Who do you think you are? Fruitful journey across generations
From Mirandi Riwoe, the award-winning and bestselling author of Stone Sky Gold Mountain, comes the story of an Irish-Chinese family over four generations in Australia.
There’s a moment in Brisbane author Mirandi Riwoe’s new novel that perfectly enshrines the idea of racial prejudice that is one of the themes of the book.
Mind you, while Riwoe has not written a polemical, she does like to ask questions about prejudice. And she does that in a clever narrative fashion in A Short History of Longans, which has just been published by UQP.
In case you’re not aware, the longan is a fruit, a kind of cousin to the lychee, and it’s also known as dragon’s eye.
No, this is not actually a history of the fruit, though the longan is a motif that works throughout the book as a kind of recurring link to the Chinese heritage of the characters. One of them is Ruby, an Australian with Chinese heritage trying to make her way in Hollywood at a time when casting someone who appears to be Asian was tricky.
When Ruby auditions for a production, that issue is made clear when the casting director says to her: “Ruby, we are developing a television series, notionally called East Meets West.” He taps his cigarette against the top of the desk, narrows his pretty eyes to light it. “Fu Manchu. You heard of him?” Yes, of course. She nods. “This one is about Fun Manchu’s daughter.”
‘I’ve always been fascinated with the Australians who appear to be White Australians and then you find out that they have a great-grandad or ancestor who is Chinese’
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Talk about typecast. It’s a very entertaining episode in a beautifully written novel from the author of the award-winning Stone Sky Gold Mountain (Her first book was novella, The Fish Girl.)
Her second novel, Sunbirds, was set in Java during World War II and explored some of the same territory as the new book. Riwoe’s heritage is Chinese and Indonesian.
“My dad came here from Indonesia,” she tells me when we meet for coffee at West End.
“I’ve always been fascinated with the Australians who appear to be White Australians and then you find out that they have a great-grandad or ancestor who is Chinese. I’m fascinated by how those great-great-grandparents even got together when there was obviously racism and later the White Australia policy. I’ve been interested in these families and how it affected them.”
So, in her new book we have the story of an Irish-Chinese family over four generations in Australia. The story opens in the year 2049 with Daniel, an elderly and long-isolated man who has a shameful event buried deep in his past. We meet him as he is dealing with the destruction by a storm of his beloved longan tree.
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Then across the autumn of 2000, the summer of 1949 and the 19th century, the tangled roots of his family tree unfurl to the moment an Irish orphan finds her fate entwined with that of a Chinese bushranger. A Chinese bushranger? Yes, really. In fact the book opens with a page dedicated to the story of Ah Yang, who was a bushranger active in the 1840s. Who knew?
Riwoe’s writing is always appealing and accessible while the structure of this book is different. “Fractured” is the word she uses to describe it.
‘The longan tree is of course present in each section of the novel, revealing place and lineage and perhaps reflecting endurance and longevity’
“There are different sections that are all supposed to tie in,” she explains. “That’s what I loved about Tim Winton’s book, The Turning. It has always stayed with me, the way those stories were linked and I wanted to do that.
“The longan tree is, of course, present in each section of the novel, revealing place and lineage and perhaps reflecting endurance and longevity. Maria, being the foremother of this particular Chinese Irish family, is also woven throughout the novel, fluctuating in importance and temperament and the experience of each character. And a Chinese altar appears once in a while.”
Which is as it should be because it was the experience of looking at an old joss house (Chinese altar or temple) in Far North Queensland with her father that was one of the sparks that lit the fuse of inspiration.
“There was a huge longan tree beside the temple and he was incredulous. He was interested because he had a longan tree, too, but this one was obviously very old.”
The longan tree connection is also there in Stone Sky Gold Mountain and is an interesting touchstone that is symbolic of the Chinese heritage her characters share.
Not sure if there will be a longan tree in her next book. Actually, she has two on the go – one about dogs (a reflection of the fact that she has a one-year-old golden retriever named Bess) and another book which is tantalisingly about Mata Hari, the Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War I.
“One of the things I found fascinating about her is that there are some people trying to be White, but she is a White Dutch person pretending to be Eurasian,” Riwoe says.
And thereby hangs a tale, for sure.
A Short History of Longans by Mirandi Riwoe, UQP, $34.99.
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