Of Myths, Monsters, and Tall Tails

When I lived in Japan in my 20s, I visited a scenic lake called Kussharo in eastern Hokkaido. Amidst the tranquil views and souvenir shops was a nigh unmissable bright blue statue of the lake monster Kusshi. The name seemingly inspired by Scotland’s Nessie, there was even some speculation it was in fact the same monster, swimming between the two bodies of water through a secret tunnel in the centre of the Earth. Kusshi only became popular in the 1970s but has nevertheless been embraced by locals and tourists alike. Familiar and yet different, just as all retellings are. The idea has stuck with me all these years: one where we are connected by water, by monsters and by the stories we choose to tell.

Water

I grew up on a house on a hill overlooking the River Clyde. One of my core memories is the rare treat of driving up to Loch Lomond to feed the swans and enjoy the view. Perhaps that is why I’ve always been drawn to water, despite never learning to swim. Like many children brought up in the UK, I loved fairytales like Cinderella and Snow White but was surprised to learn the original Little Mermaid did not have a happily ever after ending, nor does the Scottish selkie. The selkie is a seal who can shed her skin to become a beautiful woman. A fisherman steals her skin and locks it in a chest, forcing her to become his wife. One day, years later when they’ve had children and made a life together, she finds her skin and returns to the sea.

I am drawn to selkies and mermaids like the tide is drawn to the shore.. Over years and iterations, it felt natural to use water to tell the stories of women of colour: our journeys from other lands, our exotification, our miscommunication, and all the unpleasant stereotypes and power imbalances that go with them.

My debut novel Fathomfolk is filled with peoples from water mythologies: kelpies, kappas and water dragons, but it is the women—the mermaids, sirens and selkies—that drew me to the shoreline first.

Monsters

One of the things that held me back for many years was a fear I would be called out for getting my own culture wrong. Fear I could not do the research in the original language; fear of never having lived in the country of my parents or grandparents. The fear grew so big, so overwhelming, that I didn’t know how to tackle it. It became the monster under my bed.

I grew up watching Mr Vampire, a classic Hong Kong film about an exorcist dealing with the malevolent undead alongside the antics of his incompetent apprentices. When I started researching hopping vampires for my forthcoming novel Harbour of Hungry Ghosts in greater detail, I discovered that the original stories had little to no mention of how the undead were exorcised. Most of what Mr Vampire depicted was made up, vaguely borrowed from Taoist practices and applied to vampires. In essence, the filmmakers had invented the rules of engagement. 

And yet this decision has become an embedded part of the mythos. The image of a Qing dynasty official in long blue robes with a yellow talisman attached to their forehead is synonymous with hopping vampires. Our collective belief has made it so, just as Santa wears red and Frankenstein’s monster has a bolt through his neck. In other words, we invent and reinvent our monsters, changeable through the centuries.

Stories

Folklore and mythology have become ways for me to build a sense of identity. Like many diaspora folk, I struggled with this for most of my teenage years and into my 20s. I watched my mother confidently call herself Chinese even though she had left Hong Kong at sixteen. “Where are you from?” was and is such a loaded question to those of us who have wrestled with this exact question most of our lives. But my journey into reading and writing mythology and folklore retellings helped me process this.  Diaspora folk are retellings, no less valid, but new interpretations of what has come before. We are the product of the stories that generations before us chose to live: seeking new opportunities, new love, new life in new lands.