Cover Vanessa Chan, author of ‘The Storm We Made’ (Photo: Fady Younis)
Vanessa Chan, author of ‘The Storm We Made’ (Photo: Fady Younis)
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Author Vanessa Chan’s ‘The Storm We Made’ offers an untold perspective of World War II in Malaya through a cinematic page-turner
When Vanessa Chan set out to write her first novel, she had never intended to delve into the historical fiction genre. Her debut novel, The Storm We Made, centres around Cecily Alcantara, a Malayan mother who becomes an unlikely spy for the invading Japanese army during World War II and the horrifying torrent of consequences that befall her family and community.
The novel was released on January 2, 2024, to rave reviews, fast becoming a bestseller in the United States and the top pick of notable book clubs, including Good Morning America and BBC Radio 2. It has since been translated into 20 languages, with Chan even approached by Japanese publisher Shunjusha. “We should learn from stories of the women who were dragged into the war,” they wrote to Chan, who never expected to gain traction in Japan, moved by the sale.
“The Storm We Made started as a throwaway assignment in graduate school,” Chan recalls. Tasked with writing a short story that could repeat on a loop, Chan had first written about a girl’s harrowing experience running through multiple checkpoints in an attempt to return home before wartime curfews. “As a testament to a good teacher, mine wrote, ‘I believe that you should consider that this might be the outline of something longer—this might be your novel,’ and I went for it. Then, the pandemic happened,” Chan mentions, working on and off over the following two years to flesh out the story.
Above Chan's first novel, ‘The Storm We Made’, started as a throwaway assignment in graduate school
Chan's first novel, ‘The Storm We Made’, started as a throwaway assignment in graduate school
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Isolated in a small Brooklyn apartment amid the crisis of Covid-19, Chan was unable to cross state lines to be with her mother, who passed away from cancer in a hospice facility in April 2020. “When you’ve lost someone close to you, the waves of insurmountable grief hit without warning. The way you usually deal with that is to grieve with other people, and I couldn’t do any of that,” Chan says. The only sense of normalcy she found was in writing her book. “I would wake up every day and try to write up to 888 words—a lucky number. Sometimes, I would exceed that number, and writing got me through the grief.”
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Chan’s mother was an early reader of the novel, which was written from late 2019 into 2020. “When I was particularly proud of a paragraph, I would take a screenshot and put it on my Instagram stories. Then, I would be devastatingly embarrassed and delete it an hour later. My mother learned how to screenshot, magnify the image to read it, and would call me to give her feedback as mothers do,” Chan shares. When her mother’s eyesight began to deteriorate, she would call Chan to read passages to her. “That was how I got through it towards the end, and then she passed, and I just kept going forward.”
Chan admits that the book changed in trajectory following her mother’s death. "We should write about history that are both happy and sad. My novel started as a tale of three sad children living through the war but because I was going through so much, my novel was too sad, even for me.” Needing levity, Chan invoked the character of Cecily, who's both a mother and a spy. “I needed a character to have some agency [in a senseless war], making good and bad decisions, trying to change history, even if she does it poorly.”
Above Cover of ‘The Storm We Made’ (Photo: Vanessa Chan)
Cover of ‘The Storm We Made’ (Photo: Vanessa Chan)
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Asked about the challenges of approaching research for her book, Chan notes she used to feel insecure about answering the query. “It was difficult because I always viewed historical fiction as based on a strict methodology, reliant on reams of interviews, microfiches, and the like. It wasn’t like that for me because I was writing this novel in the isolation of the pandemic. Also, there weren’t many resources available written from a non-European perspective,” Chan explains, pointing to accounts from European prisoners of war in labour camps, with little known of what life was like for regular people. “If you don’t have primary resources because no one else puts them down on paper, you must learn to accept what you have. Many anecdotes and backdrops of the novel came from conversations with my grandmother while growing up.”
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From how to avoid an airstrike to mixing tapioca with rice to make rations go further, Chan sprinkled her novel with wartime anecdotes, largely forgotten by modern Malaysian audiences. “My grandmother was always appalled by the popularity of boba tea,” Chan remarks. “She could not understand how people would choose to pay money to eat tapioca balls, questioning how anyone could enjoy this unappealing gluey thing!”
During the writing process, several books stayed on the top of Chan’s reading pile to serve as inspiration. “One was Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half because it’s a novel about history set in the 1950s, about black people who choose to pass off as white to navigate the world. The novel felt contemporary, even though it was historical. Brit is also very confident in making timeline decisions, which made it a craft totem for me.” Chan also points to Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, which helped her figure out how to write about ancestral history, honouring someone else’s lived experience while maintaining readability.
Above Many anecdotes and backdrops of the novel came from Chan's conversations with her grandmother
Many anecdotes and backdrops of the novel came from Chan's conversations with her grandmother
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The process of selling The Storm We Made was insane, according to Chan, who recalled stepping off the plane in Malaysia sometime in mid-January 2022 only to find her phone blowing up with notifications. “My agents had sent the book for submission, and editors were keenly interested. When they’re interested, they like to make phone calls before making an offer.” Chan had 14 calls lined up for the week in the wee hours of the morning, with Malaysia 12 hours ahead of New York. By the end of the week (and her mandatory home quarantine), Chan had sold her book. “I ran to my grandmother’s house to tell her. She said: ‘Wonderful, wonderful, good for you, but tomorrow is Chinese New Year, and we cannot sweep the floor then. So are you going to sweep it for me now or stand there, telling stories?’” As Chan says, you can always trust grandmothers to keep you humble.
Asked about her hopes to see a film adaptation of her cinematic saga, Chan admits, “It would be nice if it happens, but I am not fussed if it does not. If Michelle Yeoh would like to make her presence felt in the cast, that would also be great.”
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The Storm We Made highlights the importance of having Asian writers telling Asian stories. “The nations of this region have existed for a long time, with our histories framed by colonisation, and I am over it. It’s time that the stories that belong to our ancestors and us are told,” Chan says. She hopes to see an emergence of writers from the region, confirming the need for more players across all genres. “If you can name every writer of the last 10 years from Southeast Asia on your two hands, it’s not enough!”
Even so, Chan advises all burgeoning writers that there’s no need to rush the process. “It’s easy to feel like we are losing time as children of the pandemic. I can promise there is enough time to write, but you must sit down and write because many people think about the book in their head, and then it just languishes there,” Chan cautions. In her experience, having the discipline to sit down and write can transform even the vaguest concepts into poignant tales. Chan wants to encourage Malaysians and Southeast Asians to make their voices heard. “We should tell our stories. Be bold because those who have made it through the door are holding it open. There is a growing appetite for Asian literature in recent times, so take advantage of that!”
Credits
Photography: Fady Younis
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