An Interview With Teresa Lim
'I would learn that when families tell stories, what they leave out re-defines what they keep in. With my family, these were not secrets intentionally withheld. Just truths too painful to confront.'
I was sent a copy of Teresa Lim’s debut book, a memoir called The Interpreter’s Daughter.
If your families are like mine, it would be easier to extract water from a stone than to extract a drop of family history. Generational trauma means we leave legacies behind in silence.
However, Teresa Lim managed to uncover her family’s story across generations and create this gorgeous memoir. She tells the story of one Singapore family, all starting from a family photograph taken in Hong Kong, 1935, that’s been passed down through generations, .
“Through detective work, serendipity, and the kindness of strangers she was guided to the fascinating, ordinary, extraordinary life of her great-aunt Fanny, and her world of sworn spinsters, ghost husbands and the working-class feminists of 19th century south China.
But to recover her great-aunt's past, we must first get to know Fanny's family, the times and circumstances in which they lived, and the momentous yet forgotten conflicts that would lead to war in Singapore and, ultimately, a long-buried family tragedy.
The Interpreter’s Daughter is a multi-generational tale: Teresa's family story transports readers from the Opium Wars to the end of the Second World War, through south China, Singapore, Shanghai, Borneo, Hong Kong and London.”
I got to have a Q&A with Teresa over email so read on if you’d like to hear from the author!
Teresa Lim. Photo credit: Lorenzo Ali
Congratulations on the publication of your first book! What was your writing journey that led up to this memoir?
It’s a cliché but I’ve always loved writing, mainly short stories as a young teen and then a young woman. Some of these wound up in a first collection of such stories by Singapore women, published in 1976.
After university in Singapore, I joined a local newspaper, the Business Times. I worked as a business journalist in Singapore and Hong Kong for nearly ten years.
Journalism taught me to fact check. It also taught me to think and type (on a typewriter) at the same time, which was a useful skill - that might feel natural now to a generation used to keyboards, but it wasn’t usual in my time.
What was the process of interviewing your family members like?
Frustrating when they couldn’t - or wouldn’t - remember; rewarding when what they did want to talk about, however irrelevant to the question asked at the time, found a place unexpectedly and importantly later in the book’s narrative.
Did you have any resistance from your family when you decided you wanted to publish this?
None on the whole. The only worry I had was that an aunt, whose adoption into the family was not widely known, would object. In fact, when she was shown the passages describing her adoption and earliest years, she embraced them.
How do you look after yourself/recover after writing parts that are emotionally difficult?
I found it hardest to have to imagine how my great-grandfather felt on leaving his home for the first time. To get under his skin, I had to do a kind time travel - it was like immersing myself into a deep well with little air. When I surfaced, I was gasping. I gave myself permission not to revisit the process for months.
Time for speed round questions! Tea or coffee (or what hot drink)?
Coffee! Oat milk latte.
Favourite snack?
Cake - a slice from a good, homemade cake.
Best time of day/night to write?
Morning. When I was young I loved writing at night; now I prefer the mornings. But whatever time of day, it is solitariness that is most important. l write best when I am alone in our flat.
Pen and paper or laptop?
Laptop. As a journalist, I was trained to type, not write, my thoughts. There was simply no time, with daily deadlines, to transcribe handwritten text into a typed article. But if I am stuck, hand writing breaks the block. It feels as if there’s a special connection from the brain through your hand (holding a pen) to the paper.
Big thank you to Teresa Lim for taking the time to answer my questions and to WeAreMediaHive for sending me the book!
The Interpreter’s Daughter is out now via Penguin Michael Joseph. Click here to get your copy!*
(*This book was gifted. The link is an affiliate link, meaning any purchases made via that click-through gives me a small commission at no extra cost to you.)