Jess's external pressures just take an unusually persistent and intrusive form! You don't fully know yourself yet and you're vulnerable to being hijacked by external pressures.

Being in your early 20s, just out of college, can be a hard place to be. She doesn't have a lot of power, as the story opens. Seems like everyone has expectations and assumptions about Jess - especially Ah Ma, who just feels casually entitled to the real estate in her head. The internal explanation, according to the narrative logic of the book, is that Jess is Ah Ma's true heir - she's the one person in their family who is most like Ah Ma.' That's an explanation that's external to the book. 'It's something that sets you apart from the rest of the world, carving you out from what's default and treated as real. 'Jess is diaspora and queer, and both those things are a bit like being a ghost among the living, or living among ghosts,' Cho tells me in an email interview. But as it turns out, she's pretty well suited to being a medium. So now, after death, Ah Ma has a job for Jess: Get even.Īt first Jess is terrified by Black Water Sister. And in life, she and her god were wronged by a local bigwig. In life, Ah Ma was a medium, the host of a god named Black Water Sister. It's Ah Ma, the dead, estranged grandmother she never knew. Stuck living with her family in Malaysia's capital Penang, hiding her sexuality and aimlessly hunting for jobs, Jess starts to hear a voice in her head. Jessamyn Teoh is at a crossroads: When we meet her, the central character in Zen Cho's new Black Water Sister, she's newly graduated, unemployed, and bound by a need to support her parents, who moved back their home in Malaysia after their American dream turned sour.Īnd of course, strange things can happen at a crossroads.

Zen cho black water sister