A Cross Generational Conversation Between Two Writers

Woman to woman, writer to writer: a conversation between rising star Amanda Lee Koe and celebrated author Suchen Christine Lim

- Andrea Sim

Travelling back to the past is the stuff of movies and myths, unless the mind permits an eclipse of time. In 2014, Amanda Lee Koe stumbled upon a photograph at the Strand Book Store in New York City. It depicts a costume ball in 1928 Berlin, where an unlikely trio of women — actress Marlene Dietrich, film director Leni Riefenstahl and actress Anna May Wong — were captured by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, beaming into his camera. In Koe’s hands, the picture is a doorway in time. The 31-year-old Singapore-born writer set foot into a year-long exploration of these three women, in their own right mavericks of 20th century film, but whose journeys weren’t always smooth sailing, and tales not necessarily golden.

Earlier this year and after four years in the making, Koe has emerged with her own snapshot on the lives and times of Dietrich, Riefenstahl and Wong — in the form of her debut novel Delayed Rays of a Star. On occasion, we enlisted renowned Singapore novelist, the 71-year-old Suchen Christine Lim, for a cross-generational discussion with Koe. From woman to woman, writer to writer, and one perspective to another, the duo’s conversation that took place over the phone spans Koe’s new book, its characters, and in tandem, society’s issues at-large such as racial typecasting, gender equality and political correctness.

SERENDIPITY

A Photograph

Suchen Christine Lim (SCL): Hello Amanda, I enjoyed your book! It’s very cosmopolitan. The photograph is a very lucky find. If I had found it, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

Amanda Lee Koe (ALK): Thank you! I’m very much a lover of happenstance, so I think it’s really nice that it kind of first began with a photograph.