Anna Sulan Masing

Usually I say I’m a writer because I think people can understand that. And then I say I’ve written a few podcasts and I’ve done journalism stuff, curation.
It’s funny because, years ago when I was first looking to buy a flat and I took my mom to a few places, the estate agents asked what I do. When I replied, ‘I’m a writer’, my mum turned to me and was like, ‘Are you?!’ The agent was so confused. I told him, ‘Just put writer—it’s fine, it’s true’.

I love the research. I don’t mind the writing because it’s a bit of a problem-solving exercise, but I do get so stressed about it. I put it off. But when you’re in the mode, and it’s flowing, there’s nothing like that feeling.
I’m also a big fan of editing. I generally tend to overwrite, with the idea of cutting 50 percent and then adding on about 10.

I get quite brutal. But I never throw things away. I put them on another page and save them, and then I’ll come back and sometimes add them back in or shift things around.

I always wanted to be in theatre, but later I realised that was actually about wanting to tell stories. I wanted to be in a position to platform stories. Everything I did, even in school, was about, how do we organise events around storytelling? I think I’ve stayed true to that—I’ve just gone through it in lots of ways.

I wanted to be an actor from when I was young; I loved it and found it really expressive and creative. But when I got to my final year of university, I felt really uncomfortable on stage. I think it was related to that period in time, as women’s bodies were so scrutinised and I didn’t think I fit into the norm—which, looking back, is wild because I was so tiny and little and absolutely ‘perfect’. But I didn’t feel comfortable in my body, and people looking at me was often either othering or sexualised. I found that difficult, and also got a bit bored of performing because as an actor you have to wait around for someone else to decide you look right. I was like, I’m not that person.
I decided to direct and tell stories that way. I started a theatre company, and that was really fun, as I got to work with new writers and young actors. Eventually I went back to do my PhD because I wanted to take that further: How do I make theatre that really explores all these big questions? And how do I investigate what can be the next way of telling stories? At that point, I wasn’t enamoured with the theatre world and wanted to introduce more voices. Performance culture and performance art from the Global South was predominantly told through white voices, and I knew there had to be another way. That’s why I went back.

When I was doing my PhD, I realised all these stories and rituals and histories—so much of it was about farming and food. Having grown up around food and working in hospitality, I realised that food was such a central part of all these stories, and a way of telling difficult stories in particular.
I was also doing more journalism. Where theatre can be quite elitist, journalism can reach more people. I went into theatre to democratise it and make theatre this big thing that everyone could experience, but I found myself stuck in the structures. I’m not saying media is any better, but there are more spaces where you can actually be heard and seen.

I love to eat, and I like cooking when I’ve got some time, but cooking doesn’t de-stress me. Part of me is a little bit rebellious, like, I’m a feminist, I don’t need to cook. And I don’t want—as a woman of colour and immigrant—for cooking to be my thing where everyone else says, ‘That’s how you have culture’. I have culture in other ways! So it’s been a really strong point to not be the cooking person.
But ultimately, I do love to cook. Rather, I love people coming over. For my book launch, we had a big day of cooking with me and my friends, and it was so fun. We made all these different dips, and I put a chicken in the oven. That’s what I love about cooking and feeding people—when everyone is a part of it, like Christmas. That’s the bit I love.

It’s so weird. Food was such a central part of my upbringing; my mum and my sister are amazing cooks, and food was how I kept hold of my heritage, but it wasn’t fetishised.
Then there’s the other thing with people of colour where, for working class communities in particular, food can be quite a dangerous and uncomfortable topic. You might not have grown up with the foods that give you comfort, or there was a scarcity. So this nostalgic dream of food can be a really dangerous space to go into. There can be a lot of pain in that, and I don’t think that gets thought about a lot.

I don’t know if it was a realisation, but there was a time in Malaysia before we moved to New Zealand when I said to my mom that I didn’t want to be white—I wanted to be full Iban. I don’t know why I said that, but something must have clicked, which made me think I didn’t want to be half. I wanted to be fully one thing. I was obviously really aware that I was a little bit ‘other’. And then I remember going to New Zealand and having someone tease me and being really confused. It was so ingrained in us that we were Iban; that was core to my identity. It was almost like, my name is Anna, and I am Iban.

No. In Malaysia, we had our family, but in New Zealand, there was no one. When I was younger, I hardly remember anyone else who was South or Southeast Asian, though there were a few people from Hong Kong in high school.

Like, not even understanding what whiteness is. With a friend of mine, we have a thing where every now and then we realise we’re not white. You grow up thinking we’re all normal, everyone is the way they are, and suddenly you see these points of difference. I’d walk down the street with some white friends and then catch myself in a shop window and think, I’m different. Not that I want to centre whiteness, but you become very aware that you’re not that norm.

Obviously, spices. I’ve written a lot about pepper, so that’s my favourite topic. But I really want to do more writing on whiskey from a historical and a colonial perspective, particularly with Beyoncé making her own whiskey, when in the US it was made by enslaved people and had its own class system around it. You also have the trade system that was developed around getting barrels from one place to another. That’s mad.
Then you’ve got gin, which I think is always fascinating. It’s all about the spices used, and of course you’d look at the spice trade and the theory of gin and tonics being created to counteract malaria; how at one point, the amount of money that the East India Company was spending on quinine essentially would have paid for the British troops for a year.

There was so much I couldn’t put in. Laksa would be an amazing one to go really deep into. The stuff about the Chinese merchants having two lives, coming to Malaysia and building a family with local women while having a family back in China. Then there’s a whole conversation, which needs to be verified, about the enslavement of indigenous women to these men—there’s some evidence of it. There’s a lot of grey areas, and it’s to do with trade.
That context created Nonya cuisine, which laksa is a part of, and laksa is definitely a dish of power and consolidation and evolution. But it’s also about female power; a lot of women ended up being restricted to the home, and they created this dish for, because of, in spite of that. They owned what it meant to be this cultural community.

So much. I had a little argument with an editor who’s also my friend because I said there’d been a rising interest in discussing colonialism. She was like, ‘People have been interested in colonialism for years’, and I replied, ‘No, they haven’t’. I knew that from when I was allowed to write about it in my work. Now people ask me to write about it.
They’re specifically asking me to write that piece because they want it to be spoken about, which I don’t think would have happened post-pandemic, pre-pandemic. I think there was a shift there. I wouldn’t have been commissioned for mainstream places. And people are much more open to speaking about gender identity and what it means to exist in spaces that feel safe.

I do think at times I have self-edited, self-censored, which is annoying when I think about it.
Recently I was interviewed for something about MSG, and the first thing they said was, ‘Oh, we can’t be political’. I’m actually really upset about that. It’s impossible for food not to be political, especially MSG. Eventually I was like, ‘Look, you can’t talk about MSG unless you talk about racism. It’s intertwined. Are you saying you don’t want to talk about racism?’ Sometimes in the moment, it doesn’t quite hit you, then afterwards, you’re like, that was very weird.

I do feel there was a time on Twitter where people were listening and opening up. Everyone was writing threads, and people were genuinely engaging. There were panel discussions where I was talking about cultural appropriation, and it was a topic that people began discussing more. Stuff I’d written about academically would come into public spaces. If you’re going to put it down to a piece of work that I felt quite proud of, there was a piece for gal-dem about Gordon Ramsay’s Lucky Cat restaurant.

Unfortunately, that moment of opening up was right before the pandemic, and it seemed to stop dead. No one wanted to get any deeper—we reached a point where things got progressive enough and people felt they’d done the work. I now feel quite pessimistic about it.

Exactly. But there was that moment when people wanted to talk about it. I don’t want to be too negative because in many ways we’re in a better place.

Wild. It’s quintessential. Jason would be like, ‘Oh, we’re fine now’. I’m not saying that the industry isn’t better, but it’s this thing of, because we’re better now, we don’t have to think about it at all. In a way, it’s worse because you understand the issues but you’re not actively trying to change them. His wife is a woman of colour—how is he not actively anti-racist and actively feminist?

I know a lot of people who want to come off social media because of the constant news, particularly coming out of America. For me to bring Chinese and Any Other Asian out right now feels on one hand really important, but on the other hand, it’s a battle. This book wasn’t meant to be a fight; it’s meant to be a book about resilience and joy whilst pointing out the horrors and atrocities. Instead, it feels like I’m coming out with this book when people are going to say, ‘We don’t want to talk about that’. My takeaway from the book is we have to be messy. We can’t just tick boxes. It’s quite silly and quite funny sometimes, because I think you have to be a little funny to deal with all this darkness.

There’s something there, because food is consumed. It’s not just that white men are taking up space, but they’re consuming you. It’s a very visceral feeling, and that’s why it’s so hard to put into words when you see something happening, or you see an example of appropriation. It’s not just someone saying, ‘I’m an expert in this and I’m gonna cook it and own it’. They’re saying, ‘I’m gonna cook and own it and then I’m going to eat it’. When food can be your biggest link to identity, you are eating me, and that’s so hard to explain to someone who doesn’t have that, whose belonging and sense of home is reiterated in so many ways in their everyday life. It’s consumption in two ways, because it then becomes something that’s sold and branded. But to explain to them, ‘You are consuming me’, makes no sense to them.
When your culture or your identity is also the only lens through which a lot of people will see you and where you’re from—that’s why people put so much weight on it. How else am I supposed to anchor myself or make myself relatable? I wrote in Penang about Malaysians being reduced to five dishes, like roti canai, nasi lemak. It’s like, this is all you are. It’s difficult because it’s so cut and dry.

Writing this book was really difficult, but it’s not the first time that I found myself in a situation where I couldn’t process the information. I did get a therapist last year; basically, I needed to have someone I could speak to about identity, who understands freelancers and creatives. That was good because it gave me some space to be OK about having these emotions, but it can still be difficult. In my book, I write about crying in the British Library because you’re reading this stuff, and you don’t know what to do with it.
I’m very lucky that I have really good friends that are open to having these discussions in a non-judgmental space, other women of colour and people from marginalised communities. I also think having a dog is great. Going out to take a walk is the best thing, and here, we’re near the marshes. It’s cliché, but it’s helpful.

I would say Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Woman, Native, Other and Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands / La Frontera. I read both of them when I was doing my PhD. Both are poets, and so the way they look at structure when they’re writing—they throw out any rules, and I think that’s really beautiful. I go back to them all the time.

Oh, interesting. It is continuous, but it does feel different. I think I write with the audience in mind; I always think about writing as if I’m talking to someone. I’ll read my work back out loud. I’m constantly thinking, if I was in front of someone, trying to tell them this story, how would I say it? That’s why I love podcasts and audio. But it’s different rhythms; when I’m writing poetry, it often feels much more physical and sensory.

I make a little pot of tea. I’ll show you my room, actually. I used to have my desk here and would look out on the garden, with all the cats and birds and squirrels. I don’t have my desk here anymore, but this is a bit of a shrine. This is the last rice harvest that my dad did, and I have my crystals. Having these things around me is really important when I’m writing. And then here are all my books.

I’m really sentimental, and I’m really into objects. I think they are super important. My mum’s quite like this as well, and it was interesting to go back to New Zealand and see my mum at Christmas and realise that every corner in the house is really beautifully laid out. She’s got lots of objects, but it never looks cluttered because she’s curated it so you can enjoy them. I think I have a similar approach.
I’m doing more research on Iban history, and objects are really important. They would often pick up their houses every five years and move to farm different spaces, but they always brought their objects. My research was saying how important objects were for creating a sense of home and belonging for Ibans. It’s ingrained in me from both sides.

I’ve started writing a piece of fiction, which I’d like to be a novel. That’s why I’m reading The Golden Road, because there are historical facts I want to make sure I have. I’ve done so much research on pepper and Iban history, but there’s so much missing because we don’t have the records. There are some bits; I’ve heard stories of peoples’ lives, and I know fiction can tell those parts without having to make sure it’s all cited. I don’t think indigenous people and Southeast Asian women are represented particularly well, and I want to tell their stories.
We touched on this, but I also want to write more about the history and impact of drinks. We talk about food as a cultural thing, but we very rarely talk about understanding drinks. In fact, they’re probably one of the earliest things that we ritualised. We forget that they’re cultural linchpins.