4.5★s
Backwaters is the first novel by award-winning New Zealand poet and author, Emma Ling Sidnam. Even though her maternal great, great grandfather emigrated from a Guangdong village in China to New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth Century, and her father is Singapore Chinese, writer Laura Long Stephens doesn’t feel Chinese. She really hates it when people ask her where she’s from. “Here!”

Then, her boss at the Auckland Art Gallery asks her for Chinese New Zealand stories for an anthology about minority cultures in New Zealand. Of course, she doesn’t have any: “Does my family history count as a Chinese New Zealand story? Even if it does, am I Chinese enough to write these stories?”

But a visit with Benjamin Long, her maternal grandfather, gets her thinking about it: maybe she could write about him? While he rejects the notion that he had any sort of interesting life, he does suggest that his grandfather’s life might make worthwhile subject matter.

Her great, great grandfather’s journal is a real find. It’s all in Mandarin, but Grandpa is ready to sit down and translate for her. And so she writes Kaineng’s story, or at least, her interpretation of it. Grandpa’s OK with that. It describes their ancestor’s youth, his emigration, at which time Kaineng becomes Ken, his work in New Zealand, his return to Guangdong to find a wife. Kaineng was a poet and story teller so his writing is interesting, beautiful, moving.

As Laura works on her Chinese New Zealand story, she can’t help thinking more about her own ethnicity. Her younger sister’s remarks regularly criticise her attitude, and their mother’s history adds impetus to her attempts to understand and accept her Chineseness.

In her burgeoning private relationship with her white work colleague, Henry, she finds herself challenged: “maybe it’s not super healthy for you to be self-analysing all the time. You might feel better if you focused your energy outwards a bit,” he tells her, and “what do you hope will change after all of this? When you have more answers— if there even are answers?”

She is surprised to find herself attending an Asian arts Collective, and realises she has more in common with these people than she first realised. She comes to admit “I’ve been so internally racist my whole life.” Finally, on a short research trip to Hong Kong, she connects with someone whose heritage experience is so close to her own, that empathy, and emotional and intimate connection can occur without explanation.

At last, she realises “I want to be proud of my roots. My sister is. But I hate being seen for my ethnicity… At first I resented having to write these stories just because of my heritage. But now it feels like a privilege to have stories that people want to hear.”

Laura’s narrative is interspersed with her fictional version of Ken’s story in fifteen parts, and two fictional versions of her mother’s conception. While this novel may resonate with people of Asian heritage, Ling Sidnam’s talent with words, descriptions and plot ensure that this is not a prerequisite for enjoying this beautifully written debut.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Text Publishing.