Growing up, Tiffany Tsao was never in one place long enough to call it home.

Her nomadic upbringing had her and her family living in the United States, Singapore and Indonesia and being an American citizen of Indonesian-Chinese descent, she not only found it difficult to establish a physical home, but a cultural one as well.

Whenever anyone asked where she was from, she did not know exactly how to respond.

“I had to decide what kind of answer to give — the short story or the longer one,” Tiffany told The Jakarta Post via email. “Did I want to explain that I was technically a US citizen? Or that my parents were both ethnic Chinese, but more specifically, part of the Chinese diaspora to Indonesia?”

Nowadays, Tiffany is an accomplished literary translator and writer, and her diverse career and accomplishments are a direct byproduct of her childhood.

Her parents emphasized her Chinese roots more than her Indonesian ones, but when she met and mingled with Chinese-Americans, she did not feel the kinship she was hoping to find.

When she told people she was Singaporean, it prompted even more questions and led to Tiffany’s ultimate conundrum.

“So what am I, then?” Tiffany questioned. “Where do I belong?”

That questioning followed her to UC-Berkeley in California where she was getting her PhD in English literature.

As a requirement for her graduate program, students had to gain proficiency in another language. Tiffany decided to brush up on her Indonesian, which was only at a basic level from her brief time spent in Jakarta as a kid.

The United States edition of her novel, The Majesties, just came out on Jan. 21. It will be translated into Indonesian by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, whose works Tiffany has translated before. (Courtesy of Tiffany Tsao)

“I began reading more Indonesian fiction and it seemed to activate something dormant within me,” Tiffany said. “It felt like I was unearthing something long buried, or watering a seed and having it sprout.”

By that point, she had already started what would become her first book, The Oddfits, which she began while pursuing her undergraduate degree in Massachusetts, but it took her years to finish due to her studies.

After getting her PhD, she had a short stint working as a postdoctoral fellow, but when her husband was offered a position as a lecturer in Sydney, Australia, she was excited at the opportunity of being closer to her family back in Asia.

The Oddfits sat untouched for a while until a publisher showed interest in acquiring it in 2015. This came just after Tiffany had quit academia, and her career as a full-time writer had begun.

Her first book follows Murgatroyd Floyd, a boy who does not seem to belong in his hometown, which happens to be Singapore. He does not look like the locals but later realizes that he also does not fit in with most humans. He belongs to a group of people called oddfits — a rare type of human with access to the “more known world”, a land invisible to most people. The parallels between Murgatroyd and Tiffany are obvious knowing her background.

Soon after, she began to delve into the world of literary translation. Her decision to study Indonesian turned out to be a fruitful endeavor, and her new mission became not only introducing the world to Indonesian works but also staying true to each author’s original message.

“I feel that Indonesian literature is still quite underrepresented on the world literary scene in comparison to its actual literary output and accomplishments,” Tiffany said. “More specifically, it is important to me that Indonesian literature is not only published in translation, but also translated well and respected on its own terms.”

The Oddfits is part of a trilogy that follows humans who are able to see into the “more known world”, a land invisible to most people. (Courtesy of Tiffany Tsao)

Her translating career has become award-winning work, most notably her translation of Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s poetry collection Sergius Seeks Bacchus. The collection touches on life in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community of Indonesia, yet another group of people who are outsiders in their community.

Tiffany’s devotion to the translation of Indonesian literature has begun to put her, and the literature she is translating, into the spotlight.

She currently remains in Sydney working on the third and final novel of her Oddfits series. The second novel in the series was out there, titled The More Known World.

The US edition of her novel under the title The Majesties (originally published in Australia as Under Your Wings), was just launched on Jan. 21 this year.

Her days translating and writing have her constantly at her computer, but her family reminds her that sometimes she needs to cut loose.

“I have two small kids […], who remind me how to have fun,” Tiffany said.

Her career, just like her youthful struggle for her identity, has led her down many corridors and passageways in which she has constantly searched for the right path. She now uses her past experiences as fuel for her writing, with most of her characters being outsiders who happen to be situated in the many places she has lived.

Those places have remained tied to her. Whether she is embracing her Indonesian roots by showcasing its literature to the world or writing about characters who also felt like they did not belong, Tiffany is constantly rising to new challenges. Just like she has always done. (ste)

— The writer was an intern at The Jakarta Post