Backwaters – Emma Ling Sidnam

READ FOR NZ BOOK AWARDS

Backwaters addresses the consequences of feeling distant from your ethnic heritage. It starts with fourth generation New Zealander, Laura, being asked “but where are you from from?” New Zealand has been her family’s birth place and home for generations, yet acquaintances and strangers want to pigeon hole her to her great-great-grandparents’ homeland of China. Laura is ambivalent about her heritage so the questioning not only bugs her but guilts her about not knowing more.

My Chinese roots are tangled, messy, unwanted and yet still there. They’re still there, even if I never get over myself, even if I never dig deep enough to find that they’re beautiful. Still there, even if Ken Long isn’t my real great-great-grandfather. Still there, even if there are answers I’ll never find.

When she’s asked to write about the Chinese New Zealand experience for a work project, Laura decides to discover her family’s history via the diary of her great-great-grandfather Ken, a market gardener in the early years of the colony.

A dual narrative follows the journey of Ken’s immigration and Laura’s identity crisis as she undertakes a deeper exploration of her whakapapa and wonders if a closer connection to it will alter her life any.

This is something that happens too often in New Zealand, people born and raised here being asked where they are from, which is surprising when we have such a diverse and multi-cultural society. Ling-Sidham has captured well this moment of recent history and of right now.  Plus she has given Asian New Zealanders more of a voice, a group which is under represented in fiction.

I really enjoyed this character and her existential ponderings, not only about her heritage, her identity and her sexual orientation but also about family secrets that come to light. Backwaters is a contemporary exploration of what it means to be a young adult growing up in today’s crazy world and everything felt authentic, especially the characterisation of Laura. – Rachel

Published 2023
Text Publishing
310 pages