"The Coffin Maker" - lead story in The Heartsick Diaspora - a collection by Elaine Chiew - 2019

I find posting upon collections of short stories very challenging.  In most cases, including those in The Heartsick Diaspora,
Elaine Chiew's debut collection, the stories were often not written with inclusion in a unified book initially in mind. There are fourteen stories in The Heartsick Diaspora. I have read all the stories at least once. The collection is very much involved with the diaspora of Singapore residents. (Just being curious, a search revealed the term "Singapore" is used sixtyone times in the collection.) Singapore itself is very much a city built on several diasporas, that of Chinese, Indians, Malays with a culture imposed through centuries of colonialism.

Today I will post on the lead story, "The Coffin Maker", in The Heartsick Diaspora, set during the Japanese occupation of Singapore.


February 15, 1942 - The Japanese occupation of Singapore begins

Under the control of the Kemeitai, the Japanese Military 
Police,  around 40,000 adult male residents of Chinese heritage.are rounded up and shot.

September 12, 1945 - The Japanese surrender Singapore to the British.

As the story opens a Kempeitai officer, accompanied by a female interpreter, has entered a coffin maker's shop.  He is there seeking a hardy coffin made of top quality wood for a Japanese officer killed in a  skirmish with Singapore freedom fighters.

The interpreter makes the coffin maker think of his mother and his sister.

"In the dimness of the shop interior, the interpreter was backed by a halo of light; it filigreed through her silver-threaded kimono, so that for a moment, the coffin maker imagined she’d hidden flickering fireflies inside her robe. She shuffled in her clogs. The way she moved reminded.  him of his mother’s pigeon gait–his mother with the tiny bound feet that he used to massage at night with Tiger Balm because of the pain. The interpreter ’s hair, done up in an elaborate bun, was jet-black and with her head bowed, her neck was long and lily-white, just like Mei, his sister. She’d powdered her face so white it made him think of dead maidens and kabuki dolls. Even so, she was the loveliest thing he’d set eyes on during the Occupation."

In this we get a deep glimpse into the history of Singaporians of Chinese descent.  I believe his mother's bound feet, a terribly painful process speaks of an upper class background, a structure now. largely destroyed.  The interpreter tries to make herself into a traditional Japanese cultural token.  Of course the coffin maker is nervous, knowing on whim the officer can have him executed.  The officer asks him about the wood he has available.  Few Singaporians can now afford expense coffins.

There is much history in this story, we learn about Chinese resistance societies, the horrors of Nanking, and the personal history of the coffin maker.  The officer makes him very nervous
 when he asks him about his mother and sister.  A week later he learns something terrible has happened to his sister. 

The story line takes us deeply into the ways residents try to communicate with each other.  A few years ago I was deeply into the work of Elizabeth Bowen, an Anglo-irish writer of great talent.  She was an air raid warden in this same time period of our story, out  during the bombing of London making sure all lights were out and people were in shelters.  Later she said the bombing raids greatly increased her libido, prompting her to have sex with near strangers.  I was very intrigued to see an echo of this in Chiew's story.

Next month I intend to post on at least four more stories from The Heartsick Diaspora. I anticipate doing at least seven More posts on her stories followed by an overview.  Needless to say I would not devote such attention to a writer unless I greatly admired them and believed in their future. 

I give my total endorsement to this collection.

"Elaine Chiew is a writer and a visual arts researcher, and editor of Cooked Up: Food Fiction From Around the World (New Internationalist, 2015).
Twice winner of the Bridport Short Story Competition, she has published numerous stories in anthologies in the UK, US and Singapore.
Originally from Malaysia, Chiew graduated from Stanford Law School and worked as a corporate securities lawyer in New York and Hong Kong before studying for an MA in Asian Art History at Lasalle College of the Arts Singapore, a degree conferred by Goldsmiths, University of London.
Elaine lives in Singapore" . From her publisher

Mel u