Review of ​The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan

​The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan is about a Malay family living both before and during the Japanese occupation. Two storylines parallel each other, the first in which the mother, Cecily, helps an undercover Japanese officer, Fujiwara, thwart Britain’s stronghold on the country. Cecily provides information to Fujiwara from her husband who works closely with the municipal government. They learn there is a plan to build a port, so Cecily and Fujiwara concoct a scheme to gather as much information as they can on when/where it will be built. Eventually, the constructed port goes up in flames and Fujiwara evades detection by leaving. Along with their schemes, Cecily and Fujiwara begin to have an intimate relationship. Fujiwara then returns with a woman, Lina, who once lived in Bintang, but left because her first husband had been accused and killed for starting the fire. Lina and Fujiwara return, where Fujiwara continues to gather information, while having an affair with Cecily. Both Lina and Cecily become pregnant, and both have girls. However, Fujiwara leaves right before Lina gives birth. Lina waits for Fujiwara to return before giving birth, which starves the child of oxygen, and the midwife has to pull the baby out, scarring her head forever. Lina then dies as Cecily helps her create names for their children.
 
Years later once the Japanese occupy Malay, they take Cecily’s son, Abel, and force him to work at a camp building a railroad for transport. At the camp, Abel is beaten, raped, and thrown into a chicken coop where he becomes an alcoholic. Abel is then forced to kill the person who took him from his home. He meets a slightly younger boy, Freddie, who likes to draw and who helps Abel in his drunken stupor. As the war begins to wane, Freddie leads the rest of the boys in creating an exit plan while Abel is barely able to stay alive. Once Japan surrenders, Britain bombs the camp they stay at, killing Freddie in the process. Finally, Abel returns with Freddie’s drawing to a home that has seen so much loss.
 
In the time of Abel’s disappearance, the two remaining children, Jasmin and Jujube, try to survive under the occupation. Jujube works at a teahouse serving Japanese soldiers where she meets Takahashi, a school teacher, who is not violent like the rest of the men. They begin to have a friendship, though it’s strained when Takahashi discusses his daughter back in Japan. Cecily, knowing that young girls are taken by soldiers to be workers at a brothel, disguises Jasmin as a boy, cuts her hair short, and hides her in the basement when soldiers come by. One day, another girl, Yuki, finds Jasmin in the basement where they begin to have a friendship. Jasmin then leaves the basement with Yuki where they go to the brothel where Yuki is held. After returning, Jujube finds out Jasmin has been leaving the basement where she becomes furious and that causes Jasmin to run away. Jasmin goes to a storeowner to get Yuki’s blood off her pajamas where she meets Fujiwara. Fujiwara takes her into a mansion where she stays most of the day and at night returns to the brothel to meet with Yuki. Jasmin convinces Yuki to join her at Fujiwara’s mansion where they get discovered by Cecily who was looking for her daughter. Fujiwara returns to the house as well where it is revealed that Yuki is his daughter he had with Lina and they fight about what is to happen to the girls. As the adults talk, Jasmin and Yuki run away to the brothel, but once it’s set on fire they hunker down in a wheelbarrow where they are burned alive. Fujiwara, Cecily, and Jujube run to the fire and search for the daughters, but soon realize they have been burned up. In the end, once Abel returns, they watch as Fujiwara surrenders. Finally, the family receives a letter from Takahashi with flowers drawn in calendar dates and they hang it next to the drawings and the tin with bones the family believes are Yuki and Jasmin.
 
This novel is deeply tragic, devastating, and powerful in the way it renders the occupation, the violence, and the relationships of the characters. It confronts questions of colonialism, and shows that any occupation completely devastates a people. The novel also weaves the past and the present seamlessly through Cecily and her children’s eyes. I am completely floored at the depth and breadth of which these characters are explored and how they confront oppression in all of its forms. While reading, I was reminded of the novel Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim which also confronts Japanese occupation and violence, though in Korea. I am utterly astounded at both how Chan wrangles the subject matter and how she explores how the characters navigate devastation.
 
Final Rating: 5/5