Conversation: Sharlene Teo
By Jiaqi Kang
This interview was conducted via two rounds of emails in July 2018 and was originally published in Issue #8 “GOLD (金)”. Get it now on BLURB.
Ponti conjures up the relentless heat and humidity of prosperous Singapore at the turn of this century, a country whose economic boom only took place a generation before. It examines the lives of three women, alienated from one another and the world by seemingly insurmountable personal torments: Amisa Tan, the faded star of a cult horror film; her daughter Szu whom she resents; and Szu’s school friend Circe, the nouveau riche with no direction. A refreshingly candid look at the concept of the young girl — heartbreaking, relatable, and with a dash of mythology, Ponti is a promising début from Sharlene Teo, the young Singaporean law graduate-turned-author based in the UK who in 2016 received the inaugural Deborah Rogers Award of £10,000 to complete the manuscript.
Jiaqi Kang: What made you decide to pursue creative writing after Law studies? Does Law inspire your work?
Sharlene Teo: I’ve always wanted to write novels, that was always the end goal. The study of law involves utilising and applying language in very particular, often bone-dry and almost fascinatingly impersonal ways. So, yes,
you could say in a way my legal training did influence my work, to the extent that education, culture and the effluvium and ephemera of life influences one’s writing.
JK: Szu’s self-loathing, Amisa’s cruel ambition, and Circe’s self centeredness all really resonated with me, and the raw way in which you communicate their feelings reminds me of the nostalgic self-deprecation of Lady Bird. How do you craft unhappy, angst-filled characters?
ST: As Tolstoy famously put it, “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Flawed, divisive characters are the most interesting. Angst equals agitation. I tried to think of each character as a dramatised version of a series of human flaws.
JK: Ponti has garnered a lot of praise for its raw and honest portrayal of female friendship. What, if anything, are some things that you think are often missed or misrepresented in depictions of female friendships within mainstream media?
ST: There seems to me to be an overt focus on sexual rivalry, one friend
much more beautiful than the other, obvious binaries that aren’t attentive
to the nuances and subtleties of these relationships. Power and allegiances shift and slide within female friendships, and there can be an almost narcissistic intensity to them that is very unique, very individual.
JK: Szu’s story is set in 2003, at the same time that you were 16. How did your own adolescent experiences contribute to the storywriting? Do you think that generally, using your own experiences helps or hinders the writing?
ST: It helped with references to the time, and conjuring up the particular
atmosphere of Singapore around that time, student hangouts like Orchard Road and that entire adolescent experience of academic and personal stress. I think writing not from what you know or have lived necessarily, but what you feel strongly or are most curious or angry about, helps writing, is what makes it interesting.
JK: Is there a universal teenage girl experience?
ST: I think some aspects of teenage girlhood are fairly universal. There’s the longing, ennui, intense introspection, the big, almost insurmountable hopes about life.
I think writing not from what you know or have lived necessarily, but what you feel strongly or are most curious or angry about, helps writing, is what makes it interesting.
JK: The three different points of view set in three different epochs remind me of some of the sweeping intergenerational stories that have been quite popular in the past few years, like Khaled Hosseini’s work or Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing. These books use a country’s recent history as a framework, and the nation is to an extent one of the characters. Do you see Ponti as a Singapore story?
ST: Yes, it is very much concerned with how Singapore changes, along with
Amisa’s arc. How the city includes and then seemingly alienates her.
JK: Why magical realism?
ST: I’d more closely align the more eerie parts of the book with fabulism, magic realism moving beyond the boundaries of Latin America to depict a consensus reality where the lines between reality and imagination are skewed.
JK: Why fabulism, then?
ST: It fitted those parts of the story.
JK: What kinds of stories did you think were best told through dream sequences? Why?
ST: As above, the story finds its mode organically. Too many dream sequences are tiring, of course, the same way that someone telling you about their dream always gets a little tedious after a while. It’s best to mix it up.
JK: What is your writing process? When and how do you write best? How long did it take you to write Ponti and what was the hardest part of the story?
ST: I’m disorganised and write in spurts. I’m most clearheaded in the mornings. It took me about 4 years to write Ponti in various drafts, from my initial idea right through to the end. The hardest section to write was the funeral.
JK: Why?
ST: It felt long, tiring, relentlessly sad, and worst of all, quite boring. Public and private mourning can be exhausting.
JK: What media do you find most inspirational?
ST: Films.
JK: That’s interesting, because I definitely found many scenes to be very cinematic. Why choose to make Ponti a book rather than a screenplay?
ST: I’m always surprised that anyone asks this question! It’s like asking a baker why didn’t they make a steak instead of a cake. A writer of novels is not the same as a writer of screenplays. Short story writers have a completely different set of skills to novelists. Just because we all work with words doesn’t mean those skills are interchangeable nor so easily adapted.
JK: What are you reading right now?
ST: Just finished Mixed-Race Superman by Will Harris which was incredible; just starting In the Cut by Susanna Moore.
JK: What can we expect from you in the coming year?
ST: Definitely not my second book so soon :)
JK: Do you have any advice for our audience of fledgling Sino creatives?
ST: Keep reading widely, voraciously. Maybe keep a journal, so long as you’re writing and reading regularly the rest of it is just committing your ideas to paper, seeing it through without wincing too much or being bogged down by self-criticism or self-censorship.
Original interview by Jiaqi Kang. Illustration and banner by Jessica Peng. Medium article re-uploaded by Natalie Cheung.
Sine Theta is a creative arts magazine made by and for the Sino diaspora.
WEB: sinetheta.net
BLOG: sinethetamagazine.tumblr.com
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/sinethetamagazine
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/sinethetamag
BLURB: blurb.com/user/sinethetamag
REDBUBBLE: redbubble.com/people/sinethetamag
PINTEREST: pinterest.com/sinethetamag
DONATE: paypal.me/jiaqikang
