In Conversation with Zedeck Siew

Zedeck Siew is a Malaysian writer slowly opening the door to Malaysia’s literary scene from the seaside town of Port Dickinson. His previously published zine, A Thousand Thousand Islands, and book, Creatures of New Kingdoms, are beautifully embedded in Southeast Asian roots and culture, leaving no room for Western influences.

Fascinated by video and role-playing games, Zedeck Siew's works encompasses his adorations for the unknown and mundane. In his first book, Creatures of New Kingdoms, he paints a picturesque image of his home and the aspects that make it special by incorporating folklore and cultural features that are unique to him. The intricate intimacy of his works and words offer the reader a land of familiarity and comfort.

Aside from being a 'massive game nerd', Zedeck has been a translator, editor, and critic. He is currently endeavouring to write his first novel while fighting a colossal monster; procrastination.

In this interview, Sara Mostafa unravels Zedeck’s sense of self and identity as a writer, concluding with the works that have continued to inspire him.

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SM

Your book Creatures of Near Kingdoms allows Malaysian and foreign readers to dip their feet into Malaysian folklore, culture, and world. Was this your intention when you were writing it? What did you hope your readers will gain from it?

ZS

In Port Dickson where Sharon and I live, we have a bit of a garden, and frequently get visitors: monkeys, civet cats, a colourful bird now and again. I wrote about those animals; the trees that grew around us; imagining the ways I could relate to them. We also live next to human things: a secondary school, where teachers scream at students every assembly; two petroleum refineries, whose flares we can see from our bedroom. I wrote about those, too.

All that went into Creatures of Near Kingdoms. It is not a book of Malaysian folklore or culture, really -- it is not general, like that. It is a book about the folklore I love; the cultures I live with, the world I share. I hoped it would carry the sensations and sensibilities of my very own geography, here in Port Dickson.

Writing so specifically is a strange magic: the more truthfully you speak and imagine your own space, the more readers see it mirrored in their own truths. Folks from Canada and Poland have written to me, telling me that this or that story in Creatures spoke to them -- reminded them of some aspect of their life. I guess that is what I want readers to have from the book? A sketch of what my space is like, and how much kinship it has with their own.

(Also, I just wanted to write a book of silly fables with animals and plants.)

SM

From my research, I have found that your zine A Thousand Thousand Islands has been well received by the gaming community, what elements of gaming or games, in general, captivated you to write about them?

ZS

A Thousand Thousand Islands is a zine series that me and artist Mun Kao work on together. The zines are gazetteers -- guides to places set in a Southeast Asian-inspired fantasy world. They are designed for use with tabletop roleplaying games -- stuff like Dungeons & Dragons.

ATTI began as a visual-arts research project. Mun Kao was reacting to how narrow the Malaysian imagination is, when we imagine our mythic past: genre-fantasy or anime tropes, re-skinned with tanjaks and kerises. We wanted to push things further: what would SEAsian fantasy that was not just badly re-skinned Game of Thrones actually look like? What kind of textiles and materials did people use? How would that change the stories they are in? Minor details like "Did people wear shoes a lot?" have far-rippling effects on the kinds of stories you might want to tell! In tabletop RPGs, a group of players essentially tell a story together. They imagine a space, and their characters in that space. Since our purpose with ATTI is to get people to imagine stuff in wider ways, RPGs seemed the perfect fit. Instead of readers idly asking: "Oh, so such-and-such character tends to go barefoot?" -- we have players going: "Wait wait wait, my character is actually barefoot right now, and there's a mangrove flat of dunno-what-nonsense in the mud, could we go from root to root instead?" Way more immediate!

(Also, Mun Kao and I are just generally massive games nerds.)

SM

In one of your interviews, you mentioned that language is "A sense of self. How can you think if you don’t think in a particular language?" I have never thought of language in that way so that statement made me take a few steps back and view my life in a different light. How has language impacted you and your life?

ZS

Oh, massively, I think? Like everybody who has grown up in this context.

Malaysians are at the very least bilingual. English is my first language. I speak and write in Bahasa too -- but because of Malaysian language politics, I have never felt comfortable with Bahasa. Ultra-nationalists use Bahasa proficiency as a cudgel to others and dismiss groups they don't like ("Why don't you speak our national language, you are not truly Malaysian!"). My use of Bahasa has always been a source of shame and anxiety. But middle-class Anglophones like me have also wielded English as a weapon, to mock and belittle others. We live in different worlds, because of the languages we speak, and we use those languages to police the borders. This is why translation is one of the most important things we can do. Must do? But it is so very hard.

This is a huge question, hahaha. The last time I tried to think about it I wrote a whole essay here.

SM

You're currently working on a novel; will the novel take the same form as your first book or will it be different? How has the writing process been so far? What has been your biggest challenge in writing a novel?

ZS

I am currently working on: a BM translation of Creatures; a collected volume of A Thousand Thousand Islands; a number of other RPG adventures. The novel that I started when I first quit my day job to write fiction full-time is a distant mirage. I respect and envy folks who are able to work on novels. I am not sure I even have it in me, anymore. Because of social media my brain has the attention span of a tiny rodent, always running, easily bored, 'oh lemme procrastinate by starting something new', etc...

That is the biggest challenge, I guess. To stay on a single long-form-prose thread. All the ideas I have are essentially cheats: Creatures is a collection of stories; RPG adventure are novella-length, but they are written to be open-ended, to contain possibility, not to have linear narrative arcs. I could spin this by saying that: oh, I am interested in experimenting with narrative and prose forms. Ha! Honestly? I lack the endurance a novel requires.

SM

Which authors or books have inspired you and continue to inspire you in your journey as a writer?

ZS

Nowadays, I like to talk about two: Ursula Le Guin, the American author most well-known for her spec-fic. My favourite work of hers, which gets nowhere near the recognition it truly deserves, is a book called Always Coming Home: a kind of anthropological overview of the Kesh, a culture living in Northern California long after the collapse of Western civilisation. It presents Kesh stories, dances, food recipes. It muses about many weighty things: the nature of civilisation; the meaning of utopia; how humans relate to the other peoples (i.e.: plants, animals, places) of the earth. Le Guin even cut a whole record of music for the book. (It also helps that Always Coming Home is formally similar to RPG gazetteers!)

Zurinah Hassan, poet and fiction writer, Malaysia's first female Sasterawan Negara. Another severely underrated person. Unlike our other celebrated (and male) writers in Bahasa, there is a real economy in the way Zurinah uses Bahasa: there's little berdeklamasi grandstanding in her poetry; her use of language is understated, utterly dedicated to getting image and music across. Her poetry can be angry without shouting; simple like a rendang looks simple. Cerita Dalam Cerita is a lovely collection of hers, published by ITBM.

Note: This interview was conducted through email.