‘Asian Worker Stories’ — Too Powerful to Be Ignored
Asian Worker Stories is available now at Hard Ball Press.
By Joe Maniscalco
Things are especially bad for U.S. workers right now, and they only appear to be getting worse. But how much do any of us who have never had to do it, really know about what it’s like being a migrant worker forced to leave behind everything and everyone that matters to us just to survive?
How many of us know what it’s like to live life as a 21st century slave—with all the tranquilizing pretenses to the contrary stripped away?
The protagonists at the heart of the “Asian Worker Stories" anthology from Hard Ball Press know what that’s like. They toil in far off lands, are beaten, abused, and terrorized, never knowing when or if they’ll ever again be reunited with those they love most.
But you gotta make a buck somehow, don’t you?
“During my research into working-class literature in Asia, I have had the privilege of reading a plethora of narratives authored by workers themselves,” editor Luka Lei Zhang writes in the introduction to Asian Worker Stories. “These stories, spanning a range of time periods, offer profound insight into the lived experiences of the working class.”
Indeed, Luka Lei Zhang has assembled a collection of singular worker voices who—whether fictionalized or not—know the lived experiences of their protagonists intimately well.
What Draws Us Closer to Home captures a mother’s special anguish as she’s forced to kiss her four-year-old daughter’s forehead goodbye and board a plane bound for far off Singapore.
In Rain, a young man laboring abroad while his pregnant bride back home in Tamil Nadu, India is rushed into emergency surgery is worked so hard he doesn’t realize where the couple’s true danger actually lies.
A Tinge of Ferris Wheel introduces readers to an Indonesian teenager from a remote village in East Java who’s compelled to accept a job offer working as a domestic overseas where she encounters another women not unlike herself imprisoned for 15 years—and desperate for freedom.
Then there’s author Stefani J. Alvarez’s protagonist in The Autobiography of the Other Lady Gaga… a Filipino trans woman who slips into life as a sex worker after losing her secretarial job at a government agency in Saudi Arabia.
All of the sketches, stories, and vignettes contained in Asian Worker Stories are haunting in their authenticity and undeniable in their sincerity—calling to mind the intimate portrait of three working class Malayali women from Mumbai, India movingly portrayed in last year’s Cannes Grand Prize winner All We Imagine as Light from writer/director Payal Kapadia.
“Victoria,” the woman at the heart of Janelyn Dupingay’s What Draws Us Closer to Home agonizes, about her employer discovering her secret cell phone—the one connection the heartbroken mother has to her daughter quickly growing up back home without her.
“She started sneaking her phone into the toilet, but always felt guilty about it,” Dupingay writes. “She tried to suppress the growing unhappiness within her, until early one morning before starting work, she discovered she was being bombarded with text messages from her daughter.”
A cell phone is also central to “Rames,” the expectant father in Rain.
“Today is the day of Rain’s birth, and most of our family are here at the hospital,” his young bride Priya tells him. “Please pray for both of us, and keep your phone on.”
“Ningsih,” the main character in A Tinge of Ferris Wheel, desperately wants to help her imprisoned neighbor contact the Indonesian Embassy for help—but feels too paralyzed to act.
“One week in her employer’s house in Riyadh, everything seemed to be going smoothly,” author Indah Yosevina writes, “until one fateful morning when a letter detailing a story of torture was thrown from a neighboring home and landed right in front of Ningsih while she swept the front yard. She was shocked. Ningsih picked up the projectile and read the letter. Before she could finish reading, however, her madam came from behind her and rudely grabbed the letter.”
There’s certainly no one listening to the protagonist at the heart of The Autobiography of the Other Lady Gaga… After being sexually assaulted in the parking garage of the Al-Rashid Mall by a trio of local teenagers, the religious police officers there force her to sign a “confession,” shouting “‘Gays here in Saudi Arabia are for raping and for killing.’”
“I have been immensely moved by the literary contributions of worker writers who, through their remarkable talent and unwavering commitment have enriched the working-class literary landscape, leaving an indelible mark on the collective narrative of the region,” Luka Lei Zhang adds in the introduction.
Asian Worker Stories amplifies these important voices in its pages, and many more still. They are urgent, immediate, and too powerful to be ignored by anyone who works for a living.
Order copies of Asian Worker Stories directly from Hard Ball Press.