BLPG group member profile - Jenni Ibrahim

As a child I was an avid reader and sometimes thought of becoming a writer. But I thought I would have nothing interesting to say because my life seemed uninteresting. My life was boring because it seemed to be happening in a similar way to many other people. So many other people – my sister, my brother, my parents, my school friends, our neighbours. Who would want to read about that? To become a writer I would need “real life experiences” and this assumption subconsciously drove me for much of my life. At 13 it never occurred to me that the others around me might experience things differently. In my mind I had no unique voice or story that could be of any consequence to anyone else.
As I grew older I became busier with the things that fill your life –study, social life, family life. Writing too, but rarely fiction. In fact I had sometimes struggled with the short creative essays required in lower secondary school. Then I veered into studying science and my creative self went on a very long holiday. My days were filled with lectures, assignments, lab work, swotting, and then the long task of writing a PhD thesis in psychology. The only fiction I wrote appeared in holiday job applications.

Then at last study was over. Work, marriage, motherhood and more work filled my days to overflowing. I now look back on a life far from ordinary. At 21 I was not going to marry someone from a grey Australian suburb, but instead settled on an ambitious, bright Malay man from a small green and brown village in Perak, Malaysia. The prospect excited me no end. A young man who laughed outwardly -and seethed inwardly - at the Australians he met who thought Asians lived in trees.

After five years together in Australia we moved to his country. I am emigrating, I reflected, as I boarded the plane one wintry Melbourne day. Forever was the deal. It didn’t bother me. In the 1960s and early 1970s politics in Australia stunk. Too many narrow-minded conservatives voting for narrow-minded conservative candidates. In spite of the big change of government in 1972 that had seemed impossible the previous year.

The irony of my views of Australia didn’t occur to me then. Not until well after I began a journey as a strongly opinionated woman settling into married life with a strongly opinionated local, his extended Muslim family and the wider Malaysian society - which was anything but simple or dull. Now I was the outsider and he was the insider. Language learning was a priority – oh, and how to peel tiny 2cm red onions, lots of them. I was not adjusting to the life of an expat, but learning how to assimilate into Malaysian life as a permanent resident.

After nearly two decades together, our marriage dissolved and I faced a task I had never expected. Assimilating into Australian life after a 10 year hiatus. I worked, I single-parented. Now that phase is over, I am ready to write but I’m very frightened. For I have had an interesting life. More than enough to inspire me to write. All I have to do is do it. And through the Book Length Project Group I find I'm not alone.