How does (re)writing folktales for your children and the greater globe compare to your other writing experiences?Painful.
First, let me say that I am a very new author. I had only one other book published, a YA Steampunk – The Ghost Engine, before I wrote The Girl Who Became a Goddess. So I was/am inexperienced. When I wrote my first novel, I relied on years of storytelling experience as well as my previous career as an analyst/programmer. I put myself into the role of my protagonist, asking myself how Berd would have felt as a young woman growing up in the Industrial Age, when women had yet to obtain equality. I hope I would have made the same decisions as she. But what I wrote was fiction. Although I put my heart into my book, I could ‘hide’ behind the story. Writing The Girl Who Became a Goddess was different as I was writing for my children. While I wanted them to know the world I had come from, I didn’t want them to see an idealized version of Singapore. Or me. I was determined from the start to write the truth. Truth is a cleansing experience. Living in Australia, so far away from the childhood trauma, it was easy to ‘forget’ what had happened. Writing my folktales, I was forced to relive the pain, and ask difficult questions of myself. I didn’t realise until I started writing the folktales, how it was that I had heard so many stories. Painful.
0 Comments
 BOOK REVIEW⠀
[The Lusiads] The Portuguese explore their national identity through the exploration of Indian trade routes. // 🌟I STARTED A BLOG TO ADD MORE THOUGHTS! I will post more about The Lusiads later this week. Check it out! 🌟⠀ //⠀ WHAT I LIKED⠀ In a sense, Camoes writes as an inverted Homer. Homer was a blind poet - often thought to be a collective group of ancient poets - describing the actions of one man. It was unlikely Homer ever saw the islands his tale describes. Camoes is a half-blind poet who ACTUALLY TRAVELLED to the places in his poem. HOW COOL IS THAT? He lived in Asia for much of his life. While he wrote The Lusiads, it is believed he travelled Cambodia, China, and India. He is one poet describing the collective experience of Portuguese nobles through history.⠀ //⠀ Camoes plays with the form of epic poetry. He manipulates his choice of high versus low language as well as fantastical happenings to introduce Portuguese as a literary language. He plays with a balance of realism - scrapping “sludge” from the bottom of boats - and fantasy - many gods/nymphs/etc change the heroic paths. The religious aspects of this text are super interesting.⠀ //⠀ WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE⠀ Make sure you know Homer and Virgil before you read this. Like study them hard. You need to know the episodes of these classical poets to see the classical references Camoes makes to connect his country to his education of classical antiquity. CLASSICAL KNOWLEDGE. You need them for this.⠀ //⠀ It’s also important to understand Camoes' tale of Vasco de Gama acts as a story frame to depict past Portuguese nobility. It is a story of many and flashbacks are plentiful. That being said, it is an interesting ethnography of the lands Portugal “found” in their attempt to establish better Indian trade routes. // 🌟I STARTED A BLOG TO ADD MORE THOUGHTS! I will post more about The Lusiads later this week. Check it out! 🌟⠀ //⠀ The Lusiads (by Luis Vaz de Camoes) ⚡️⚡️⚡️3/5⠀ //⠀ Thank you to #gutenbergproject for giving all access to this epic for free.⠀  BOOK REVIEW [Diary of a Madman] A madman’s diary holds stories across revolutionary China. // WHAT I LIKED Lu Xun’s writing defies genre. I still don’t know if I should classify it as an unreliable narrator, an anthology of short stories, a manifesto…hmmm... I suppose it is all of those things. The book begins with a short introduction in which a character reads a childhood friend’s diary. The friend is said to have gone mad, but it now safely working for the government in another province (smells fishy, right?). Anyway, the introduction narrator opens the diary and away we go. // Every passage could be completely new. From characters to setting, Lu Xun stretches his writting across many perspectives of the "madman's” China. Some of the stories are retelling of classic myths, others are letters between collegaues. Lu Xun captures you into the new setting within a few lines. His inferencing cluse left for the reader are fantastic. // WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE The first few chapters were my favorite. I loved the building of the story frame within the madman’s mind. The rest of the book breaks from the story frame, and I wish there was more written about it! This book’s constant change eats at your stamina, but each chapter brings something new. I would also recommend brushing up on any knowledge of China’s cultural revolution and modernism movement before reading. Lu Xun’s wonderful allusions may be lost without this prior knowledge. // Diary of a Madman (Lu Xun) ⚡️⚡️⚡️3/5 //  BOOK REVIEW⠀
[The Magicians] Mopey magician Quentin tries to find life’s meaning in magic.⠀ //⠀ WHAT I LIKED⠀ Secret magical school? Sign me up. Like now. I like Grossman’s play on Narnians multi-worlds and Tolkien magical beings. He plays with the same ideas in a darker tone. There is one good twist at the end (which I unfortunately already knew from watching the show) which Grossman continuously hints towards without being too obvious. I loved his play with time and the define - though kind of static - characters.⠀ //⠀ WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE⠀ Grossman’s characters remind me of Salinger rich kids with magic still never finding happiness in the world. Which would be great if I liked Salinger, but I pretty much have hated everything I’ve read by him. The characters are always distraught for basically no reason, and it tries my patience. I understand the whys of the writing…but really. YOU HAVE MAGIC. YOUR LIFE IS LITERALLY MAGICAL. I’m here if you want to trade abilities. Just saying. Also, the male gaze just kills me. It just serves no purpose. The Magicians is a product of its time - with usage of the r-word to boot. ⠀ //⠀ Ending note: I like the show more.⠀ //⠀ The Magicians (by Lev Grossman) ⚡️⚡️✨2.5/5⠀ |
