Empowered by the pen, Balli Kaur Jaswal sheds light on the lives of marginalised groups through her fictional novels.
Prompting discussions about sex, gender roles, as well as social issues around class and race, the Singaporean-Punjabi woman hopes to challenge readers to explore new perspectives.
“By giving a voice to the characters who are typically marginalised, so by putting those characters in the forefront of the story … you can sort of remind readers that that person’s story matters as well,” she said.
“I think the more you individualise a person’s experience, the more nuance you bring to it.”
With humorous undertones and strong female protagonists, Jaswal aims to dismantle linear stereotypes around minority communities.
“The main message is that people can surprise you, that there is no narrative that is so simple, that people are complex,” she said.
Exploring topics and themes that could be deemed off limits by more conservative cultures, Jaswal said the more these topics were brought to light, the better society could become.
This week, she is taking part in the Brisbane Writers Festival, discussing these ideas with other authors and audience members.
Lived experience in a minority group
Growing up in Singapore as part of the Punjabi Sikh community, Jaswal felt she had to explain where she was from because she was part of a smaller group within a minority.
She said this gave her a unique perspective on how majority and marginalised populations coexisted.
“I come from a small minority, religious and racial community in Singapore, so I think I’ve always kind of looked at things from the outside,” she said.
“I’ve always been very, I think, attuned to what the majority are, the way the majority thinks, and the way the majority kind of looks and behaves, and the way that I might have to try to assimilate or fit in in order to be accepted.
“I’ve always had to explain where I was from and I think that makes you a natural storyteller.”
Jaswal has had a strong sense of justice from a young age, a quality that has etched its way into the pages of her books.
“I identified unfairness and then pushed back against unfairness a lot,” she said.
“Once I discovered that I loved to write, and I love to tell stories, the stories I wanted to write were ones where I [could give] a voice to people who didn’t necessarily have that in real life.”
Exploring women’s sexuality
Jaswal is not one to shy away from challenging the status quo, as evidenced by her famous book title, Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows.
“I always had a curiosity about women’s sexuality, and the women in my community just being so quiet about all of it or are being expected to be very kind of quiet,” she said.
“It wasn’t just sexual sex that was taboo, there were some of the other things that were quite alarmingly taboo, like, violence against women, or caste prejudice.”
She started writing the book with a question: what would happen if a group of women sat together in a room and started telling each other about the things they wanted?
Set in London, the novel follows a group of widows who do just that, Jaswal’s method of challenging the expectation that widows are not sexual.
“When you get the right kind of group of women together, they do talk quite openly, and they do support and empower each other,” she said.
“As I continued writing the novel, I realised that there were all these other things that probably happened in their community that they hadn’t really voiced. I put language to [it] and, yeah, that kind of propelled the plot forward.”
Jaswal has been pleased to see minimal backlash to her work — a testament to her ability to relate and resonate with all kinds of people through narrative.
More than one way to tell a story
Her most recent novel, Now You See Us, is about Filipino domestic workers in Singapore who band together to prove the innocence of their friend who has been accused of murder.
This was inspired directly from her lived experience and observations living in Singapore, where a Filipino woman was accused of murdering a child and another domestic worker.
“Having lived in Singapore, we only had state-run media at the time. I just assumed that what I heard in the news was correct,” she said.
But when she moved to the Philippines with her family when she was in high school, Jaswal heard a completely different story – a very fearful narrative.
“[There were] a lot of people who were scared of what this powerful, wealthy country had done to one of their own,” she said.
“It was the first time in my life that I discovered there was more than one truth, that there’s more than one way to tell a story.
“That stuck with me for a very long time.”