Were you ever hesitant to publish your novel in fear of backlash from the public since it is centred around a topic and historical event that are not widely discussed? And eventually those two separate strands of thought in my head began to weave themselves together and formed the backbone of The Weight of Our Sky. And I’d always wanted to write a story against the backdrop of May 13 th. Mental illness has been an area of particular interest for me for a long time – I’ve even written a non-fiction book about it – and I’m particularly drawn to the way mental health and culture and faith interact for us as a people.
How did you come up with the idea to base a story on mental illness that intertwines with the setting of one of the darkest moments in Malaysian history? I didn’t want the very real loss of human life to be boiled down to stark numbers anymore I wanted to portray the stories of the people who lived through that time, to show both our humanity and our inhumanity, and the effects racism has on both. The narrative I chose was less about picking sides and more about sharing stories instead of data points. If you read The Weight of Our Sky, I think – I hope – that you’ll see that I tried to be as even-handed in my portrayal as possible, while still sticking as close to fact as I could. With that, whose story did you choose to share? And was it based on anyone specific? However, the recollections from the event were usually cloudy and split down the middle between Chinese and Malay perspectives. The events of May 13th 1969 were a true portrayal of how propaganda and dichotomy could tear a nation.
JUICE got the opportunity to delve deeper into the conception of The Weight of Our Sky as well as get a scoop on the author’s upcoming book, ‘The Girl and The Ghost’, set to debut in 2020.
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