A new novel that explores human issues is soon going to hit the stands, and is set in a familiar place: Sparwood.
The adult fiction book called ‘Dandelion’, coming out on April 26, was written by Sparwood’s own Jamie Chai Yun Liew, who was born in Fernie but spent her childhood in Sparwood, before moving to Calgary when she was 11.
“I grew up reading a lot of books, and none of them ever featured the places that I grew up in,” Liew said.
“I wanted to pay homage to a place where I learned to love books, where I learned to love nature, where I had a very charmed childhood, but also, you know, a troubling childhood in some respects too, living in a small town as one of the very few Asian families that were living there at the time.”
Liew’s parents immigrated to Canada from Brunei, and were descended from a diaspora of Chinese people who migrated from China. Her father was considered ‘stateless’, as automatic citizenship was not granted to him when he was born in Brunei. Her father’s journey led him to Vancouver, and eventually to Sparwood to work in the mines.
The main character in the novel, Lily, seeks the truth about her missing mother, Swee Hua, who walked away from the family when she was 11 years old, “never to be seen or heard from again,” reads a synopsis on the book.
“She recalls the spring of 1987, growing up in a small British Columbia mining town where there was only a handful of Asian families; Lily’s previously stateless father wanted to blend seamlessly into Canadian life, while her mother, alienated and isolated, longed to return to Brunei.”
The book explores the experience of migrants, motherhood, and statelessness, among other things.
“I think the story really tries to untangle the tension that migrants have in terms of how they oscillate between wanting to fit in, wanting to succeed, wanting to blend, and on the other side of things, wanting to ensure that they respect their traditions, their heritage, their culture, and maintain and carry that on to future generations.”
Though it is based on experiences Liew had growing up, the novel is fictional. In real life, people have very complicated feelings, Liew said, adding that both her parents are “very proud to be Chinese, but they’re also very proud to be Canadian.”
“Everything in life is not black and white, I would say.”
“I remember very clearly moving from Sparwood and was very heartbroken about leaving that town.”
Liew now lives in Ottawa, and aside from being a soon-to-be-published novelist, she is a professor of immigration law at the University of Ottawa and a practicing immigration lawyer. She has also spent some time in Malaysia, which got her thinking about migration stories and the issue of statelessness more deeply.
Liew said the message of the book she wrote was drawn from a diverse range of Canadian stories, and said that her Chinese-Canadian story is different from the stories of other Chinese Canadians.
“The story is about paying homage to difference. But also asking people to look at us not just as foreigners, but as part of our community as well.”
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@fishynewswatch
josh.fischlin@thefreepress.ca
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