Meet Cheryl Chong

Cheryl Chong & Ridge Anderson

Cheryl Chong is a Singapore-based writer whose work explores place, memory and the textures of everyday life. She spent nearly two decades working in public policy and planning before turning to writing. Her work has been published in the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Kitaab and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.

Every Chautauqua issue has a theme. The theme for our upcoming edition is Intervals. Would you mind speaking on how the idea of Intervals contributed to your choice to submit your writing?

Cheryl: “6:30 am in Arashiyama” grew out of the current stage of my life. I think it’s most simply described as between leaving a full-time corporate job and moving into whatever might come next. I was interested in the experience of inhabiting that in-between space, when the structure and identity that one has assumed for many years is no longer there, but a new direction has yet to emerge. I wanted to explore what it meant to sit with that uncertainty and what might become visible when there is sufficient time and space to reflect. The theme Intervals resonated with the essay’s concern with this transitory phase of life.

As a creative nonfiction essayist, what techniques do you use to decide the angle in which you display a narrative?

Cheryl: I usually begin with a particular experience, person or idea that keeps sticking around in my head, and refuses to leave. From there, I try to work out what makes the experience or idea worth writing about, sometimes through a metaphor (or several. Sometimes metaphors get too muddled). 

I also think about what to leave out. An experience can contain many possible stories, but not all of them belong in the same essay. I try to find an angle that allows the details to accumulate meaning without explaining everything to the reader. It is often through the process of writing itself that I uncover what I want to say, and conversely, what need not be said.

Do you have any projects that are taking priority with your time right now or that you are particularly excited about? 

Cheryl: I’ve been working on personal/lyric essays that revolve around a few themes - corporate performance and performativity, layered selves, the body as a site where this plays out. Perhaps I’ll expand them into a full collection eventually. 

I am interested in the possibilities presented by both personal and place-based writing: looking at something familiar or ordinary from a different angle and uncovering histories that have faded from view.]

Is there anything specific you take into account when submitting your writing internationally?

Cheryl: I think about whether a piece can speak to readers beyond the context in which it was written, without losing the specificity that makes it meaningful. Writing about places or experiences situated in Asia or Singapore, for instance, sometimes means providing enough context for readers unfamiliar with the place, while resisting the temptation to explain every cultural reference or turn the piece into an introduction on that particular country/city.

When trying to “place” my pieces, I also look for literary journals whose sensibilities seem compatible with the work. I hope that writing grounded in a particular place or experience can find points of connection with readers elsewhere.