Hazera Forth - Writing Blog

A Concrete Approach

2010-02-03T15:18:00.000-08:00

I mustn't forget to be systematic in my research. That's a lesson I have learnt already in the last few weeks of blogging this ghost-journal.

There are so many resources that will be useful but often, I am asking such wild questions, sometimes stupid questions (I don't mind that they seem stupid) because it means I'm not making too many assumptions - it means, I can be wide-eyed and amazed when I get a good answer.

Some of the issues that I've already raised - like the gap between flights and voucher validation - I think may have been answered by the Hansard site and it's enitrely possible to have had possession of the Ministry of Labour Voucher, entered the UK and then had the voucher stamped before the validity ran out. I think that is plausible.

The other part of being systematic - is making sure I can validate all the primary sources I have in my possession. It's all well and good having the original airline tickets with dates but don't mean a thing unless I can check them against a passenger manifesto or have some other official corroboration in writing that it actually took place. So, that's the approach...

Have a primary source, check that is genuined, validate it and then contextualise it - in terms of the historic and emotional backdrop. Let's not forget, the systematuc indexing of each source - I have created an authority file of data items to use for my catalogue and I am keeping it simple:

What is the source?
Format of source?
Individual Family member to which it relates
Date of source
Type
Primary or Secondary source
Validated
Documentation of validation.

I have another piece of Oral information from my mum. She recalls that on first arrival, dad did stay in London and then went to Birmingham after the initial six months to work in a woollen mill. There is no documented source in my files to corroborate this so, how does anyone go about looking for a place of work where someone may or may not have been employed when they don't know the name of the factory, the dates of employment or any other facts which have not been determined from someone's (not always reliable) personal memory?

A discussion also arose about immunisations of new entrants into the UK - I have not found any reliable information about health and travel for that period - specificially related to migrants from South Asia. Although, migrants would not have been able to refuse a medical examination by an immigration officer at their port of entry. This does not mean that all migrants actually received a medical exam. It would be interesting to know what the procedure involved - what was checked and what criteria was used to refuse entry.

In the last couple of days, I have had a chance to both reflect on some of the information I have found as well as to make new ties with old acquaintances and family friends and am pleased to say may have inspired similar personal investigations into their pasts. I really hope some lines of enquiry cross and that our mutual interests will lead to finding out other truths and maybe in sharing them, we will arrive, like our fathers did and just as they dreamt of a new world, our world will be changed and made concrete beneath us. Isn't that how the tarmac must have felt when they first came here?

Mind the London Gap

2010-02-01T16:33:00.000-08:00

A strange gap in the dates leads me to wonder what happened between dad's flight from Bangladesh in Apr 1963 to his Minisitry of Labour Voucher's date of entry to the UK in November 1963. Would he have had a stop-over in Karachi? I don't think so as the outbound ticket lists multiple changes for the same date.

So, what happened for seven months?

Aside from this anomaly, I have found his residential address up to May 1964 based on his NHS Medical Card which was 24 Offord Road, London, N1, not very far from Camden and Kentish Towns and is 2 minutes walk from Caledonian Road Station (British Rail overground). The next question has to be, why there? What secret lair of our mythical meanderers existed here? Was there a job here? A lodging, paid for by an employer? Who else lived here? Questions, questions. His GP was a Dr K. Bhattarcharya, who is more than likely a late Bhattacharya by now.

Below, is the Google Map with satellite image overlayed of Offord Road as it is now.
From what I can tell, there were terraces with gardens - relatively long - probably about 60 feet. The street outside the terraced houses looks narrow - and is likely quite overcrowded with cars but would have been fairly empty in 1964.

What I like about this image is that from a bird's eye view it is the same as it was 46 years ago, nothing much has changed except maybe the trees will be taller and some of the roofs will have been retiles, reimagined or houses slightly renovated and extended but generally, the spirit of Offord Road is the same. Isn't it?

View Larger Map

And What About 1963?

2010-01-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

Other than the death of my grandfather, I ask why 1963 is the year of choice for coming to the UK? Why then and why not 5 years later (and how long is a piece of string, etc) or 5 years earlier? What was the imperative? No earlier than 1963 may be due to an external limitation such as how and when the UK was actually allowing migrants from that region to apply for entry. The only imperative I can think of for not waiting any longer is the obvious economic one. But were they really that poor? From listening to my mother and her peers, I wouldn't have thought so. They had their own land, and subsisted comfortably on that.

My father was the 2nd eldest sibling out of 3 girls and 4 boys. Another child, I believe died before any of them were born (this needs verification). His older sister, I've never met - she died in the early 1980s. The number of siblings is not very unusual and just one infant death is almost a miracle compared to the mortality rates for the period. He was born in some year between the late 1920s and the early 1930s and although his passport indicates January 1932, this is just a date of convenience for official purposes.

But I keep asking myself why would a man of my father's age, with a young family and a comfortable subsistence - and all those siblings - want to migrate to the UK?

The answer is simple. Freedom. I hadn't thought about it because my worldview is so Europeanised and is cemented in only really knowing about what happened after 1971, that I forget that from 1947 onwards, the moment of East Pakistan's inception, the people of Bangladesh were subject to great political and military upheaval. In fact, my mother recalls how her father's village was under Marshall Law by the Pakistani Army for a period in her teens.

Looking into the documented history, you would understand very well why many men decided that life might just be better under the British than under the rule of Pakistan. For example, no sooner had Pakistan become independent of India, did it decide the Urdu would be the de facto language of people in East Pakistan (what is now Bangladesh). Bangla as a language was no longer to be used in officialdom, taught in schools, spoken in offices. This explains my parent's ability to speak relatively fluently to our Urdu neighbours and my friend's as I was growing up.

Bangla did not become a state language of what was termed the state of Pakistan until 1956 after much protests and a highly provocative Language Movement in 1952 which is still commemmorated today.

In 1958 however East Pakistan came under Marshall Law. This was the catalyst for many men of my father's generation. They were not fighters, they were farmers and fisherman and all they wanted to do was continue living a normal life. So, it seems to me that they weren't all just economic migrants, they were slowly fleeing a country they didn't see as their own any more. It turns out that Ministry of Labour Vouchers were issued under the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 and 1969, so there would not have been an opportunity to migrate any earlier than 1963 considering the application process.

It will be interesting to see exactly how many East Pakistani men, in particular, were among that first wave in 1962 and 1963 and whether the numbers grew in subsequent years. Were they clambouring for vouchers like they were precious morsels of rice? Were they so hungry for a new life away from the occupiers that they would have gone to the other side of the world, to a cold, wet, colourless place where they would have to toil in manual jobs just to send back two or three pounds once in a while? Was it really going to be that much better?

Elevation

2010-01-25T16:13:00.001-08:00

The images below are different views of the airline ticket for my dad's first journey - they show the front page, the flight details and then the flight details zoomed in so the dates are more visible. They are 9th April 1963. It details the connecting flights from Sylhet to Dacca to Karachi to London.

This was a journey being undertaken by a 32 year old (roughly) farm hand who had no real grasp of English at the time, no certainly about what job he would fall into, no experience of modern travel other than perhaps trains or buses from major cities (if at all) and for whom, this was worth leaving a young wife and two young children for in order to entertain the idea of a better life.

He had no concept of what England would be like - he'd never seen the pictures or watched television. His world view would have been created from newspapers, letters from individuals who had already braved this "odyssey". I say odyssey, because after all, this was an unknown land where streets may have been paved with gold and stars and creatures both beautiful and abominable may have lain waiting in their paths. I can only imagine the parting that would have taken place - it would have been at the village, as the expense of having a wife and children or other family entourage to be taken to the local airport would have cost a farming family a fortune. They weren't poor, but they weren't too comfortable either. There was no concept about whether he would ever be able to afford the trip back - it was just a dream he would. So, that goodbye, that was really goodbye for my mum and my elder brother and my sister. My brother would have been 8 years old and my sister would have been 11 months. Which leads me to an interesting, and amusing realisation about my sister' age. My mother insists that dad left for the UK when my sister was just under a year old (roughly 11 months), which would place her birth month at some point in May 1962. But documents place her as having been born September 1963. I suspect my dad wasn't the first and he certainly wasn't the last to contrive birth dates of their children to fit an agenda to be employed at some point in the future.

So, this ticket is telling me about how my father was setting out on his own, not just on one flight but three connecting flights to places he'd never been before, with the thought that he might never see his wife, his children or his mother and siblings ever again.

My esteem for him, from this point has elevated in recognition that he did this alone, for them, for me.

The Origin Story

2010-01-24T16:58:00.000-08:00

This is the key artefact of my Origin Story. This is the slip of paper that made my life and everything that has happened since May 1963 possible.

Just as Superman or Spiderman had an origin story, this gives me that vital "truth", the historic context, of how my parents came to settle in the UK.

The Voucher is one of the many filed old papers from my parent's precious holdall. It had been there untouched since 1963. It is a very important document and without it, my dad would not have been able to enter the country to work. It was issued to migrant workers. There is more information about it here: http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/asian/settling/settling.htm

What it tells me is that this was issued about 6 months after my grandfather died. (He died circa November 1962). It tells me my dad, named in the voucher as Miahdan Ullah, had this voucher validated on 27th November 1963 (he entered the UK much earlier, in April but I'll talk about that when I scan in the airline ticket). It tells me that at the time of issue, my father was East Pakistani. (Bangladesh did not form until 1971). Already, this has given me a backdrop, a time, a place and maybe even an insight into the personal thoughts he might have struggled with. Perhaps there was a hidden relief in my father knowing that HIS father did not have to deal with his eldest son leaving their land and his rightful place running the family. I might speculate that there was a disagreement between them, that my father rebelled and did the application without my grandfather's knowledge. Maybe my mother might agree with my speculation but we will never really know.

The voucher also tells me his occupation was "Cultivator". The address line is significant, not only because the country is Pakistan but that this is the same address for my parent's village even today. It's difficult to describe how the postal sysyem works but "V" or "Villa" is for Village (Mukimpur), "P.O." is for Post Office (Lamja), "Dist" refers to District (Sylhet). There should be a further division between post office and District for the Town which is Habiganj. It's very close to Sylhet in the North Eastern part of Bangladesh, close to the border with Assam.

The physical location of this address covers a fairly wide area. Village is more akin to a hamlet and not strictly speaking a specific house with a door number, especially in a rural area.

Google Maps shows it here:

View Larger Map

I Can't Time Travel

2010-01-23T12:39:00.000-08:00

I won't know all the specifics, all the actual living details of how my father travelled, what he was feeling. I can't time travel and sit on his shoulders so there will be moments when I have to imagine how the facts played out. My husband advised me that this should not just be an almanack of data and documents. It's not just a dossier of a journey.

My dad died in September 1992 of complications from tuberculosis. At the time of writing this, I will be twice the age I was when he passed away and isn't that already an extra life for me? My memory of him is already half fact, half fantasy. He is both a dead, lost archaism as well as a chiseled in stone mythical being. He always had that quality when I was a child because he was either at work or somewhere else - visiting the homeland - or dividing his time between his migrant peers and helping people write letters to their loved ones in Bengali. And when he remarried, I did not see or hear from him for nearly three years. So, once quantified, I only really knew him for twelve or so years. I suppose, I feel cheated.

This, then, is my desire to spend a bit more time in his company. To understand him and to mark him as a legend, a heroic wayfarer whose story will tell all the migrants' stories. It might charm the generations who followed, be they the descendants of those first settlers or those embarking on their own today to other places, to have a figurehead, a god-like superhero about whom they can tell their children as bedtime stories, just as they do with Zeus or Jesus.

I am the next generation

2010-01-22T13:22:00.000-08:00

At first I thought I shouldn't say much about myself and who I am before embarking on putting all the context together of how I came to be here. I learnt from someone that sometimes, you have to put the ending first and that gives your story - whether fiction or faction - a direction, a gravity.

I am Hazera. I don't know who named me but my mother will once say my dad and thrice say my brother. I was born in Bangladesh on a date that eludes me. It's definitely 1975 and my passport says July but we celebrate in June. It's beautifully ambiguous, just like my identity. And Hazera is my "official" name. Not the one my siblings, parents, neighbours and myriad other distant relations and adoptive aunts and uncles called me.

I am Zoba. It means Hibiscus. Friends of my parents suffixed it with Rani. Zoba Rani.

I have three living siblings; a brother, 18 years my senior; a sister 12 years my senior and a half brother about 13 years my junior. My father remarried when I was 12 and he never met his son.

When I was much younger, my parents had a lovely clipped holdall which held all their filing of important papers and old passports. It had the airline tickets, port documents, international money order receipts , trade union memberships, gas bills, letters to the solicitors about our naturalisation, addresses of forgotten places on slips of old notebook paper, thin blue envelopes which had writing on the inside and the words Par Avion on the front and stamps with tigers on them. To avoid them being lost or filed by my mother, I took them and started going through them. When I lay them out, in date order, I suddenly saw a whole history. I could map out the very moment my father left his village in Mukimpur, Habiganj, Sylhet and follow him to the plane, imagining what window seat he took and him leaving the chaos of the primitive airport. I could then board with him on a flight from Sylhet to Dhaka and connect to Karachi and then onward to London. I started to be in his shoes, taking his first steps on his maiden voyage to a country that he did not yet know would be cold, damp, dark.

Possible Titles

2010-01-21T14:58:00.000-08:00

1) Chronicle of My Wayfaring Father
2) Treading on Tarmac
3) Long walk to London - A Chronicle of an emigre's inaugural journey to the UK.

I like (1) and (3) but maybe combined better? Maybe something like this:

"Long Walk to London - A Chronicle of My Father's Maiden Voyage"

Why I have the desire to do this...

2010-01-21T03:51:00.000-08:00

I said months ago that I would write an introduction to what draws me to want to chart my dad's journey to the UK in all its documentary minutiae.

Firstly, I think I want to add to the knowledge base of the South Asian diaspora. My friend Usma would like that - she's hoping to do a Masters with SAOS looking at this topic with anthropology.

Secondly; now, I am not an academic, I'm not a sociologist or have any distinguishing qualification to do with studies of this realm of history, ethnicity or economics. What I am, is a daughter who has always heard about the stories, the wistful memories, the hardships, the changes and adaptations that her parents punctuated their family gatherings with. My mother's many sorrowful but spirited personal histories of her kin or the wealth of the land they lost, or the punishing monsoon rain, or being the eldest son's wife in a large brood for whom she was responsible from about the age of 12 or 13, are the stories that I am desperate to identify with.

Thirdly, this was my father's journey - his soul aim to get away from being a farmer's son, the implications of which have probably been an unforeseen factor in the loss of personal wealth and aspiration for many Bengali families of Sylheti origin. This is purely anecdotal and this work does not intend to set out numerical or statistical proof for personal observations. I'll try to use already gathered data to address certain areas but this book is not aiming to be a text book. I will at least try to discuss some of these implications and the evidence in a later chapter - just to reconcile whether the anecdotal bears any relation to the reality. I suppose, I would consider this my father's diary - had he thought to write one - and just to lay out the facts of what happened from A to B. It may serve as some kind of legacy to me, a new set of myths and heroic journeys to re-tell my children and my children's children. Maybe I'd like to embrace all those men and women who came to the UK (and elsewhere) with new respect for their odyssey, to say "Yes, it was worth it. You made the sacrifices and the next generation recognises wholeheartedly your effort, your need to find a better life. And you gave us a better life and so in turn, we will work hard and flourish and preserve your memory."

Who knows, in 30 or 40 years time, they will be considered as legends?

Finally, and this is the most obvious and cliched of the reasons for turning my attention to this work - my identity. I'm not so sure I know exactly what or who I am and what or who is meant to be the person my children will perceive. I've lived in the UK since I was a toddler, little more than perhaps 18 month's old. I've been to Bangladesh just once, when I was nine from November 1984 to August 1985. I have to say, the experience didn't do me much good - both physically or psychologically. I lost weight, I got ill, my education fell back at least a year and I didn't quite understand the point of it all. I wish the experience had been different and that I had come away with a wonderful, romantic, rose-tinted view of the country, my extended family and everything in between. But, I didn't.

All I know is that I spent a great deal of my formative years moulding a "third" culture for myself. I've borrowed this term from someone, I'll fill in the references later...but what I mean by that is I knew I wasn't a white, English person but I knew I didn't really understand or care enough about being a Bengali person. I kind of grew my own culture - it's not even half way between the two - I sort of rejected both - but it gave me a chameleon like ability to shift into mimicking one or the other depending on my personal goals at the time.

What's most imperative for me, now I've had a daughter, is to make sure I know exactly how to deal with her questions about her personal culture - not the one that society foists on her or the one her grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles will inevitably want to infuse into her but the one she will build for herself. And she is bound to because her father, my husband, is white, English.
I might get to the end of this work and consider myself completely and utterly Bengali - for which there are implications or I might consider myself British Asian - now, I'm sure I'll have to build a personal definition of what I think that even means. Or I might decide, I'm just British or that I'm just a writer or a poet or a photographer or a communist. It's whether we want to all consider a different way of indexing "identity". Maybe it's nothing to do with Race or culture at all.

Back from the brink of motherhood

2010-01-20T09:55:00.001-08:00

Well, it's been nearly 18 months since my last post and my writing mojo has returned since having successfully made a baby girl! The timing of the return of my mojo is a little bit awkward in that I go back to work in a couple of weeks but no matter. The point is, I am back to writing and blogging.

Not much progress has been made on the outline of the documentary book I had in mind, purely because my study space is still in some disarray but I am going back to Boot Camp under the hawk eye of Alex Keegan and I want to make sure I write at least 500 words a day. To be honest, I am on Facebook so much that I might has well redirect all that frivolity, naval-gazing and mild attacks of innuendo and ranting about whatever the latest thing is to offend me, that I'm sure on most occasions, I have written a short story at least twice over.

Another couple of books

2008-07-19T17:29:00.000-07:00

1) Bloody Foreigners by Robert Winder (which I am currently reading)
2) Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam (fiction novel recommended by my friend Usma Malik)

Edit to add more books to this list:

3) Across Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers: Life Stories of Pioneer Sylhetti Settlers in Britain
by Caroline Adams, Tassaduq Ahmed (Introduction), Dan Jones (Illustrator) (recommended by Julie Furnivall)
4) Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (recommended by Vanessa Gebbie)
5) Songs from the River's Edge by Katy Gardner
6) Age, Narrative and Migration: The Life Course and Life Histories of Bengali Elders in London (Hardcover) by Katy Gardner (both Kay Gardner books recommended by Jahangir Ali)

Katy Gardner Wrote Back

2008-07-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

Here's the reply on Friday 11th July:

Dear Hazera
Thanks a lot for the email. What you're proposing sounds really interesting, especially if you can make a connection between the experiences of the older generation and children and younger people born in the UK (on the latter, I'm currently involved in a project on transnational Bangladeshi kids in London, in which we're looking at how they connect to different places and negotiate between Sylhet and London - we'll be having an exhibition of the kids' art work at the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green from January - March 09.)

There's a lot of stuff you could read that you'd probably find useful:
1. Routes and Tales of the Bangladeshi Settlers, A. Chowdhury 1994 Birmingham History Group (or something like that)
2. Across 7 seas and 13 Rivers, Caroline Adams
3. Age, Narrative and Migration : the life course and life histories of Bengali Elders in London 2002 Katy Gardner
4. Ayahs, Princes and Lascars, Pluto Press, Rozana Visram 1986

You might also want to be in touch with the Brick Lane Circle, who've been holding a series of talks about Bangladeshi life in the UK, migration etc. You can find out more at: Brick Lane Circlew: www.BrickLaneCircle.orge: bricklanecircle@yahoo.co.ukt: 07903 671 787
Good luck - let me know how you get on
Best Wishes
Katy

Books to add to the Bibliography

2008-07-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

My good friend from uni, whom I call Akuma for reasons I can never remember, has just recommended a book to me by Katy Gardner called "Songs from the River's Edge" which someone else has also mentioned recently so I guess it's fate. He is Bengali too and we actually grew up in Luton so we have some common ground and he's read more widely than me.

Whilst browsing through Amazon, I also noticed another book by Katy Gardner called:
"Age, Narrative and Migration: The Life Course and Life Histories of Bengali Elders in London" (Hardcover).

I wonder if she has a website. I may need to write a letter asking for
a) permission to use one or two passages from the books
b) advice on her research methods
c) recommended reading.

I will go now and learn more of this fascinating person.

LRPS Panel - 1st Image - Lime Kiln - Lindisfarne

2008-07-06T16:58:00.000-07:00

Working Title & Start of Book Log

2008-07-06T15:21:00.001-07:00

Well, now that I've made a lot of noise about writing this documentary book about how my dad got to the UK, I am not a professional researcher (although my post-graduate certificate in Health Informatics should claim otherwise) and nor am I a genealogist so no idea at this moment about how to sort out all the keys things I need to do...

I'm hoping part of this blog will serve as a sort of "log" of how I will approach it and record my efforts - good and bad...

Also, I'm still thinking of what to call the book. A few working titles come to mind so I'll list them here:

1) "One foot East, other foot West"
2) "Fathers' journeys" (deliberate possessive plural as some of the book will also include short features about other men/women of his generation)
3) "Londoni" (Generally a Bengali term referring to one who has been abroad, specifically to the UK)
4) Coming back to the idea of creating myths, legends and heroes from the stories of these first travels of immigrant fore-fathers, I think a better title is required than the three above and I want to avoid it coming across as too commercial or as if it's some kind of "soundbite". How about "Passage from Sylhet"? or "Sylheti Journeys"?

I suppose I will have to sleep on it, but so far, none of these really sound right. I wasn't specifically thinking that the book would only include stories from Bangladeshi migrants and certainly not just those from Sylhet, at any rate, those "other" stories would only be intermittently spaced between the whole of describing my father's footsteps. So, perhaps it needs to be more personal? Oh, I'll come back to it. I'm sure something much more organic will emerge as I start to compile it.

The PLAN:

1) Research - to validate exact dates for things like flights, official documents and so on. I have to make sure these all come from primary sources (I knew I did A-Level history for some reason). This will help me fill the gaps of some of the timelines and to work out what I need to address either through some oral collection from living relatives or another means. I think this part of it is going to be the most difficult because I'm barely speaking to 99% of the family right now....

The research will also involve finding at least 2 or three other families whos parents came over at about the same time as my dad and collect their transcripts of that so will need to send out calls for submissions of these in the next few weeks. They'd have to be people I have no family link with - completely and totally fresh stories to my own.

2) Structure. I think I already have a vague idea in my head that this will have the following:

a) Introduction - why I have the desire to write this and the scope of what's included and what's excluded. (2000 words)
b) Timelines (as validated as possible), maps and other interesting artefacts to help visualise and illustrate the wider picture. (1000 words)
c) Brief History of migration from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan - with focus on Bengali migration. Information about migration now, census data on poverty, employment, education, health. (6000 words?)
d) Brief history of the poitical context of how Bangladesh was formed and its current political state. (3000 words)
e) Presentation of the relevant documents in time sequence order from each decade split into chapters - 196os, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s up to my dad's death) and the known details surrounding them in terms of the family, the context in terms of immigration and the context in terms of my father as an individual while linking his experience to the experience of some of the others who will be interviewed. (20,000 words)

f) A chapter addressing the implications his migration has had on the family and the wider issues in British Society. (5000 words)
g) Conclusion/Personal thoughts about the journey (3000 words)
h) Log of how this book was compiled. Mistakes I made, things I learnt. (3000)
i) Bibliography
j) Index

So far, the plan appears to be a word count of between 43,000 and 50,000 words.

Voice

2008-07-04T07:08:00.001-07:00

I don't have a voice yet. I'm trying too hard all the time.

A Bit of Culture

2008-07-04T01:59:00.000-07:00

Go listen to some of Bishi's stuff:

http://www.bishi.co.uk/music.html

I have to confess, when I saw her on the Culture Show on the BBC a couple of nights ago, I wasn't sure what I would make of this but I gave it a chance and I think she's amazing.

Mediocrity

2008-07-02T16:29:00.000-07:00

There's something wrong with me.

I read work by the most brilliant people and I over-analyse it, look for the teeniest, tiniest plot holes or try to sniff out anything close to a hackneyed or near-cliched phrase that I can't even read a newspaper without going, "that's shit that is".

How do I switch my brain OFF? How do I go back to enjoying the flow of words, the nuances, the emotional resonance without saying, "hmm, that image just doesn't work" or "that's a bit of a mixed metaphor, that is"?

What's wrong with me?

I can't even enjoy Harry Harrison any more. And when I was 15, his Stainless Steel Rat made me laugh and cry heaps. So, how do I become 15 again and see the world every day as if it's still the first day?

What should I read that will repel that cynical, blackened heart of mine? Suggestions on a postcard, please.

Ah, I'm a Journalist

2008-07-01T04:31:00.001-07:00

Doh! Facts, truth, haha. I'm a journalist! I woke up this morning realising I had solved that particular question.

So, what does this mean for my creative endeavours?

I guess the question really is what kind of writer SHOULD I be?

I quote from ex-fellow-Boot-Camper, Louis Malloy from an email correspondence:

"...I think you know once a certain type of story starts to get accepted for publication. That's probably not a self-confident answer, but we're at the mercy of our audience. If you want to be writing epic tragedies, but you can only get comedy porn published, then face it- you're a comedy porn writer. Just an example of course, not specific to me."

That about sums it up, doesn't it? I don't think I will make it as a journalist, maybe a columnist - maybe. As a writer, now, that looks more and more like it's going to be something commercial and as Louis said, whatever mercy the audience have at the time of going to press.

Speaking of the press, I think we're in an amazing age of freedom of the "press", whether you're a blogger or a staff writer for the New York Times. It's a shame there's so little worth reading out there. When people were doing illegal pamphlets in some dark-age, it was out of necessity to get some truth (or a version of it) to someone, somewhere. But now, what cringe-worthy rubbish is out there? Where's the quality, dude?

Subbing

2008-06-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

Well, the thing is I only sub things about once in a while when I really feel the urge. Everything I have ever submitted anywhere has found a place - more or less. Which begs a question - why do I not submit more? Am I a procrastinator? No, I don't think so? Do I feel my work is not good enough to submit unless it's perfect? No.

Do I not write enough? No, that's not the case either.

I think it's because I don't want to submit things just for the sake of seeing them published somewhere. I want to write things that mean somethng and move someone. If they don't move me, then why bother?

There's also a heck of a lot of places to submit to, whether online or traditional print mags and there-in lies another compelling problem? Have I read enough to know what's good or not yet?

Definitely not.

The other problem is I don't actually LIKE reading any literary fiction whatsoever. I like critiquing - that's never an issue - God, I love hating something, but I actually don't like reading stuff that's been made up. I like facts, documents, reality. So, that leaves me with a dilemma...and a deep question to ask myself which is "what kind of a writer am I?"

I've asked a fellow writer this and hope he'll answer but I will have to incubate the question for a while. I thnk it's why I am more and more drawn to writing an account of my father's migration, but also because facts are always tangible and can be checked and be made certain. With fiction, there's all kinds of level of disbelief one has to suspend and I can't do it - most writing just isn't good enough to do that. The only time I can do it is with Sci-fi and that's because you already know from the outset it's going to be a world so made-up that you just have ride along with all the beautiful made-upness, the gadgets, the weirdly contorted views of the world we know or worlds we don't know.

I will cogitate on this and see what happens.

Asheka Troberg

2008-06-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

Well, I can't talk about Brooklyn Voice and not mention one of its founding editors, Asheka Troberg, right?

Here's a letter she wrote to the http://www.theDailyStar.net about the Bangladeshi community in Brooklyn:
http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=34700

I'd quite like her to join the Fiction Workhouse if she gets enough time away from her hectic schedule at the BV. But I think you'll agree, that there is certainly a difference in attitude in writing style between US SE Asian writers and UK SE Asian writers. I'd love to explore those differences with her but in the meantime, enjoy her letter.

Brooklyn Voice

2008-06-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

The Brooklyn Voice is a site with a penchant for a rather quirky approach to being a magazine for the thoughtful consumer of literature, music and the arts in general. It also has a vibe about it with South East Asian roots but equally firmly with its feet in the US. The humour is American but its soul is from the East.

I'm going to keep a good eye on this site because even though aesthetically, it won't please everyone (not yet, anyway), the articles, reviews and ethos of the production team are worthwhile. Please take a look.

I also think they will be moving quite a pace forward in linking in with a number of interesting writers. Catch them on facebook too.

Novels

2008-06-28T06:13:00.000-07:00

So, I started two novels.

One is just utter pants and it's been shelved for about 5 years and it makes me cringe to even look at it.

The other is more like a good idea but without the necessary personal effort required to write it. I will write it.

However, I've come upon another idea. Not really a novel this time but more or less a living documentary and I actually do think it's worth doing. I recently found a whole load of old papers and documents belonging to my late father, documents which explain his journey to the UK and help me build up a picture of his lonely steps to a cold Britain over 40 years ago. It's also opened my eyes about some of the family history too - both personal, emotional and financial. It's filling in a few of those gaps for me and I have even figured out my sister's actually a year older than I thought. It's those bits of certainty that compells me to actually write this thing.

I have a structure in my head about how I want to put it together - but I also want it do something for a generation of people under 25 - and that is to given them a glimpse of what their parents and grandparents went through during that period of pre-Enoch migration. I want them to understand that they can aspire to something and actually, to be a tiny bit grateful for those lonely journeys.

I am thinking of collaborating on this as a project perhaps with one or two other writers of my generation with migrant routes.

But you know, this idea, it's got a bit of passion behind it - and it has facts, truth as well as that ordinary mystique you get with folk-tales and handed down oral tradition. I can make those early "pioneers" into heroes, legends, and who knows, their descendents might let them live on in their own actions. They might understand how important it all is.