BY GUILLERMO WHEREMOUNT
“I didn’t really come to it with a plan, other than I felt like I really needed to write about Cambodia – not for some greater good, but just for myself, really.”Like many visitors, Melbourne-based writer Laura Jean McKay had an urge to respond to her Cambodian experience in a creative way. Some become photographers, others get excited about blogging. Laura made several trips over three years, first in 2007 as a volunteer aid worker “as Australian women seem to be!”. She was inspired to take to the keyboard and her efforts were rewarded this year when her book, Holiday In Cambodia, was published in Australia by Black Inc Publishing (available here from Monument Books, where she launches it this week, for $17:50).
It’s not a travel diary, it’s not a documentary, it’s not an expose of the tourist industry. Rather, it’s a series of short stories set in Cambodia. “It started out as a novel, on the ’60s Cambodian surf rock theme,” says Laura. “I moved to Phnom Penh in 2009, working with the Nouh Thak Writers’ Association and [began my] love-hate relationship with Phnom Penh. I find it quite scary and strange, but I’m fascinated by it and that makes it a really good place to write about. I never felt relaxed in Phnom Penh. I just really started going at this collection and I’d be writing five stories at once.”
What emerges is something like a mosaic: bright shiny diamonds of stories that observe and that observe the observing, and also the lack of observation. “The subjects that I’m writing about, they’re not original, they’re the sort of things that tourists and expats experience when they arrive in Cambodia. They see brothels, they see street kids, they see tuk tuks. If they stay for a bit longer they see factory workers, they see land grabs, things like that, but I wanted to explore these in a way that made Cambodia the dominant culture and these people coming in the foreigners.”
Much of Laura’s storytelling seeks to overcome the frequently narrow perspective of the foreign traveller, while still examining how such a perspective works. “A lot of the stories are a reflection of myself and some of the characters are re-walking the steps that I made. I think it’s really important, when you’re looking at stories that make a judgement on a certain culture… to also recognise that you really need to be judging yourself as well. It’s as much a self discovery as anything.
“There were certainly stories that I didn’t tell because I just felt as though perhaps it would be a bit too finger-pointy, and there wasn’t enough of me in there to be able to justify that.” She heard stories “that were just so astonishing that I couldn’t even write them, too over the top, they were too fictionalised, and a caricature. I felt that I would possibly paint a flatter picture than their characters deserved”.
Hence the name of the book: almost a caricature in itself. “Cambodia really confronted a lot of my values about myself, and myself as a traveller. When I arrived in Cambodia the very first time and I said to the person [from] the programme, oh, this is great, Cambodia, just like Vietnam – which went down really well – so, where do you go on holiday? And there was a silence and the guy said ‘I don’t go on holiday.’ And I was horrified and that sentence changed everything for me, my point of view changed with that.
“For a long time the book had a lot of different titles. Very much towards the end of the collection when I’d finished a lot of the stories, I was listening to the Dead Kennedys and I just went, Oh! I had always loved the lyrics to that song; it basically says everything that the collection is about. Today it would be Holiday in Syria. Also it is just that cliché: everybody makes the joke about having a holiday in Cambodia and I felt like that really it summed up. I knew that it was the right title when one of my friends said, ‘Oh, such a cliché’ and I went YES! I’ve got it!”
The title embodies the literal, the ironic and also the iconic reference, and news travelled far. “I got a letter from Jello Biafra’s record company saying Jello would love a couple of copies of the book, so I found myself shaking in my publisher’s office, trying to write a note to the man… Hi Jello, thanks for being the greatest punk rocker in the whole world, and hope you like my book. Catch up some time in Phnom Penh.”
Things have changed since she last visited and Laura is keen to see the scene. “I’ve been head down, finishing off this book for the last few years; I have no idea what is actually going on in Cambodia, I’ve really lost touch. Nou Hach is still running and producing their journal, which is great. The comics scene is going well, but again that’s visual. I would love to get some of my stories translated into Khmer.
“In 2009, there still wasn’t much of a critical art culture from Cambodian people; there was quite a lot of fear about criticising anything. And because the whole writing scene was so smashed, people were just in the role of supporting each other: great, you wrote a story, well done. It’ll be interesting to see if that critical culture is emerging or not. I would really love for a Cambodian woman to review my book. That would be really exciting for me.” Confronted by stories of the shift in the expat population to a more family oriented community, Laura laughs. “My mind is sparking: maybe I could make a volume two with new stories: parents and nappies!”
WHO: Author Laura Jean McKay
WHAT: Holiday In Cambodia book launch
WHERE: Monument Books, Norodom Blvd.
WHEN: 5:30pm October 19
WHY: Jello Biafra asked for copies!