Think again—she’s a riot!
This PJ-born, New York-based author is vivacious, practically dancing with joy, and known for spontaneous bursts of laughter and quick quips.
“I’m a very unserious person who has written a very serious book. People always come to me and they’re like ‘Oh, it’s going to be a serious intellectual conversation’. I’m extremely unserious! Chan, who’s in her late 30s, shared with FMT Lifestyle.
Currently on a global book tour, the 339-page ‘The Storm We Made’ has hit bookshelves worldwide, selling in 20 languages and territories.
Chan’s historical fiction is earning rave reviews for its riveting narrative and complex characters. It even snagged the January pick of Good Morning America and BBC Radio 2’s book club—a phenomenal feat for a first-time novelist.
“It was insane when I found out!” Chan, who was Facebook’s corporate and financial communications head, admitted.
“It’s crazy. Many Americans don’t even know where Malaysia is and to know the novel was piped into the households of three million Americans was unreal for me.
She said it was also strange that many Americans began to regard her as an authority on the history of Malaysia.
“I’m not an authority nor a historian. I’m just a person who wrote a book and most days I can’t believe this happened,” said Chan, who named Brit Bennett’s ‘The Vanishing Half’ and Min Jin Lee’s ‘Pachinko’ as inspirations.
Besides doing extensive research online, Chan’s biggest source of information was her paternal grandmother who lived through the Japanese occupation. Chan remembered spending hours with her when she was younger, listening to tales of terror and survival and also stories of people’s tenacity.
Interestingly, her father and grandmother, who are Eurasians, became the primary fact checkers for historical accuracy before Chan even sent out her manuscript.
In her book, homemaker Cecily Alcantara is thrust into espionage, testing familial bonds in post-World War II Malaya in 1945. Cecily grapples with her son’s disappearance, her daughter’s sequestration, and her hidden past.
Cecily harbours two painful truths: she blames herself for the family’s predicament, and her history has been kept a secret from her family.
Spanning years of both agony and triumph, “The Storm We Made” unfolds through the perspectives of four unforgettable characters.
Writing a multi-perspective novel came naturally to Chan, thanks to her upbringing in a large family. “Everybody’s telling the same story but from different lenses,” she explained, drawing parallels to her family gatherings.
The characters in her novel, though in different places, process the same war with different facts, allowing her to explore various psyches, ages, and timelines.
Jujube, Cecily’s eldest daughter, was the first character Chan tapped into. Initially a writing assignment during her master’s degree in creative writing at The New School in New York, Jujube’s story evolved into the heart of “The Storm We Made.”
“I wrote about this girl living in another time during the war, running through repeated checkpoints to get home and thinking about her family’s misfortunes. I thought that was it.
“But the teacher was like, ‘This is not done. I think this might be your life’s work. This might be the beginning of something. You should just try and keep going’. And I did,” Chan recounted.
Fuelled by personal challenges, including her mother’s passing and the pandemic, Chan found solace in the fictional world where characters had agency, and the story “just fell out of me, like a compulsion almost.”
With the novel’s positive reception, could a movie or TV adaptation be on the horizon? Possibly, Chan revealed, cheekily adding: “If it does happen, Miss Michelle Yeoh can call me. She can play the main character or just someone who walks on the road to show her face and leave. Whatever she wants, I’ll make it happen for her!”
Follow Vanessa Chan on Instagram and purchase her book at major bookstores nationwide.