I get why Watermyth is a hard sell. It’s a postcolonial portal fantasy with DEI; a Muslim mermaid; more Malaysians and Muslims (from different diasporas) than you can shake a stick at; a mish-mash of superdiverse cultures on a mythical island that has a diaspora composition that is majority Global South, apart from the autochthonous communities. Add to that: a literary-fiction based narrative style straddling domestic fantasy within an epic fantasy framework. Well, I guess that’s why. It doesn’t fit into neat boxes and I absolutely refuse to write trauma porn which is often what mainstream readers want if they are ever given something from a minority perspective. There are also holier-than-thous that would like for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) narratives to follow a single-note through line, an obvious method of narrative resistance. Sure, but there are many ways for protagonists to claim agency and resistance; both overt and covert. You’ll find both kinds on Watermyth and the rest of the novels of the Cantata of the Fourfold Realms but mostly, I follow my bliss and write the story I want to tell.
I want to write stories that have an epic and byzantine scope while also being cozy and filled with joy. I don’t want the dread and gloom that is part of the chiaraschuro of my narratives to dominate. If they are there, they serve as foil. As all artists know, you cannot draw/paint light without shadow. Also, to be clear, I do not sit down and do a DEI laundry list when I write these things. I just happen to be a Global South postcolonial scholar who lives in the Global South. I write what I am surrounded by, and construct fantasy worlds based on different signifiers. Even as a teen my juvenile fantasies and SF writing were steeped in the imagery of my country and of the East, but with some elements I liked from my reading of folktales/fairytales and the epics. My Sesen stories started when I was a teenager, drawing maps, telling myself tales of a human-colonized planet with singing crystals that became a telepathic network. I created civilizations out of cultures I inherited and some I did not inherit. The main tale that was the beginnings of the Yrole Triptych had a boy building household appliances as a domestic sorcerer in training in a home that looked like many a home in Malacca, where I spent a couple of years of my early childhood. As you can see, the domestic element in my fiction goes back a long way*.
Back to the Cantata of the Fourfold Realms, a great chunk of it (hint Cantata itself should tell you) is based on my later obsession and nerdery related to Medieval and Renaissance history, culture, and music. Which is how you have brilliant but ultimately fascist renegade Mer-Princes building an alternate Venice. From John Ruskin’s volumes of The Stones of Venice to Hazlitt’s History of the Venetian Republic, I devoured them all and other academic articles in-between (as someone who has access to the databases). Most of the historical stuff doesn’t make it into Watermyth but it’s hiding in the background. It will be far more obvious in Rosemirror where we travel back to the time of the Cathars in French history, and to the Renaissance period in Venice. Political skullduggery and BIPOC mermaids is part of the tapestry I am weaving.
As to why Watermyth is a hard sell –clearly that’s because it’s not a straightforward BIPOC fantasy rooted in one culture. It’s hybrid culture and syncretic storytelling because that is who I am. Chronically hybrid, belonging to more than one world, never really feeling like I belong to any of the ethnicities that are in my DNA. This series allows me to play with that liminality and who I am. It’s something I cherish and will not give up. You can’t say it’s not wholly Malaysian, though. Not when I’ve already signposted it very clearly with my dedication in the preliminary pages of Watermyth.
To all the public libraries of Malaysia.
Because they fuelled and enabled so many of my writerly and scholarly obsessions which reach back into my destitute teenhood when I could not afford an abundance of books nor had the resources I now have to research and learn more.
*Some of the tale of Serolar can be found in Dreams Strung Like Pearls Between War and Peace in Clarkesworld Magazine. The Yrole Triptych will be finished and published after I’ve published the first three volumes of the Cantata of the Fourfold Realms (the rest would be stand-alone).
**Information on how to access Watermyth is here: https://mythopoetica.com/2024/09/01/places-to-purchase-watermyth-ebook/