A WOMAN WRITER IN MALAYSIA (2)

AN EXTRACT FROM  MY BOOK. (page 36 to 38 )
(co published by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka and International Islamic University Press, 2018. It is a book about being a writer and a woman in Malaysia)

Besides poetry I also write short stories and a novel that touch on women issues. Most of them evolved around my personal experience particularly the obstacles in pursuing my ambition of becoming a good writer. I have written about the customary and domestic obligations, the burdens of child bearing and rearing that suppressed  artistic talents. I  have had the experience of having to stay home with my little toddlers, during which period it was impossible to produce anything of literary standard. Later, when I managed to break away, I summed up those depressing situations in a short story entitled Catatan Di Meja Makan (Writing on the Dining Table), first published in 1983 in our national newspaper. The protagonist in the short story,  Hamima, was an upcoming short story writer who left her job to look after her small children. She became desperate when the routines of a housewife took her away from her writing, and from herself. When Hamima had no choice but to take an resign from her job, she thought she could manage her time. She planned her schedule properly. She tried to allocate time for the various tasks of a housewife, working the hours and minutes needed for cooking, sweeping, ironing, washing plates, tidying up the kitchen so that she  could have some time left for her writing. She was determined not to lose her footing in the field of writing or to  die off like  many women writers before.  

Hamima found out later that there is no such thing as time tabling in a housewife job because it is full of the unexpected. There was no way of telling when the child would get sick, at what time he was going to slip and fall, or when anyone would smear tomato sauce on the floor. She felt empty and depressed for not being able to write. She envied the men, for it is so easy for them to do anything. For instance, a male writer could sit at the table with his books for as long as he wanted to.

She read about a male novelist  who was a big name. He said he was lucky to have such an understanding wife. Can a woman writer have the same privilege?  What would happen to the children if she locked herself up in the room to write? The children would cry for her. They demanded attention and disturbed her even when she wanted to write. They have been disturbing her even when she was hungry and needed to eat, and even when she was sick and could not lift up her head.

The short story is an example of how personal experiences are put to literature. The protagonist,  was an image of myself and other women writers struggling to steal sometime to be ourselves.  It  expressed  my  own desperation in a life that offered no sense of satisfaction or purpose. Those were the times when I considered myself a failed poet and a failed person. During the period, I wrote very little, partly due to the fatigue of household chores and attending to small children’s constant needs, and the fatigue of suppressed anger and dissatisfaction. I lost contact with the world and the contact with my own being.

I was also disturbed by the fact that women were usually isolated from their surrounding.  They were usually confined to domestic affairs. A short story entitled Seperti Ibu (To Be Like Her Mother) relates how a village girl, Tijah, was brought up to help her mother and to become just like her mother. She got up in the morning and followed the routines set for her. She looked after the younger siblings and was responsible for everything that happened at home while her mother worked in the padi field. Tijah sometimes questioned why her elder brother Ahmad did not have to do anything, and why their parents did not treat their sons and daughters equally.

How lucky to be Ahmad. He is older but need not wash plates. Ahmad need not carry the younger siblings. Ahmad can play as he likes and can go anywhere he likes. Ahmad will not be scolded if the house is messy and dirty. Tijah will be blamed for anything wrong or not to expectations.  Mother always nagged at her and mother said all is done for her own good because Tijah is a girl. Tijah will one day get married. She will be a wife and a mother with a house and children to look after.”

Tijah observed that whenever the people from the government office came to give a talk at the open space near the village headman’s house, her father would go with the men folks to listen to them. She envied Ahmad because he was free to follow them. But her mother and the other women never go since they had so much to do at home. 

            There are other short stories  that touch on obedience and submission as the symbol of decency, dignity and womanliness . A common stereotype phrase dedicated to women is “No matter how  highly educated you are,  a woman’s place is in the kitchen”. This almost discourage women to pursue further studies. Mothers and grandmothers advise their girls to marry young. The  elderly ladies  are worried of their daughters not being able to find a husband which mean they will have no children and no one to take care of them in later life. Somehow they manage to instil fear and unnecessary worry among the girls causing some of them to forgo further studies and career opportunities for the sake of settling down. I depicted this   in several short stories including Anita.  Anita was brilliant and beautiful. While studying in the university she was active in community work including helping to teach voluntarily Malay students who were weak in Mathematics and Science especially in the rural areas.   She was too occupied in student activities to take up serious relationship with the opposite sex. Furthermore boys prefer quiet and low profile girls for their potential wives. Anita graduated to become  a school teacher, determined to do her best to help the students and help the society. She organized programmes and asked for commitments from her fellow teachers. But Anita became a victim of prejudice and misunderstanding and even rumoured of trying to steal somebody’s husband. This happen because Anita was still unmarried even though she was close to thirty.