We, The Survivors

We, The Survivors, Tash Aw's latest offering, is a book steeped in the current realities facing Malaysia. The text delves into themes of class, poverty, diaspora and other forms of global mobility—all serious issues dealt with in a layered and nuanced way. As a diasporic author, Aw has always been driven to write about Malaysia. His debut novel The Harmony Silk Factory which won the 2005 Whitbread First Novel Award and, in the same year, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Asia Pacific region) is about the colonial history of Malaya, identity and belonging. We, The Survivors focuses on a particular segment of the Malaysian Chinese diaspora, the 'no-money Chinese people' (p. 202). In a recent interview Aw explains the motivations which led him to write this novel: 'Malaysians are obsessed by racial division—we always think in terms of Malay, Chinese, Indian. But in fact, we are equally, if not more, divided according to class lines.'²⁴ Of course, class differences afflict most societies but he feels that the Malaysian scenario is striking because this divide happened so quickly and disparity of wealth, he asserts, is the biggest fault line among Malaysians today. Indeed, more and more, political and social commentators are discussing the growing income inequality in the country which is hindering the fight against poverty. Embedded within this narrative of class divide in We, the Survivors is the story of migrant workers in Malaysia, another destitute community in the country.

The opening line of the novel is uttered by Lee Hock Lye (or Ah Hock), who is the protagonist and the narrator of the story: 'You want me to talk about life, but all I've talked about is failure, as if they're the same thing' (p. 3). Ah Hock is a 'no-money' Malaysian Chinese living in a rural area, a community which, Aw repeatedly states in interviews, is largely neglected, living obscured, undocumented lives. In communities like these, the keyword is survival because life is hard and ambitions belong to 'people like you, not people like us. You know what I mean---people who lived in the cities, who went to decent schools' (p. 30). Ah Hock's tale begins with the disclosure that he has killed a Bangladeshi and for the rest of the book, we are told why he killed the man. Constantly moving between the past and the present, we are given the gritty details of a tough life with limited opportunities for improvement, let alone upward mobility. It is the way this story is told which forms the crux of this novel. In a matter-of-fact, detached manner, Ah Hock tells us he grew up in a poor fishing village called Bagan Sungai Yu and though only a short distance of fifty feet from Kuala Selangor on the other side of the river, the difference between the two places felt 'like an ocean between two continents' (p. 22). Aw shines in his descriptions of rural landscape and the way the lives of human beings are inextricably linked to the vagaries of the natural elements. Here Aw is also exposing what he sees as the myth of rural life: its romanticisation. Rural life is crushingly difficult. For Ah Hock, his mother and the rest of the villagers it is a battle just to survive.

In the midst of this destitution, Ah Hock holds on to his dreams of a better life and moves to the city, taking up various jobs as a delivery man, night security guard and waiter till he finally lands a job as a labourer at a fishing farm rearing sea bass for upscale restaurants in the city. When he is promoted to the post of foreman at the farm owned by a Mr Lai, we are introduced to another important theme in the novel, the migrant community in Malaysia. The number of migrant workers in Malaysia has grown exponentially with the rapid progress of the country over the past three decades, yet they remain hidden communities living precarious lives on the edges of society. Because Ah Hock's poverty...