Singaporean author Jemimah Wei talks about the hurdles and hopes she shares with the characters in her debut novel
The Asian education system, as most will agree, is full of highs and lows. Students stumble as they balance academic excellence, extracurricular activities and a social life, all the while trying to figure out who they are. The delicate teenage years are filled with these never-ending moments of stress yet punctuated by little joys: having high school crushes, flipping limited-edition erasers or buying icy treats on a sweltering day.
For Jemimah Wei, who grew up in a rapidly modernising, post-financial crisis Asia, writing a coming-of-age story where the competitiveness of Singapore’s education system digs its unrelenting claws into a young person’s psyche felt like a natural progresssion.
After a decade of frantic writing and rewriting, doubts and hopes, The Original Daughter — published in May this year — is Wei’s debut piece. The tale, which draws from her personal experiences, follows Genevieve Yang, whose world is turned upside down when a new sibling appears. This distant cousin, Arin, is thrust unceremoniously upon the middle-class Yang family after the passing of a grandfather long believed dead.
Gen and Arin — initially meek, scared and withdrawn — eventually grow closer over a series of events, their lives shifting around each other’s, sometimes connecting, other times spiralling further away. The sisters’ drive for academic achievement turns into desperate job hunts, and family issues tear their home apart. Even as they mature, and exam scores become trivial numbers, the pair still share their sisterly bond when Gen heads abroad for a new career, until a stinging betrayal severs it, seemingly for good.
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Wei states that the essence of the book has always been centred on these plights, unchanging in the 10 years since its conception. “There were certain elements, big ones that were always there from the start, like the idea of a sibling that was returning, this idea of moving abroad, of going through a crisis while you’re abroad, all those things were there.”
Storytelling and writing were always in Wei’s bones. Previous ventures included a three-year stint in advertising, freelance work for various agencies and a host on Singaporean reality lifestyle channel Clicknetwork.
Uncertainties about pursuing authorship full time lingered in the back of her mind until a masterclass at Nanyang Technological University, where she was working towards her first master’s degree, led her to meet Tash Aw, the Malaysian mind behind The South. He made her realise that being an author was something she could do professionally. “Suddenly it felt like it was possible in a way it didn’t before,” she says.
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This encounter was the push Wei needed to take a step towards full-time writing and she pursued her second master of fine arts (MFA) at Columbia University in the US. Despite receiving support from both her government and the institution, she was still worried about justifying this life-changing move to what felt like a world away. Wei says, “I didn’t have the idea that I would go in and see [how my master’s] goes … No, if I’m going to put two years of my life and spend all this money and stop working, I’d better have a book at the end of it all.”
But much like her protagonist, Wei too faced a crisis when far from home — the Covid-19 pandemic cut short her time overseas. She returned to a different Singapore, one under strict lockdown. An opportunity to write presented itself in the form of the Curbside column for New York-based online publication No Contact, founded by fellow MFA students. There, Wei penned her experiences living in quarantine in Southeast Asia.
By then, The Original Daughter was still in the works, far from complete, and Wei was eventually able to return to the US for a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University in 2021, which came with financial and communal support. Living in the Bay Area, she poured her efforts into writing, spending nine hours a day hunched over her desk.
Wei admits her first seven years of drafting The Original Daughter — beginning in 2014 — were frantic; she was unsure of the story’s eventual direction and its vast cast of characters. Although her first manuscript (admittedly messy) was completed in 2021, the budding author spent the next years carefully revising her piece.
Words did not always flow like a river when Wei was crafting her tale and, at one point, she could not decide how to end it. “A big part of the writing process for a debut is working for an extended period of time in this very psychologically vulnerable state because there is a really high chance that you finish writing a book and nobody else reads it, and nobody cares,” she says.
The Stegner Fellowship opened doors for Wei. Peers reviewed her writing and she drew the attention of publishing agents, a reassurance that someone out there cared for her finished product. She shares: “When you have that kind of external stamp of belief and approval, especially if you’re not from the global publishing majority, it really helps for somebody else to be like, ‘We also believe in you’.”
Healthy relationships and external support helped greatly in providing Wei with a sense of security. She notes how isolating and financially risky committing to full-time writing can be. Bills need to be paid, and the immense pressure to compose the perfect book can be crushing. When confidence wanes and success is but a speck on a distant horizon, having others who trust in your journey makes all the difference. “It’s important to be surrounded by people who reflect that reality back to you.”
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As cheery as life can be in fiction, the circumstances surrounding Wei’s characters are not all sunshine and rainbows. Gossip and class prejudices rear their ugly heads but Wei slips in glimmers of hope between the bleak lives of her protagonists: a young Gen shares a ritual of eating McDonald’s fries with her mother, who also leaves loving, handwritten messages for her two children.
But does one have to necessarily experience the things you write about? She quotes Aw’s reply to a similar question: You don’t have to have personally suffered, but you have to have incredible empathy for suffering. “You need to see them fully as people, as characters with humanity who aren’t just functioning as some plot point or a check box,” says Wei. She handles the sisters’ anguish and pain with care, leaving readers with a sad resignation as their journeys end on what is both a bitter and hopeful note.
Wei shares a last message, one she feels is often overlooked in the world of publishing: “Writing a book is a solo activity, but releasing one takes a village. Like any other production, there is a lot of invisible labour that goes on behind the scenes.” For every story brought to a rightful place on the shelves of a store, there is not just the author but the editors, designers, publicists, marketers and agents who contribute to its success.
In the face of hardships, Wei’s endeavour — as well as Gen and Arin’s — is one of failures and fumbles, but also of the determination to stand up despite it all. The Original Daughter pushes one forward: make mistakes, but know it is never too late to try again.
