PETALING JAYA: Hanna Alkaf, whose first two young adult novels touched on the May 13 race riots and “pelesit” (insect spirit) folklore, has quickly become one of Malaysia’s fastest rising literary figures, garnering attention and plaudits in the United States with her distinctly local voice.
Describing herself as “unapologetically Malaysian”, Hanna has refused to bend to what western audiences expect and are used to, presenting genuine Malaysian voices and cultures without compromise.
“I don’t want my characters to apologise for their existence, or their culture or background. For me, that means I don’t italicise, I don’t overexplain, I don’t provide a glossary, I don’t give footnotes, I don’t do things that to me feel like apologies. I have always been adamant about that, maybe some would say militant.”
Once a writer at a lifestyle magazine and later a copywriter, Hanna only decided to seriously pursue a career in fiction writing in 2015, finally banishing the self-doubt that had held her back in the past.
“I realised there was nothing really stopping me from writing fiction except me, there was no external force telling me I couldn’t or wasn’t good at it.”
In less than two years, she managed to finish her debut novel and find a literary agent in the US who supported her brand of unabashed Malaysian-ness, knowing that if she wanted to make the kind of money needed for this to be her career, she needed to look abroad.
Her first novel, “The Weight of Our Sky,” won an award for new young adult and children’s literature for Southeast Asia and her second, “The Girl & The Ghost”, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for young readers’ literature.
In July, she signed a lucrative deal for another two books, with her next book “Queen of the Tiles” slated for early 2022, a murder mystery set against the backdrop of a competitive scrabble tournament once again based in Malaysia.
Her journey was still far from easy, even with the backing of an agent and the path to publication slightly clearer, as a foreign voice writing about a culture unfamiliar to many publishers.
“The truth is, if you’re going to publish in the West, or any market that isn’t Asia, you must contend with the fact that publishing is very, very white, from the top down, from the editors, to the agents who evaluate your stories’ perceived worth, down to the books that make it to the shelves,” she says.
“No matter what you do, how much faith you have, how much you work or how good it is, you are going to start at a disadvantage.”
With all the plaudits, Hanna has made the conscious effort to block out the “noise” as she calls it, so as to not be distracted from the reason she pursued this path in the first place.
“I’m very appreciative of the attention, the awards, the reviews, but at the same time what matters most is the work. Sometimes with a lot of noise, it gets difficult to concentrate on what the main focus should be, which has to come back to the writing.”
“People enjoying my books, that’s all really cool to think about, but if I think about it too much it gets in the way of telling the stories, so my focus always has to shift back to what the next story that needs to be told is, and how can I do it in the best way for my audience.”
However, despite the torrent of praise her work has received in the US, Hanna refuses to buy into the mentality that success abroad must be a measure of Malaysian excellence.
“I think it’s an idea that smacks of post-colonialism, that we still subscribe to this idea that ‘West is best’. It’s nonsensical, you don’t need the West to consider your work worthy for it to be worthy.”