Title & author
The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan
Synopsis
Taking place in Malaya just before and during World War II, The Storm We Made depicts life under British and Japanese occupation, showing how trauma generationally imprints itself on and within bodies, not just because of violence enacted upon individuals, but also from their subsequent urge for control, and the desire to protect those they love.
Who should read this book
Fans of The Nightwatchman and Minor Feelings
What we’re thinking about
Hidden histories
Trigger warning(s)
Physical violence, sexual violence, sexism, mental health, colorism, racism (see more)
“In Malaysia, our grandparents love us by not speaking,” writes Vanessa Chan in the Author’s Note of her debut novel The Storm We Made. Taking place in Malaya (now Malaysia) just before and during World War II, the novel depicts life under British and Japanese occupation. Her family never spoke about their life during the war, and though their silence held love—a desire to protect, a wish for more—it also held trauma. The Storm We Made shows how trauma generationally imprints itself on and within bodies, not just because of the violence enacted upon individuals, but also from their subsequent urge for control, and desire to protect those they love.
Using both a dual timeline and four different narrators, the novel dives into a history that those who experienced rarely speak about. Cecily, mother of Jujube, Abel, and Jasmin, “missed being a woman who cared about something, missed being a woman who was more than just an extension of her house and family” (Chan, 178). She dreams of more—for her husband to not be focused on pleasing the British, for the colorism that impacts every part of their society to disintegrate, for a life beyond caring for children. And so she becomes a spy to help the Japanese take control from the British, believing their promise for a better path forward. But as the new occupation brings violence, separation, and more, she starts to see these as consequences for her actions, and never tells her family about what she has done.
But her silence takes its toll. “The hole in her heart threatened to engulf her if she didn’t do something, anything, to feel a little power, to remind herself that she still had something the Japanese could not take away,” feels Jujube (291). With her family broken and separated, Jujube is in many ways alone. A sick father and a distant mother lead her to assume the role of matriarch. And to young Jasmin, “it seemed…that her mother lived in this in-between place—always shaking, about to crack open, always waiting for the thunder” (111). So she “tried to smile and stay happy” (103). The weight of their mother’s trauma, and her desire to protect her children, imprints upon them—they begin to carry their own anguish, all the while wrapped in the desire to find control and care for those they love.
In an interview with Book Riot, Chan shares: “I received a long letter from a publisher in Japan who wanted to publish the book that basically said, ‘It’s time for us to show Japanese people’s stories that aren’t just about Japanese soldiers going to the front and the women that they left behind, but also about the people that they impacted during this time.’” The Storm We Made helps uncover history and, as legislators and “parental groups” across the U.S. continue to ban the country’s history of oppression from classrooms, serves as a reminder of the importance of sharing such history—not just for people to learn, but so those who have lived the history, and those who have been impacted directly by the history, can begin to heal.
“Jujube wondered about the ways in which girls and women performed for men by always knowing what it was men wanted and how it was they wished to be comforted, always engaged in the ongoing calculus of figuring out what sides of themselves they should show to a man and which parts of their grief were too unbearable for him.”
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How does Chan’s descriptive focus on bodies further reveal the impact of occupation?
The Storm We Made shows how easily “good” and “bad” can be blurred. How does this conversation resonate with our current world?
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