“Mental illness, the thing that actors pretend to have to win Oscars.” Comedian John Oliver’s opening line addresses how we cynically view the condition - overcoming it heroically with a happy ending. In reality however, trying to conquer or “get over it” is not how it works; this is their permanent world they have to navigate through. There is no better example of this than the story behind the classic semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, by American poet and writer Sylvia Plath. Suffering from clinical depression and having survived suicide attempts, writing this book for her as she says its “an autobiographical apprentice work which I had to write in order to free myself from the past.” However, she would lose her struggle with her clinical depression by suicide a month after her book release. It would take 10 years later in a American re-release where initial reviews went from lukewarm to fully embracing the book. In The New Yorker review of the book, Howard Moss writes:

“Unable to experience or mime emotions, she feels defective as a person. The gap between her and the world widens: “I couldn’t get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty.” . . . “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.” . . . “That morning I had tried to hang myself.”

Modern psychology has evolved tremendously since Plath’s time, as there are many professionals who can now help one find their words for those to break their personal silence. This can help create more diverse stories with proper representation in the media. For #KollabSFGetsLit series, I got the opportunity to interview psychoanalytic, psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, and debut author, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung, who writes about a fictional character with a mental illness using her professional perspective in her novel, The Eighth Girl.

The mystery novel is about a young woman named Alexa Wú, who is living with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). When her best friend, Ella, accepts a job at a high-end strip club, Alexa gets sucked in this world of misogyny and exploitation of sex workers. We follow Alexa as she alters through her different personalities, navigating herself away from danger. Instead of using her condition as a plot device, Chung takes her time to make sure DID is portrayed properly. She explains in an email exchange to me, “In patriarchal terms, language and representation is restricted to writing about women and not for them. I wanted to lean into this abyss and so set out to create a protagonist who was not only living with DID but who was also a heroine.” DID always used to be the plot twist to double cross the viewers, when in real life, DID is a coping mechanism to deal with trauma. “It seems there is a fetishization of DID in modern culture. A box office peep shows into the unquiet mind. How many times have we seen people with DID portrayed as dangerous psychopaths and serial killers? Alexa Wú, I decided, would not be stereotyped, dehumanized or resemble previous lunatic tropes.”

Though Chung and I are separated by a 8 hour time difference, I got the privilege to get to know her via email the past few weeks. Not only did I get to interview her as an author, she shares her experience (in great detail, to which I’m very thankful for) of as a health expert and in the media.

Long Vo: As Kollaboration is about creating opportunities for exploring diverse stories, I see that you have experience in consulting with your profession as a Psychotherapist, making sure details are accurate. Can you tell us with your experience the importance of accurate stories and how it affects the public?

Maxine Mei-Fung Chung: I think accuracy is important to dovetail with any artist wishing to attempt an idea, message or response to the public. Accurate and respectful representation along with research and informed understanding of the political and socio-economic landscape, I think, is key. Ask any writer, for example, venturing into the unquiet mind of a protagonist suffering with mental illness and you’ll be met (hopefully) with questions and concerns about stigmatization, tired exploitative tropes and the likely mention of ‘sensitivity’ readers.

If it’s our intention to write about someone who is ‘other’ to ourselves I think it’s necessary to be in conversation but not to expect that person, or community, to educate us. This conversation and understanding can inform accurate portrayals of characters in storytelling and not the ripe, bloated stereotypes that are damaging when the culture gets it wrong— this ill wind only colludes with the already oppressed culture concerning diverse stories.

LV: You also have worked in the media field (Condě Nast, The Sunday Times and The Times), what have you personally seen that has changed in diverse stories, and what still needs to improve? What are organizations like us ignoring when it comes to creating diverse stories?

MC: Certainly I’ve seen a huge shift in the online discourse surrounding mental illness which I’m really happy about. However, Mental health still gets a tough rap—the culture stripping those living with mental illness of agency, undermining their decisions and withholding credit for having survived horrible events. People living with mental illness have the capacity (in my experience) to save their own lives, contribute to our culture and our communities. They don’t need our pity, disdain or judgement. They need to be understood, listened to and offered platforms and resources to make sense of their lives afresh, and ultimately they need an even playing field, to claim the ball, and, to shoot and score. I believe we have a way to go in terms of rising POC voices so they can exist in an even playing field. I’d like to see issues regarding racial equity addressed in the publishing and entertainment industry. Asian female protagonists are still wildly underrepresented, and when given air-time are often stereotyped.

LV: Looking at the "Asian American" voice from the UK, what blindspots do we have that you wish was talked about more? (I know for example that the Crazy Rich Asians film adaptation was loved in the US. Yet because the movie only hired mostly Asian American actors, Asian Diasporic communities had mixed feelings about it.)

MC: The mixed feelings are understandable, and I’d say that whilst we have to start somewhere—you can imagine that over here in the UK, the playing field is even smaller—we must keep in mind, momentum. In recognising the importance of Parasite’s win at the Oscars, which was thrilling, and the success of Crazy Rich Asians we must spread the net wider and not get too comfortable.  We also need to organize ourselves and recognise the importance of both diverse storytelling and the storytelling by diverse authors. I’d say some of the blind-spots are around trans-generational-trauma and class.

LV: In your line of work, you have to listen to stories of people and diagnose them. Yet writing fiction, you have to create conflict for your characters to move your stories. I hear a lot of great writers are afraid to put their characters in dire situations, as I read one quote, “Many fiction writers say that their characters seem to have minds of their own.” Did your profession make it easier or harder to make choices to move the narrative thread?

MC: I guess there was conflict writing a story that moved through spaces and would hold readers attention, but what felt important for me was the representation of mental illness in modern times.

In terms of creating conflict in characters, yes, this did at times feel challenging because psychotherapy focuses on emotional settling, healing and insight. Sometimes these two forces offer very different perspectives but what felt imperative was the intention and empathy for Alexa Wú’s struggle.

I can absolutely relate to characters having a mind of their own, and I like this. I’m not a natural plotter, and my writing is mostly character lead—so Alexa Wú guiding me to some degree felt incredibly natural. I enjoyed observing the evolving narrative with the occasional nudge from me in terms of her actions, but I guess it wasn’t the focus of the book. On the one hand it made the choices easier to move the narrative thread because I have some professional knowledge of mental illness. However, the challenge was to translate this into fiction while keeping in mind the integrity of the characters.

LV: What were the themes, perspectives, (and possibly deconstructing tropes) were you able to explore through fiction that you couldn’t do in, say, writing an essay or scholarly article?

MC: Yes, so I guess ‘tropes’ is not a word that is frequently used in say, an essay, or in scholarly articles. I was keen to take some of my learning as a psychotherapist and blast it into new and  exciting forms using fiction as a platform. I think the power of fiction for exploring mental illness holds a lot of positivity.

I was conscious and sensitive to stigmatization and tired exploitative tropes concerning DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder. As a psychotherapist and writer I’m perhaps more than a little vigilant of the culture—the portrayal of mental illness and personality disorders in literature, TV shows and movies—and the conflicting forces of entertainment versus a better understanding of the human condition and whether the twain shall meet?

I was also aware that there are currently no heroes or heroines when it comes to DID who are usually portrayed as serial killers or the usual lunatic tropes. I wanted to lean into an Asian female lead too, which I thought would give the novel a slightly more diverse perspective. So little is discussed regarding mental health in Asian culture, and I hoped this would break down some of the silence.

LV: America is going through the #MeToo movement, to which the discussion of women speaking up is not as clear as just "Calling the cops." How much did you have to worry about depiction with accuracy vs telling a story?

MC: I agree, “Calling the cops” is certainly not straight forward—a century of patriarchal conditioning is hard to unlearn. With The Eighth Girl, I didn’t worry about depiction with accuracy versus telling a story, rather the hot coals in my mouth desired a platform to burn down pathology and tell the story from an informed position with an empathic lens.

LV: I know in your line of work, having Empathy must be practiced. Can you tell readers your personal take on empathy and how important it is? Were you able to grow a different sense of empathy writing fiction?

MC: I certainly have a lot more empathy for writers now having written my first novel, that's for sure! But jokes aside, yes, empathy is incredibly important for me as a way of personal meditation in everyday life. To understand and share the feelings of another is, for me, a space where intimacy grows and compassion begins. I also believe it is, in amongst rich and sometimes troubling differences, to be the very thing that unites humanity. When we truly listen, or find echoes of ourselves in another, we begin an intimate journey of understanding together. We’re able to reflect and emotionally engage with a message of you’re not alone. The greatest depravity, perhaps, is our casual blindness, our sleepwalking, to the despair of others.

I guess I’ve always been curious as to why, when writing fiction, we create the characters that we do. For me, writing fiction unearths not necessarily a different sense of empathy, but rather a more enhanced expression of it because I like to understand a character fully, create textures in my mind, spend time with him or her and engage emotionally. Then I attempt to reflect on and choose (as wisely as I can) the many words needed to express the whole process. For a while now, I’ve spent time thinking about a quote by Hannah Arendt: “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.”

LV: With your movie deal, are you excited about creating a job for another Asian Actor with Alexa Wú?

MC: For sure. When The Eighth Girl was optioned I was thrilled for two reasons: the first being that mental illness would finally have a heroine on the big screen. And secondly, she would be Asian. We also have the amazing Jo Mei reading the part of Alexa Wú in the audiobook of The Eighth Girl.

LV: In the words of another poet Hanif Abdurraqib, “So many of us begin tortured and end tortured, with only brief bursts of light in between, and I’d rather have average art and survival than miracles that come at the cost of someone’s life.” Does that resonate with you?

MC: Maybe ‘good art, marvellous art’ comes about from survival…