BY COMBINING two hot button issues and creating a believable heroine whom we can all relate to, Hanna Alkaf’s debut fiction novel The Weight of Our Sky is one of the must-read books of the year.
Hanna (right) studied journalism in Northwestern University in the US, and worked as copywriter in Chicago for three years before returning to Malaysia in 2010.
Since then, she has written for several publications, before opting to do freelance work. Her short stories have also been published in several anthologies over the past few years.
Her short story, The Tryout, won the inaugural D.K. Dutt Award for Literary Excellence in 2015, and was featured in the anthology, Champion Fellas, consisting of works by fellow D.K. Dutt award participants and journalists.
For The Weight of Our Sky, Hanna began writing it in 2016, and soon found a literary agent who got her a book deal with Salaam Reads, a subsidiary of the illustrious publishing house Simon & Shuster’s Children’s Publishing, thus introducing her work to more readers.
The book is set during the infamous May 13, 1969 riots, as seen through the eyes of a 16-year-old school girl named Melati, who is watching a film in the cinema with her best friend when the troubles start.
She escapes danger due to the quick thinking of a stranger called Auntie Bee, and ends up with a group of people who are simply trying to survive the ordeal.
What makes the story interesting is that Melati displays symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and her guilt and fear cause her to hallucinate a djinn which torments her throughout the story.
At the same time, she is desperately trying to return to her mother.
The Weight of Our Sky will be released on Feb 5, months before the 50th anniversary of the riots.
In an exclusive interview with theSun, Hanna explained: “[The story] lived in my head for a long time because it could not decide what it wanted to be. It could not decide if it wanted to be a short story, a novella, or a novel.
“It was only when I sat down and thought through its structure that it became a novel.”
The topic of mental illness was very much in Hanna’s mind when she wrote the book.
She had written about the topic before in a 2016 non-fiction book called Gila: A Journey Through Moods & Madness.
“When you see mental illness depicted in popular culture and how it is [perceived], it affects how you are able to talk about it,” said Hanna.
“I have never seen any work of fiction targeted at young people that discusses how faith and mental illness interact.”
How Melati deals with the so-called Djinn in her head, tries to find her mother, and makes sense of the violence and death around her, forms much of the story.
“[The topics] sort of intersected with the fact that I wanted to write about the May 13 riots, especially for young people,” said Hanna.
As she points out, May 13 is a subject that is covered very briefly in our school syllabus.
Hanna is worried that many young people have no idea about what took place, and how the many policies that rolled out after that incident still impact us today.
“You are not privy to [the identity of] the people pulling the strings, and what they talk about. What you know is what you [and the people around you] have to live through.”
Hanna recollects that at 16 (the same age Melati is in the book), she was not as politically-aware as some children are now.
“When you are 16, you are focused on you, and what is going on around you.”
Melati, like other teens of that era, would not be thinking of politicians and their rhetoric, but instead would be worrying about school, what movie she is going to watch, and what mum is cooking for dinner.
Hanna also chose to concentrate on the human aspects of the situation, and found it terrifying.
She talked to family members who lived through May 13, and said some were still reluctant to talk. She also tried to avoid cliches.
Hanna noted that some books written for young adults can come off as very condescending.
“I think we underestimate young readers.
“They don’t want to be preached to.
“You want to read a story that resonates with you.
“You don’t want the author standing there holding up a sign that says: ‘Here is the moral of the story’!”
She said young readers can draw their own conclusions.
