Jemimah Wei on the story behind her debut novel and what it means to be a writer in Southeast Asia

Set in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore, The Original Daughter follows Genevieve Yang, whose life as an only child is upended when Arin, an unexpected sibling, arrives. The emotional entanglements of two sisters offers a piercing exploration of chosen families, female ambition and the psychological pressures of growing up in a hyper-competitive city-state. “[The plot] had many different iterations,” Wei says. “I have a different answer every time someone asks me [how it started]. But one thing that stuck was that it was always about a sibling’s return.”

In earlier drafts, the returning character was a brother—“which feels insane now”—but over time, the story evolved into a portrait of sisterhood, exploring themes of kinship and what it means to choose to stay. The idea of chosen family grew from her personal roots. “In my own extended family, there were a lot of adoptions and [children] being given away,” Wei shares. “But there was also a lot of silence around those things … as a kid, you fill in the gaps with your imagination.”

These experiences found their way into the novel in unexpected ways. “I’ve always been interested in how we stay with the people in our lives we’re not 100 per cent obligated to.” The question feels especially relevant today, when the language around self-care often encourages emotional boundaries. “We’re living in this moment where people say, ‘This person isn’t serving me in this season of my life’,” she notes. “ I think that’s a product of a capitalistic movement in society. I was interested in what the implications were.”

Her novel does not offer a neat resolution, but rather a provocation. “It’s easy to say that we stay with the people who are easy to love. But when a relationship is very difficult, how much can that endure, really?”

For much of her early writing life, Wei wrote in isolation. “Before I met my mentor, I was writing by myself, or forcing professors to read my work,” she quips. Everything changed when Malaysian novelist Tash Aw visited her creative writing programme at NTU to lead a masterclass. “That was the first time I met someone from our region who said, plainly, ‘I’m a full-time writer’,” she recalls. “He didn’t do the embarrassed laugh. That was when I [realised]: if someone [from here can write full time], then maybe it actually is possible.”

Aw later became her mentor. “Seeing how he navigated his writing life helped me visualise a roadmap for myself.” Now, Wei pays it forward. She is part of the Singapore Book Council’s mentorship programme and regularly connects with aspiring writers across the region. “I get DMs and emails from people who are too embarrassed to tell their friends in Singapore that they’re writing,” Wei says. It is a feeling she knows well. “For a long time, whenever I said, ‘I’m a writer’, the first question was always, ‘What are you writing?’ And either you have nothing to show, or you’re just not ready to talk about it.”

The lack of a visible literary infrastructure in Southeast Asia, as compared to the American or British publishing worlds, has long posed a challenge. “When I first started out, I didn’t even know what an MFA was. I thought you just emailed a publisher [your manuscript]. I didn’t know what a slush pile (a collection of unsolicited manuscripts) or a query letter was. I didn’t even know how to ask the right questions.”

It was not until she met Aw and later moved to the US for her graduate studies that she began to absorb the tacit knowledge of the publishing world. “[In Singapore], you don’t have the chance to do that as much.” However, this is changing, Wei points out, with authors such as Rachel Heng and Wen-yi Lee securing global book deals—a shift made possible by the growing access to international agents and publishing pathways. But the emotional terrain remains steep. “If you don’t have people who take your work seriously, you don’t have that confirmation of your artistic reality,” she observes. “Without that, it’s very easy to give up.”

For Wei, the community does not have to be big. But it has to be real. “People use the word ‘community’ a lot, but it means friendship for me. You just need people who care enough to talk to you about your work seriously.”

Now that The Original Daughter is complete, Wei is learning to sit with the stillness that follows a long pursuit. “It seemed conceivable that I would forever have this book simmering in the background while I write endless short stories and scripts,” she says. “[When you’ve been working on something] for a long time, your artistic identity can become co-dependent with it.” Completing it, she admits, was liberating. “I feel very free to explore what the next stage will be.”

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