Jamie Chai Yun Liew, a professor at the Faculty of Law and the Common Law Section, discusses her debut novel Dandelion.
Last week, one of my classmates, an exchange student who speaks accented English, raised their hand and asked the professor a question. Two students who were sitting in front of us giggled like children at my classmates’ tone and insistence that the professor rephrase their response. Rage sprouted in my gut like a tangled and thorny root.
If only those two students understood the courage my classmate had to muster to speak in class, maybe they would stay silent.
One of the crucial functions books serve is to provide a portal into the emotions and experiences of others. Books provide the opportunity to relive the experiences of others–what were they thinking, how they felt in their body, and how the cackling of classmates made them feel rotten. Books are an entertaining lesson in sympathy.
Jamie Chai Yun Liew, a professor at the Faculty of Law and the Common Law Section, utilized this function of the fiction genre in her debut novel Dandelion. Written when Liew was researching statelessness, Dandelion recounts the story of a young woman who, as she begins her journey of motherhood, reflects on the loss of her mother and her family’s migration to Canada.
Expertly recounting a common experience, such as becoming a parent, in parallel to the trials and tribulations of migration, Liew highlights the similarities of the experiences. She explained the structure of her novel in an interview with the Fulcrum: “I try to create a parallel experience for people to relate to emotionally. I find some of the experiences that migrants have very similar to what Lily has as a mother. When you become a mother, you’re leaving your old life behind. Similar to migrants. You’re leaving everything you’ve known behind and you’re entering into a space that you have no idea what you’re going to be experiencing.”
By drawing attention to these experiences, the emotions that accompany them are also important to creating a relatable story.
Liew stated that “the emotions in those journeys are very similar, and I wanted people to reflect on that if they’ve never experienced [migration] before and how it might disturb our narratives about how migrants should perform themselves in our society.” Overall, by including vulnerable and real emotions connected to difficult experiences Liew presents an opportunity for readers to connect the struggles and successes of migrants (both real and fictional).
A fictional novel based on real struggles is a perfect storm created by the symbiotic relationship of Liew’s talents–research and creative writing.
As an academic and creative, Dandelion provided a unique opportunity for Liew. She explains that her research on statelessness did not leave room to tell the personal stories accompanying the people and cases researched.
“A lot of my academic reading looks at the actual legal principle, the laws, and the effects of the law,” explained Liew. “One of the things I found that I couldn’t talk about as easily in that writing was the emotional aspects and how people might be seen or felt and how their identities were experienced in everyday spaces. So [the novel] allowed me to explore that a little bit more than my research did.”
The mixture of creative and academic talents is crucial to produce a complete narrative. Students are often shown only one path or the other. The reality, however, is that a career in both is possible.
Liew asserts that “it’s good to specialize in things but I think, a richer way of experiencing the world of teaching and researching is informed by artistic creativity and collaboration.”
Liew shared the work of her colleagues such as Natasha Bakht, a professional dancing career alongside her career as a law professor; Rosemary Cairns Way, who sings Handel’s Messiah every Christmas at the NAC; Tracy Lindberg, is also a novelist and an Indigenous legal scholar.
In terms of creative writing, students should remember that successful authors rarely exist in vacuums. They do not sit at a desk with a pen and paper and produce a story in a singular strain of thought in one sitting.
Community, advisors, and mentors are crucial to the process.
For example, Dandelion is the Winner of the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award from the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop (ACWW). The ACCW’s mission is to organize, sponsor, and promote cultural arts activities and events involving Pacific Rim Asian Canadians.
Dandelion is available at the public library and the Univerity of Ottawa Library as well. Students can read the novel and or gift it to someone they love for upcoming holidays.
More importantly, students can put into action the lessons Dandelion teaches us by picking up a book written about a person or group they have prejudice about.
