Female writers and multiple challenges

WHAT is so special about Hjh Norsiah Hj Abd Gapar's achievement as Brunei Darussalam's first female recipient of the Southeast Asian Writers Award after 23 years for her anthology of short stories, Tsunami in Her Heart? A total of 23 male writers had won the award before her.

We agree with her when she said, "To me it's a milestone...(and) some people might say it's a historic event."

We may also agree with Acting Director of the Language and Literature Bureau (DBP) Hjh Aminah Hj Momin who expressed her happiness about a woman writer finally receiving the award which shows that women are on the same level as men, and that there is equality between the genders.

Certainly it is special because of her gender.

We do not have the statistics but we suspect that there maybe more male writers than female in the Southeast Asian region simply because there are still backward communities who give their sons priority over their sisters when it comes to learning to read and write.

This, however, would not be the case with Brunei Darussalam where literacy rate is excellent and where gender gap in education is almost non-existent. The delight expressed over her being a woman writer is good but surely it should go way beyond that.

Besides, if we believed in the integrity of the prestigious award, then we would also believe that she would still have won the award had she been a male. Hasn't Hjh Aminah Hj Momin said the award did not discriminate between the sexes as it was bestowed based on the quality of the literary work?

This is not an invitation to engage in a debate about the effect of a writer's gender on the quality of their work; we suspect there is none because the history of mankind has an abundance of proof of women writers who excel in their trade as much as their male counterparts. Rather, this is an invitation to acknowledge how Hjh Norsiah has prevailed over many challenges other than her being a woman.

Firstly, there are people who still think that because Brunei Darussalam is such a small country, there could not have been that many topics to write about and grab the attention of any award's panels of judges.

Such line of thinking is held by those who believe that books have to be on big issues before they are worthy of being read or even written in the first place. Through her work, Hjh Norsiah has shown that the quality of her work hinges not on the magnitude of the topic.

Tsunami Di Hatinya is, simply put, a love story of a young woman facing the tradition of matchmaking by her parents. But through this story, Hjh Norsiah also tackled the question of cultural changes throughout the ages. She also handled other issues such as education, economics, poverty, and aspirations of a new nation.

Her selection in this year's award shows that, big or small, issues of life are important topics that must be handled well before they are worthy of the ink and paper they are printed on.

Secondly, we must admit that while Brunei Darussalam may have progressed in leaps and bounds when it comes to information technology development, its tradition of writing remains a laggard.

So many Bruneians now read the Internet through their PCs and smart phones, but how many of them write, especially write books?

Hjh Norsiah deserves a distinction because she has written for four decades when the Internet was not yet invented, when the ancient tradition of story telling in the region still had a hold in communities, and when writing for either men or women was a rare occupation here.

Hjh Aminah might have expressed her hope that Hjh Norsiah's achievement would inspire other local female writers, but we would love it even more if it inspired more local writers both male and female. Brunei Darussalam needs all the writers it can get to help its writing and reading tradition flourish.