Interview with Tiffany Tsao
Portside Review
In your November 2021 essay ‘Resilience doesn’t always look like writing’, you state that ‘it's okay not to write’. When you state that, you really mean it, meaning that we do not have to write at the moment and never again, that we also find lessons out there in the world, from volunteering to talking to strangers to religion. To start with the not-writing then, can you map your life growing up. Here, I am thinking of the journeys between the US, Indonesia and Singapore, all with reference to being of Chinese heritage as well. Where were you and what were you doing before coming to Sydney, where you are now?
Tiffany Tsao
It’s a complicated story. I was born in California in the US, but my parents moved back to Southeast Asia with my brother and me when I was three years old. We lived in Singapore for six years, then Jakarta for six years. In 1998, after the May riots, my mother and us kids moved to Singapore again. My father stayed in Jakarta. From there, I moved to the US for university—I did a bachelor’s degree in English at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, then a PhD in English at UC-Berkeley in California, then a brief stint as a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institue of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.
Portside Review
From that, can you share with us some experiences of being in the United States. I recall my time studying in Philadelphia and New York with great fondness, and you spent time in smaller places like Wellesley in Massachusetts, both of which help one reflect on being located in Asia and connected to the Indian Ocean. How did your own university education and life there make you reflect on home at the time?
Tiffany Tsao
It’s funny…I think the fondest memories I have of studying in the United States have to do with the friends I made and people I met. I remember feeling an intense homesickness and sense of unease throughout, which got stronger toward the end of my time there. I remember at first enjoying the novelty of life there, but it always really bothered me that no one seemed aware on a day-to-day basis that the rest of the world existed. At the time, at least, no one talked about international news, no one seemed to know what was going on in other countries, and I felt the primary way people understood and interacted with the ‘international’, with the ‘foreign’, was through the lenses of diaspora, immigration, assimilation—in short, in relation to the US. I worried that if I stayed there, I would forget the rest of the world existed too. When my husband got an offer for a job at the University of Sydney, even though I didn’t have any academic position or other job lined up for myself, I was keen for him to take it. I was excited about being so much closer to my family in Singapore and Indonesia.
Portside Review
You have briefly written about this notion of coming into a consciousness of own’s one language in 2019 ‘Why are Indonesians being erased from Indonesian Literature?’ There you comment that you started learning Indonesian in a formal way in graduate school, and, it connects to a recent translation project of yours, namely working on Budi Darma’s People from Bloomington. The book itself is, of course, based on Budi Darma’s years as a graduate student in the United States. For unfamiliar readers, tell us about Budi Darma and the book.
Tiffany Tsao
People from Bloomington is a collection of seven long short stories that Budi Darma wrote during his time as a graduate student in Bloomington, Indiana. It was originally published in 1980. There are a great many things about the book that I love (e.g. its quirky misanthropic yet deeply lonely characters; the combination of humour and poignancy in the tales). But what I love about the book coming out in English is that it defies Western expectations of what Indonesian books are about. The collection is set in the US and features, except for one passing mention, an all-American cast. I’ve felt for a while that Indonesian books that are translated into English tend to be valued for their ability to provide insight into Indonesia—and in this sense, tend to be reduced to the fictional equivalent of tour books or cultural guides. This is an Indonesian book that can in no way be reduced to that.
This is one of the two books written by Budi Darma that are set in the United States. (The other is his novel Olenka.) He’s known especially for his absurdist short stories, the majority of which are set in Indonesia (or an alternate version of it). It was a great privilege to be able to correspond with Budi Darma on the translation of People from Bloomington. He read all my drafts and provided many immensely helpful notes. And it’s a great sadness to me that he won’t be able to hold the English edition in his hands. He passed away of Covid in August last year. His death came as a huge shock.
Portside Review
For me, from what I know of it, from the little I have read, it recalled Sherwood Anderson’s 1919 classic short story collection Winesburg, Ohio. They are, of course, set in neighbouring states, but I mean that also at the level of connection, character and action, that restlessness at the heart of small town America. What do you think Budi Darma’s perspective brings specifically from Indonesia, which might be lacking in American authors themselves? How are we speaking back to empire, for example, in and through this work and its contemporary translation?
Tiffany Tsao
I feel the stories point out the absurdity of certain things about life in the urban Midwest that could be taken for granted by Americans as normal. Using a phone to call your neighbour who lives just next door, for example; or the American obsession with individual privacy and independence.
In our correspondence, Budi Darma spoke more than once about how struck he was by the loneliness of the elderly people he met while in the US—and that definitely comes through in the stories. The idea of letting the elderly fend for themselves, that an old person wouldn’t be taken in by family, or would insist on living all alone, I feel, is just very strange to an Indonesian sensibility, if not an Asian sensibility generally speaking.
With regards to the collection ‘speaking back to empire’—I feel it’s complicated. On the one hand, it does so by virtue of its existence (i.e. it’s a brown writer exerting his right to portray white Americans, which reverses the usual direction of colonizer-penned literary works) and by virtue of getting published (again, the odds were against this book precisely because it wasn’t typically ‘Indonesian’ in subject matter). But I also feel that the stories themselves are very compassionate in their portrayal of Americans—they very much avoid exoticizing and don’t strike me as ‘payback’ of any sort. And Budi Darma was always very insistent that, though the stories are set in America, they were portrayals of human nature in general—or as he put it in his preface to the book, “an abstraction of certain types of people I have come across in many different places” (translation mine). From our correspondence, it seems Budi Darma had very positive and fond memories of his time there. The collection is even dedicated to three of his American friends.
Portside Review
On this idea, with the knowledge that we live in an inter-connected world where nations do matter but are not definitive, I think we find different affinities when we look at literary characteristics, things like form and style rather than content alone. What draws you to translating short stories as a form? And to what extent has this also influenced your work with Norman Erikson Pasaribu?
Tiffany Tsao
Something I enjoy very much about translating shorter fiction is the ability to look at the whole work with satisfaction when one is done. And to polish the translation while keeping the entire work in sight. I suppose an analogy would be the difference between sculpting something very large that you can only see part of at a time, versus sculpting something small you can hold in your hands.
I don’t think the length of Norman’s writing has influenced my work with him, though. I would happily translate longer fiction from him. Or shorter fiction. Or anything. He’s working on a novel now, if I’m not mistaken. It is very exciting.
Portside Review
Staying with Pasaribu’s work for a moment, talk us through the process for the newish collection Happy Stories, Mostly. Can you explain how this book came to fruition? And, what differed and stayed the same from previous translations you have done with the same author?
Tiffany Tsao
After I translated his poetry collection Sergius Seeks Bacchus, it felt only natural that I translate more of his work. We had developed such a rapport. At first, I assumed I would translate his first short story collection, which came out in Indonesia in 2014. But he was also revising some newer stories for a collection that was to be published in 2020—Cerita-cerita Bahagia, Hampir Seluruhnya, and he felt those were the stories he wanted to appear in English translation. The most noticeable differences between the English and Indonesian versions of Happy Stories, Mostly are the order of the stories and the addition of one story from Norman’s 2014 collection (‘A Bedtime Story for Your Long Sleep’).
I must confess, I felt the translation of Happy Stories, Mostly went more smoothly and quickly. In contrast, I consulted Norman much more for the poems of Sergius Seeks Bacchus, and there were many poems we had to pull apart. I do think it’s because prose comes more naturally to me, and because the relationship we’d formed during the translation of Sergius Seeks Bacchus laid the foundation for the translation of Happy Stories, Mostly.
Portside Review
This sense of building relationships, of being associated with a publishing house, an author, a body of work is also there in your recent role with The Circular, a weekly newsletter that aggregates and frames hard to find non-fiction from literary sources here. Since taking on the role in October 2021, there have been affinities and connections that have crossed over and into various issues. What are you finding that surprises you and where do you see the energy in writing in ‘Australia’ right now?
Tiffany Tsao
I’m astonished at the number of Australian writers publishing in international outlets who haven’t had their accomplishments sufficiently recognized or celebrated as ‘Australian’. I’m also floored by the sheer amount of (non-fiction) literary production in Australia. There are so many publications putting out amazing work. And so much good work sits in back issues, more or less forgotten. It’s so strange to me that pieces that people devoted so much time and thought and care to crafting can, especially by social media standards, go “out of date” within a few months.
I’m also surprised at the incredibly wide range of things that Australian writers write about and that Australian publications publish. For example, there’s a lot being published about other countries and cultures, and not just in the context of their relation to Australia, which pleases me immensely.
Portside Review
Finally, I want to return to your own writing, to ask about the third book of the Oddfits fantasy series. How is that going? How does it connect to your other projects, and when can we expect to hear more?
Tiffany Tsao
The Disordered Spring is going slowly and steadily and it feels really rewarding to bring the characters and their story ‘home’ at last, even if it’s for an audience of zero. (Just kidding…there are at least eight Oddfans persisting out there, against all odds.)
I’m not sure if it is very continuous with my other projects, but perhaps that’s what makes it so special. It’s refreshing to be able to switch gears and write something more obviously fun.
I have no idea when we will hear more! I’ll probably finish it soonish and then it has to find a publisher. I won’t go into the whole story, but I decided to try to find a new publisher for the whole trilogy, so that will be a challenge. I’ve made my peace with it, though. I’m just happy to wrap up the trilogy in a way that I find satisfactory rather than perfunctory. Maybe if we don’t find a good publisher home I will just print out copies of the manuscript and send them to the members of my tiny unofficial Oddfans club.
Tiffany Tsao is a writer and literary translator. She is the author of the novel The Majesties (originally published in Australia as Under Your Wings) and the Oddfits fantasy trilogy. Her book-length translations of Indonesian fiction and poetry include Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s Happy Stories, Mostly and Sergius Seeks Bacchus; Budi Darma’s People from Bloomington (forthcoming); and Dee Lestari’s Paper Boats. Her translations have been awarded a PEN Translates grant in the UK and shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Translation Prize in Australia. She has a B.A. in English literature from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in English literature from UC-Berkeley. She now lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband and two children.