and poets shinta februiany hendra gunawan st erni aladjai and hamran sunu and the renowned poet sapardi we will perform not only in makassar but also for school pupils in the village of galesong and for the local community on the island of barranglompo during the performances all the authors will read from their work in the original language translations into english and or indonesian will be projected simultaneously the program reading at taylor s university kuala lumpur the first performance in ...