A new mother becomes obsessed with uncovering the mystery of her own mother鈥檚 disappearance. In a quest for answers, she journeys from a small British Columbia mining town to Southeast Asia, following in her mother鈥檚 footsteps, all the while reexamining her sense of belonging. This is the story of Lily, the protagonist in Professor Jamie Liew鈥檚 debut novel (Arsenal Pulp Press), which releases on April 26.
The novel is informed by Professor Liew鈥檚 own life, as well as her research on the issue of statelessness. A stateless person is someone who doesn鈥檛 have citizenship anywhere, in any form. Like Lily, Professor Liew鈥檚 own parents immigrated to Canada from Brunei, and, like Lily, her own father was not granted citizenship when he was born in Brunei, leaving him stateless. While there are shared details between the author and the protagonist, the novel is not autobiographical, but is rather inspired by Professor Liew鈥檚 deep consideration of the effects of statelessness, the experiences of immigrants, and the elusiveness of a sense of belonging.
As Professor Liew explains in an interview with The Free Press of Fernie B.C. (close to where she grew up and thus intimately connected to the novel), 鈥淚 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.鈥 ().
In 2018, the novel, then an unpublished manuscript, was awarded the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award for fiction by the Asian Canadian Writers鈥 Workshop, which praised Professor Liew鈥檚 elegant prose and storytelling for evoking a 鈥渓iterary reflection of Canadian migration, identity, and statelessness鈥.
In addition to its central place in the novel, the topic of statelessness is also front and centre in Professor Liew鈥檚 cutting-edge research. In 2021, she and Dr. Amanda Cheong (UBC) earned an Insight grant from the (SSHRC) to fund the first in-depth study of the historical and institutional roots of statelessness in Malaysia. Her project, entitled 鈥淪ons & Daughters of the Soil: The Making of Citizens and Stateless Persons in Post-Colonial Malaysia鈥, examines the legal and administrative systems that post-colonial states inherited and continue to use in conferring and denying citizenship. Professor Liew studies the bargains racial minorities made in nascent Malaysia and how those bargains have led to constitutional and legal frameworks that reproduce differentiated and hierarchical notions of citizenship. The project ultimately seeks to shed light on how contemporary iterations of citizenship, belonging, indigeneity and foreignness are manufactured through the colonial mechanisms of legal and administrative systems in Malaysia. .
Professor Liew also has a forthcoming non-fiction book, entitled Ghost Citizens, which will help to define statelessness as an important area of immigration, refugee and citizenship law. While statelessness affects millions of people around the world, marginalizing and oppressing them in numerous ways, previous academic treatments of the topic have been hyper focused on legal reform. While legal scholarship has been able to identify gaps in citizenship law, the problem of statelessness persists. Solutions on paper have not translated into action in the real world. With Ghost Citizens, Professor Liew explores why it is that stateless people are still unable to resolve their citizenship problems.
In the meantime, Professor Liew will launch Dandelion in person at the Ottawa Art Gallery on April 29 at 5:00 p.m. .
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Congratulations to Professor Jamie Liew on this exceptional achievement!