TH: We are pleased to present an exclusive essay by Frances An on her forthcoming novel, Ladder Brake. Frances also offered us an excerpt from the book.

On Writing Ladder Brake

by Frances An

After her high-achieving older sister disappears, 17-year-old Zeta Phận rents an apartment in inner-western Sydney. She finds work at a second-hand clothing store, Diamond Disguise, run by an eccentric Vietnamese-Cantonese woman referred to as Cu-cu. Along the way, Zeta becomes a sidekick to Cu-cu’s niece and aspiring music YouTuber Kim Cương, also 17. During a laundromat visit, Zeta bonds with Selene Trăng Nguyên, a Vietnamese international student who has recently graduated with a university medal from an arts degree course. The unglamorous reality of social survival obliterates the three girls’ ideals as they cruise through challenges such as one-sided relationships, broken friendships and ghosts of past domestic trauma.

The novel’s title Ladder Brake comes from a common plant of the same name, which is known for its capacity to absorb toxic substances, making it useful for cleaning water before human consumption. The ladder brake is a metaphor for the characters’ relationships, which cushion them from the full impact of personal tragedies.

Ladder Brake’s prolific use of Vietnamese/Viet-English dialogue and specific linguistic and cultural tropes invites readers into the seemingly contained world of Vietnamese migrants. Numerous references are made to songs and archetypes from Nhạc Vàng, a pre-1975 genre of South Vietnamese music known for its sentimentality, celebration of love and European influences (most prominent in its appropriation of bolero music). Nhạc Vàng was banned by the Communist government, which claimed it was unpatriotic, indulgent and pornographic, leading to the exile and persecution of its practitioners.

There are also linguistic features that Vietnamese speakers may detect. For example, Cu-cu often refers to Kim as Kim Cương (“diamond” in Vietnamese) and the thrift store’s name is Diamond Disguise. While most characters understand or speak some level of Vietnamese, they exhibit non-standard quirks that reflect the way languages differ between households and individual fluency. For example, the characters do not share the same standard Vietnamese pronouns: con (child), cô (auntie), chú (uncle), cha/ba/bố (father), mẹ (mother) and others. Being Vietnamese-Chinese, Zeta and Kim use the term Cu-cu instead of cô when speaking with Kim’s auntie, it being a Vietnamese transliteration of a Cantonese term for auntie. These transliterations of non-Vietnamese words might be viewed as phonetic assimilation, paralleling the way characters like Zeta and Selene are better assimilated with Cu-cu’s generation than their own.

One challenge that took several redrafts to calibrate was Zeta’s characterisation, the book’s primary voice. She needed to be indifferent enough to the emotional tides rocking Kim and Selene, yet not so numb for her psychological development to stagnate. I fixed this issue by emphasising her observations of strangers and changes in the urban environment, as well as her fluency in Vietnamese, which represents a quick absorption of the cultural environment.

While Vietnamese diasporic identity is gaining momentum in the English-speaking world, there seems to be an expectation to position ethnic minority identities against white majorities within Anglophone identity politics. Indeed, Ladder Brake does consider the differing attitudes towards “whiteness” from within the Vietnamese community. Selene has feelings for her French-speaking professor Raymond Solsen who, to her, represents an unreachable cultural elite. Kim envies and resents the fact that Eurasians have a disproportionate foothold in the Asian music industry. Cu-cu is contemptuous of Westerners, whom she associates with entitlement, sexual irresponsibility and lack of respect for elders. However, I wanted to foreground the evolving and conflicting social values within the diaspora by displaying Vietnamese cultural and linguistic nuances in high definition.

The vignette provided is from chapter 2: Kim returns home to her apartment after a karaoke night, which she lied about, saying it was a study meeting. She and her mother are illegally renting with Cu-cu. While Kim tries to revel in memories of stardom during karaoke, Cu-cu asks her to send an acceptance email to Zeta’s job application to work at Diamond Disguise.

An Excerpt from

 Ladder Brake

“Kim Cương! Con có cần đi toilet không?!’” My auntie, Cu-cu, barks. The lemon stench of toilet cleaning agent saturates the air. I kick my flats off. The entry mat is a flattened rice bag featuring a Thai girl decked out in gold jewellery as she balances on one leg. Her grin is too wide, like pins are holding the corners of her mouth in place, “sao con về trễ vậy?”

“We had dinner after our study session and I wasn’t checking the time,” I rub my second fingertip against the inside of my jeans pocket, trying to remove dark lipstick stains. I had actually been at karaoke with high school friends, and went for a punk look like the anime character Nana Osaki. Cu-cu never even allows me to wear natural-looking makeup, so I had to do the lipstick at the Town Hall Station bathroom. Teresa Teng’s song Tian Mi Mi fills our entire apartment. I bet the whole neighbourhood can hear it. I glimpse Cu-cu’s pink rubber glove and bony arms jutting out of the bathroom’s infernal glow.

“I tol’ your mum so many time,” Cu-cu wrings soapy water out of a t-shirt, “phải giữ cái toilet sạch sẽ. I go to Vietnam or China. Many people mặc áo sang và taptaptap iPhone hay là Galaxy S100! Nhưng khi đi toilet—filthy! That’s why,” She squats, leaving soapy trails around her as she wipes the tiles, “clean toilet is the most important—! Sao con cười vậy?”

“Nothing.” I try to stop myself smiling. I’m replaying the karaoke session in my head: my friends cheered at the high notes and fast sections I’d nailed during a solo, saying they would subscribe as soon as I start my YouTube singing channel. I could quit my commerce degree and become a music sensation, get scouted by Avex or Lantis, then top the Oricon charts.

“I’m gonna eat a bit,” As I spin around to face the kitchen, I notice a dip in the plastic sheets separating my and Mum’s bed from the rest of the living room. A couple of the curtain rings are missing. I could use some string to tie it back onto the pole Cu-cu had inserted when Mum and I moved into Marrickville with her. One day, I’ll stand behind a velvet curtain that opens out to a stage and microphone stand, not a bedsheet with period stains in the middle. Dad will be sorry he kicked us out of the home in Cabramatta. I’ll fix the curtain another time.

The fridge shelves are cloudy with fungus. I switch on my phone torch to avoid touching anything slimy. The light focuses on a broccoli head and 2L milk bottle. The milk’s best before date is marked as one and a half weeks ago.

“Hah?! Ăn nữa? I thought you went for dinner!” Cleaning agent combines with the fridge’s stale mushroom stench.

“I didn’t eat much because I was busy sing—I mean, talking.” I take the milk, then push the fridge door shut with one toe. As soon as I open the pantry, my hand lurches forward to stop a packet of Uncle Toby’s quick oats falling onto my face. McVee’s digestive biscuits and Cheerios pile on top of each other like colourful bricks. Cu-cu and Mum always fill their trollies during Woolworths’ half-price phases.

“Haven’t you heard of supper?” I ask. For some reason, “supper” seems like a white person thing. Asians just pass out for the night after huge restaurant dinners.

“Hah?!” Cu-cu’s slippers squelch against the bathroom tiles.

“Supper!” I take out two Cheerio boxes, then retain the one marked NO SUGAR. The Cheerios clatter in a plastic noodle bowl. It’s still greasy and reeks of onion powder from the instant kimchi-flavoured noodles originally packaged in it.

“You say you want to be singer on YouTube và đòi ăn supper?!” Cu-cu stands at the doorway. She wears a hot pink Barbie shirt smattered with white threads from a thrifted transformations attempt. Cu-cu might think my singing dreams are fanciful but at least I stick to one hobby. Every time she speaks to an auntie at the grocery store, Cu-cu has some manic idea of starting her own business and selling things on Amazon. Last month it was homemade soap. According to her, the soap “actually worked” but couldn’t lather up convincingly. It also stank like bleach. The cupboard behind my bed has a rolling pin slotted through its handles to hold back a tidal wave of Cu-cu’s trinkets: fabric scraps, sewing machine parts, crochet needles and tacky floral cutlery plastered with fluoro SALE stickers.

“Supper make you sup’er fat!” Soapy water dribbles down Cu-cu’s gloves and onto the floor. I wait for three Cheerios to enter the spoon before putting it into my mouth. “Supper, sup’er—you understand?”

“Whatever,” I leave her to revel in the bad English ‘super/supper’ pun.

Cu-cu’s call echoes from inside the bathroom, “can you come to the shop on Wednesday? Just one hour.”

“I already quit. I’m starting uni, remember?” The milk is sour but maybe I won’t notice if I focus on the Cheerios’ graininess.

“I know. But you need to train the new girl.”

“Technically, I don’t need to train her,” I retort, “you need me to train her.”

“Cái gì?” Cu-cu comes out, shaking her hands like a magician conducting a disappearing act, “Cu-cu không hiểu tiếng Anh.”

“Forget it.” The Cheerios are chewy and stale too. Cu-cu’s English comprehension conveniently disappears when I make a good point. She knows I don’t have the Vietnamese to explain that my training of the new girl is a favour rather than an obligation. I’m pretty sure the clothes at Diamond Disguise are either donated, stolen or cheaply bought on Cu-cu’s trips to China. “So, who’s the new girl? How’d you find her?”

“Nhớ không? I put cái bản ở ngoài tiệm kiếm người làm,” Cu-cu’s fingers outline an A4-page in the air, “you printed for me: job vacancy something-something.”

“You mean someone actually responded to that ad?” I never imagined anyone replying to those Vietnamese job ads, apart from FOB-Viets willing to run the risk that it’s a veiled call for prostitutes.

“Có chứ: a girl emailed her resume,” Cu-cu’s face becomes a wrinkled beetroot. She waddles back into the kitchen, squinting at her phone screen, “hơi mũm mĩm. But she’s very cute.”

“You think everyone’s chubby.” Cute, huh? I scroll past the name “Zeta Phan” on Cu-cu’s phone. The contact details are awkwardly split down the screen because the document isn’t compatible with Cu-cu’s iPhone. My breath halts at the loading JPG file: if she’s cute enough for Cu-cu to praise, maybe other customers will say ‘this new girl is so much cuter than the other girl [(i.e., me)] who used to work here!’ I blink just as the photo finishes loading. Zeta is a puffy-eyed Asian girl with two thick braids. It’s a too close-up selfie taken with two hands. The shirt fabric bunches around both shoulders. One braid starts halfway up her left ear, the other below her right earlobe. She’s not that pretty—thank goodness.

How to cite: An, Frances. “On Writing Ladder Brake.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 16 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/16/ladder-brake.

Frances An is a Vietnamese-Australian fiction and non-fiction writer based in Perth. She is interested in the literatures of Communism, moral self-perception, white-collar misconduct and Nhạc Vàng (Yellow/Gold Music). She has performed/published in the Sydney Review Of Books, Seizure Online, Cincinnati Review, Sydney Writers Festival, Star 82, among other venues. She received a Create NSW Early Career Writers Grant 2018, partial scholarship to attend the Disquiet Literary Program 2019, and 2020 Inner City Residency (Perth, Australia). She is completing a PhD in Psychology at the University Of Western Australia on motivations behind “curbstoning” (data falsification in market research). [All contributions by Frances An.]

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