Like Traversing Memories We Can’t Let Go: An Interview with Belinda Hermawan by Anna Cabe
Henry on the left and Bugsy on the right
This week’s tenth anniversary interview—which will close out December— is with former contributor Belinda Hermawan. Belinda Hermawan is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer whose short fiction has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Pigeon Pages, Split Lip, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere. She is an alumnus of the University of Western Australia Law School. When not wrangling with her novel manuscript, she can be found engaging in other difficult hobbies such as belatedly learning Mandarin, supporting Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League, and surviving group exercise classes.
Belinda’s “Bound,” which was an Entropy Best Online Fiction of 2018 and a Longform Fiction Pick of the Week, was published the year I joined Split Lip as a reader. This magic trick of a story became one of my instant favorites, and I have recommended it more times than I can count to my undergraduate creative writing students, as a way to look at inventing form, developing character agency, and tackling the intricacies of love and destiny. Split Lip’s tenth anniversary celebration was the perfect opportunity for me to get Belinda to take me behind the curtain.
Anna Cabe: Can you share a memory from when you were ten years old?
Belinda Hermawan: When I was ten, my family moved from the east coast of Australia to the west coast. I have a very distinct recollection of the displacement: a shrinking. Everything in comparison to Sydney felt smaller, less developed, slower. Add to that the feeling of starting a new school in the back half of the year and I just didn’t really know where I was, where I stood, if anything would ever feel as exciting or large-scale again. There’s a saying here (not even sure if it’s true) that Perth is the most isolated state capital in the world. Over time, I would act like the move never happened, like life started at ten. Someone with a psychology degree could probably tell me more about how children process major changes!
AC: Speaking of moving, I notice that your stories, from “Here Comes the Flood” to “Vanishing Point,” are set all over the world, from Australia to the United States. This literary globetrotting made me wonder: What places do you call home? How do these places influence or otherwise make their way into your writing?
BH: I think this leads on nicely from the first question. In one way, I think home is where I can feel free to explore or enjoy without constraint, which is probably more a mindset than a physical location. Rather than thinking of a house where I can put my feet up, so to speak, I can feel at home walking down the street in a mall in Singapore or a street in New York or in a gallery in Melbourne. A fair few of my stories are set in cities where I’ve only visited for 3-7 days at a time. I have a photographic memory and can comfortably recall and construct in my mind—a definite advantage for crafting short fiction. All I need is a memory and a story can spring forth, animate. It’s interesting because I maintain my best work is set in America—maybe in living somewhere so isolated, what I’m actually chasing is alternate ideas of home where the protagonist travels away and is therefore able to draw the contrast to what feels safe and known. In my stories, there’s often travel or a focus on places that may or may not be as they once were, much like traversing memories we can’t let go.
AC: Your answer fits in so beautifully with our tenth anniversary exploration of memory and nostalgia! In your bio, you mention that you're an HR professional/lawyer and in
“Vanishing Point” and “Name of the Game,” the narrators are women in corporate jobs who are keenly aware of the power they can wield and the limitations that hobble them, especially in the ways they mix sex and business. What draws you to this subject matter and these kinds of characters?
BH: I think there’s something explosive about interrogating how both external forces and internal conflict interact with each other. It would be so simple if a female protagonist could risk everything for what they believe in, for their principles. But life is not that simple and fiction also shouldn’t be reductive when dealing with such subject matter. In portraying different scenarios, I hope to show it’s not always absolute cowardice or stupidity or arrogance that stops us from taking a stand or being a “better” woman; it’s human to fear and to want to survive.
AC: That humanity and nuance you’re interested in is why I so deeply love “Bound.” As our former fiction editor Katie Flynn said, “If you’d asked me a year ago if I’d accept a story about pre-destined love I would have smiled uncomfortably into a hard NO. But this narrator is equally skeptical, as is the woman from her previous life, who threw herself into a river to avoid an arranged marriage. The narrator’s skepticism makes for an interesting rhetorical choice, a sort of reliability by affinity.” Like Katie, I’m generally not into the tropes of reincarnated or fated romance, but I love how, despite the way destiny is woven into the story, the numbers, the patterns, wrapping tighter around Aimee, she asserts her power of choice, adding a delicious, lively ambiguity to the way the events unfold. Can you talk to me about the genesis and development of the story?
BH: A fortune teller really did tell me I drowned myself in a past life because my family had sold me off to a rich noble. I took this idea and combined it with a theory my dad told me once, about soulmates following each other in subsequent lives, attempting to reconnect. The only major Chinatown I had been to since moving to Perth from Sydney was that of San Francisco, so once I planted the protagonist there, I was able to produce the first draft in three hours. Like I was possessed. My beta reader, Sophie, noted how my transitions from present to past were jarring, and she suggested using numbers to anchor the reader. I went with the age Aimee was at the time of the flashbacks and linked it to the fortune cookie. Katie was able to trim the story down during the editing phase (I have a tendency to over-explain in earlier drafts), and the end product was better than I ever imagined. “Bound” is a story that has resonated with avid writers and readers like yourself, while also being compelling to friends of mine who are not short fiction readers at all. Maybe it’s the elements of fate and free will, I’m not sure! To this day, I don’t really know what Aimee’s choice ends up being—I think ambiguous endings are part of the beauty of short fiction anyway.
AC: I’m with you on the power of ambiguous endings and not-knowing! That being said, here’s a choice I’d like to know: What is a throwback trend you want to revive? Or, what fashion trend has had a recent revival that you want to banish to the past?
BH: All this 90s fashion coming back into vogue is bizarre. The necklines, the jeans, the midriffs, the platform shoes… We are too close to wearing butterfly clips and listening to the Spice Girls on a Walkman. That being said, I am all for throwing back to the pop music of that time!
AC: Yes, yes, to the Spice Girls (my first ever CD was Spice!)! And last but not least, what is your favorite (childhood) snack food and why?
BH: Coming full circle here with this answer: a sponge-cake-like cupcake from an Asian bakery in Sydney’s Cabramatta neighborhood. Light, fluffy, joyous. I just tried to look this up and I think it’s “Chinese egg cake.” I didn’t fully appreciate the neighborhood and its community (and food) when I was growing up. Didn’t know what I had until it was gone.
Anna Cabe is a Pinay American writer living and working in Atlanta. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slate, Rappler, Vice, The Margins, The Cincinnati Review, decomp, The Masters Review, Slice, StoryQuarterly, Joyland, and Fairy Tale Review, among others. She received her MFA in fiction from Indiana University and has been supported by organizations like the Fulbright Program and Millay Arts. She is currently a fiction editor for Split Lip Magazine. You can find Anna at annacabe.com. Anna’s favorite Filipino pastry is either ensaymada or hopia.