by Ovidia Yu
LP: As a writer, I know that inspiration can come from many different places: a quote, a childhood experience—the sky is the limit. What inspired you to write this novel?
OY: Actually, I started by wanting to write about Sentosa. People know Sentosa as a tourist attraction today, but it used to be called “Pulau Blakang Mati,” or island of unexpected death. When I was young we would spend our school holidays on these small offshore islands and I loved them. Much as I appreciate clean water and good sanitation, part of me misses the atmosphere of the old days. Remains of bodies thrown into the sea by the Japanese during the war used to wash up on Sentosa and that’s where I put the first murder victim in the book . . . everything else followed from there.
LP: You set your novel in Singapore— do you think it will resonate with contemporary American audiences?
OY: It didn’t occur to me till now that it might not, but I think we’ll have to wait and see! Contemporary America is such a big part of Singapore life because of television, movies, and, of course, the Internet that it’s easy to forget how different things here might appear to people in America. But having said that, most of the American visitors I’ve met here seem to adapt to Singapore quite easily. I think because we’re English speaking, they find us a good, safe spot from which to kick off an exploration of Asia. And I hope my writing will act as an introduction to Singapore and Asia too!
LP: Can you explain the connection between a rather strict, safe country and delight in reading about murders?
OY: I think we read to learn about ourselves as well as to escape from our everyday lives and for entertainment. I love reading murder stories. But if I were living in a dangerous place with murders happening on my street I don’t think I would—I would probably be reading Rumi!
LP: You’ve written several well-received plays. What inspired you to write a novel?
OY: A whole bunch of things actually. I’ve always loved reading novels, especially mysteries. But all the books I loved most were written by people who lived in England or America about people who lived in England or America, and without thinking about it I assumed it was out of reach for me. Then I joined an online group based on Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way and I read some of Wayne Dyer’s books (which bizarrely made me return to Asian classic guides I had rejected while growing up) and I realized that instead of spending my life preparing to write books I should just start. And then I found the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and wrote the first draft of Aunty Lee’s Delights in a month. At that time it was titled The Body on Sentosa. It helped having so much online support because writing a play you get “support” from your director, your actors (“write me a part that I can play without losing weight but without calling me fat!”), and your producer (“we need a casting script by tomorrow and we can’t move the pipe organ out so write it in”), so compared to that writing every day on my own felt like a very lonely business.
LP: On page 162 of Aunty Lee’s Delights, Aunty Lee says, “I feel responsible for the people I feed. Once my food has gone into them and become part of them and their lives, I become part of their lives. In a way I love them.” Do you believe that is true?
OY: I believe that in a way we’re responsible to everyone who crosses our path. Either we can learn something from them or do something to help them, and just enjoying the meeting makes it a good encounter. If you’re like Aunty Lee and you nurture people with food, then it is true for you. I would certainly like it to be true of me, though only if I can find a way to feed people through my writing, because that would be safer for all concerned!
LP: Aunty Lee’s Delights deals with visitors from Australia and America as well as ethnic Chinese, Indian, Malay, Eurasian, and Filipino residents. Was this an effort to reach out to an international audience?
OY: Actually, that’s just how we are in Singapore. Here in my apartment block my neighbors are Chinese-speaking, and across the lobby there’s a German family and a Czech couple. But for Lunar New Year the Germans put up decorations and gave out good luck oranges like the Chinese, and the Czechs went on a getaway to Thailand like many Singaporeans, and my Chinese (though not Peranakan) aunty neighbor spent days cooking and fed us all on the results! I think because we are a nation of immigrants it’s both easier for outsiders to find a place here and harder for Singaporeans to define who and what we are. The main effort I’m making here is to figure out who we are—writing is my favorite way of working things out—but I want to figure that out for myself rather than for an audience!
Reading Group Guide
1. When her wealthy husband died, Rosie Lee could have settled for life as a Tai-Tai: “wearing designer clothes and going for manicures and overseas holidays.” Why do you think she decided to open Aunty Lee’s Delights instead?
2. How would you describe Aunty Lee’s relationship with her stepson, Mark, and his wife, Selina? What’s her motive for keeping them close? And what is theirs for staying close?
3. “To Aunty Lee, comfort meant being dressed for the job. It was obvious to her that getting the upper hand in an interview with a police officer required a different outfit from supervising the cleaning of bean sprouts.” What do you think of Aunty Lee’s deliberate change of clothing? Do we tend to change how we present ourselves depending on who we’re dealing with?
4. How women dress is frequently commented upon in Aunty Lee’s Delights, from Aunty Lee’s changes of clothing to Selina’s belief that “how women talked, dressed, and behaved was to blame for unwanted male attention” to Frank Cunningham’s proclamation that “short-haired women in pants . . . it’s just not right.” How do these views reveal things about the characters who hold them? How do the different women in the novel—Selina, Carla, and Nina, for example—deal with expectations about how they should look and behave?
5. When Aunty Lee goes to visit SSS Salim at his office, she makes sure to take along an assortment of her best snacks, which are so delicious that the previously wary Salim “looked across at Aunty Lee with something like devotion in his eyes.” Give other examples of Aunty Lee using her culinary powers to influence people. Is there a special food guaranteed to earn your devotion?
6. Aunty Lee says that she is personally invested in finding Laura and Marianne’s killer because “The two girls who died both came to eat in my restaurant. If they ate my cooking, they are my guests and they are my family.” Later she tells Carla, “I feel responsible for the people I feed. Once my food has gone into them and become part of them and their lives, I become part of their lives.” Do you believe her? Are there other reasons for her sleuthing?
7. The characters in Aunty Lee’s Delights come from the many ethnic communities who live in Singapore, including Indian, Australian, Filipino, and Peranakan (people of mixed Malay and Chinese descent like Aunty Lee and the novel’s author, Ovidia Yu). Do the characters still fit into a kind of social hierarchy, or are they all treated equally in Singaporean culture? Can you detect positives and negatives about this mix of ethnicities?
8. Aunty Lee reflects that “People ought to go through the ideas they carried around in their heads regularly as they turned out their store cupboards. No matter how wisely you shopped, there would be things in the depths that were past their expiration dates or gone damp and moldy—or that had been picked up on impulse and were no longer relevant. Aunty Lee believed everything inside a head or cupboard could affect everything else in it by going bad, or just taking up more space than it was worth.” Which characters have ideas that might need to be updated or discarded? Which have a few bad ideas that might be spoiling everything else in their lives?
9. Rosie Lee’s late husband, M. L. Lee, described her as “em zhai se—not afraid to die,” which describes how “Aunty Lee drove everyone around her through frustration to despair as she pursued some triviality that no one else could see any point in.” What do you make of this description of Aunty Lee? By the end of the novel, how has her em zhai se personality made a difference
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Also by Ovidia Yu
FICTION
The Mouse Marathon
Miss Moorthy Investigates
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
The Mudskipper
PLAY COLLECTIONS
Eight Plays
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Mistress and Other Creative Takeoffs,
with Desmond Sim and Kwuan Loh
NONFICTION
Guiding in Singapore:
A Chronology of Guide Events 1917 to 1990
Credits
Cover design and photograph by Laura Klynstra
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
AUNTY LEE’S DELIGHTS. Copyright © 2013 by Ovidia Yu. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-222715-7
EPub Edition SEPTEMBER 2013 ISBN 9780062227164
13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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