Like some of your other work, “The Plague Puller” is informed by the supernatural and the history of Singapore. So often, stories about the supernatural, especially ghosts, are steeped in superstition and folktales. What pulls you to write about the supernatural and do you have any writing superstitions or rituals?
I often joke that Singapore has more ghosts per square foot than any other country. (Actually, it’s not a joke.) Singapore is hyper-modern and hyper-rational, but it’s also very, very haunted. We’re obsessed with ghost stories. There are so many ghosts. The famous and terrifying Malay hantu, like penaggalan and pontianak. The ghosts of the traumatic Japanese Occupation during WW2. Chinese ancestral spirits, for whom joss sticks and food offerings are left out during Hungry Ghost Month.
Modern Singapore is built on exhumed cemeteries and cleared jungle. The supernatural is (famously) the return of the repressed, and I’ve always viscerally felt that in Singapore. I always, always apologize before peeing on trees, like they taught us during compulsory military service.
For me, ghost stories are about connecting with the dead. They’re about people and places we shouldn’t forget. That’s why I write supernatural stories about characters on history’s margins. I try to respect the dead when I’m writing about them. I do lots of research, so I can depict them as honestly and vividly as possible. Sometimes that leads to something like a séance, and when it does, I thank them. The dead are our ancestors and forebears, and they deserve dignity and respect. I’m grateful to tell their stories.
What can you tell us about the inspiration behind this shadowy tale?
I’m now officially part of a long line of Singapore artists who’ve been inspired by James Francis Warren’s two excellent social histories, Rickshaw Coolie: A People’s History of Singapore 1880-1940, and Ah Ku and Karayuki-San: Prostitution in Singapore 1870-1940. I was also inspired by accounts from modern Singaporeans who work with the dead. Gravediggers mostly exhume graves these days. They have important rules and rituals they adhere to. I remember seeing a gravedigger’s rest area in Bukit Brown Cemetery. A simple tarp shelter; plastic chairs and biscuit tins, but surrounded by wards. Another friend who was a police officer during his national service told me about a drowning victim; the coroner had to remove a ring, and could only get it off the dead man’s finger after he apologized and explained that he was only trying to help. I was struck by the necessity of all this, by the strictures needed when managing supernatural threats is part of your workday. You have to respect the dead.
Finally, I substantially expanded this story during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. There are awful parallels between the experiences of Chinese migrant laborers in the early 1900s and South Asian migrant laborers today. Just as cholera and tuberculosis ravaged colonial Singapore’s cramped lodging-houses, COVID-19 spread like wildfire through modern Singapore’s crowded worker dormitories. Nearly two years on, they are still largely confined to these dorms.
My favorite genre stories, especially horror, are the ones that are emotionally complex. In “The Plague Puller,” for example, we have a story rich with grief, nostalgia, dedication, love, and it’s ultimately a very human tale wrapped in a ghost story. How important are those themes to you in your work and what are some other themes you like to work with?
I’ve historically shied away from some of these themes, and this story felt like a real turning point for me in that regard. I tend to start with worldbuilding (or depicting a historical milieu) instead of characters. In the past I’ve worked with themes like dread, awe, the cost of modernity, and internal colonization. Since finishing “The Plague Puller,” I’ve been trying to get more into the complex and messy emotions that make us human. The remarkable thing about prose fiction, for me, is its ability to work on both the human and the structural/historical scale. So I hope that these themes will continue to grow more important to my work!
Tell us a couple of your favorite books or stories that get you in an autumnal mood.
I feel like I’m supposed to say “Ray Bradbury,” but truthfully, growing up in equatorial Singapore, I had no experience of seasons except the monsoon!
Since moving to North America, I tend to gravitate towards dark, broody fiction as the days shorten. Last year I read Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians and Tamsyn Muir’s Harrow the Ninth. Both fantastic fall novels. This October, I’m reading a bunch of short fiction by Brian Evenson, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and a recent re-release of Singaporean politician Othman Wok’s ghost stories, A Mosque in the Jungle; all of which feels almost too perfect for Halloween. After that, I’m going to read John le Carré’s Smiley’s People, ending the trilogy that starts with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I suspect that will also have an autumnal, winter-y vibe, though in a different way.
Returning to your website for a moment—please tell us more about this far-future space opera that you’re working on!
Thank you for asking! The working title is Her Awful and Angelic Djinn, and it’s a novel that takes place in the ruins of space opera. It’s set on a dying planet where terraforming has failed, in a distant future where galactic empires have risen and fallen. It’s a weird hybrid descendant of Dune, Aliens, and a classic Mummy’s-curse story. It’s also a meditation on climate change, rapacious capitalism, and the way that empires persist in undeath. I’m very excited about it.
What else can readers look forward to seeing from you in the not-as-far-future?
I’m about to finish a horror novella set in late 1970s Singapore! It’s about ritual sacrifice, engineering mega-projects, toxic patriarchy, the terrible cost of modernity, and the lies we tell ourselves to avoid shattering our worldviews. If all goes well, it’ll be out on submission very, very soon.
