My parents come from interesting backgrounds. My father was the middle son of a self-made furniture maker, who was able to establish shop in rural Philippines. Although life was plain, they had it well enough–my grandfather preached about the values of hard work, discipline, and precision, which culminated to my father becoming an engineer.
My mother’s life, on the other hand, sounds a little like the beginning of an epic fantasy novel. The third youngest in a large rural family, her mother was married to a man three times her age and died giving birth to twins just before my mother was three years old. A year later, my grandfather died, leaving behind about a dozen or so orphans of varying ages–orphans who must now scramble to feed the many young children my grandparents left behind.
My mom remembers having to scrounge through the woods in search of something to eat, and would tell me stories of having to cross a river every day just to get to school or how her brother would wipe his shit on trees as a joke. One of the twins that my grandmother gave her life for was adopted out, because they couldn’t feed her; the other one died of starvation.
Later, she would work as a maid for her half-sister, while putting herself through school. The cheapest college course was civil engineering, so she took that, too. That was where she met my father.
Engineering gave my parents a fighting chance from abject poverty, although it wasn’t easy because back in the Philippines, the career doesn’t pay quite as much as out here in the west. My mom remembers having to sell a radio that my dad gave to her as a gift in order to put downpayment on a small plot of land (with a right-of-way she had to share with the neighbours), where they put a little hut. They lived there with my mom’s sister and her family. The only bedroom was a loft. Later, they were able to build a proper house with one bedroom. I was born and spent the first two years of my life in that house.
But a company offered my dad to work in Manila, so they moved before they were able to properly put down roots. For the next three years, we lived in a nice, rented house with two bedrooms and a yard, in a proper subdivision. Some of the happiest moments of my childhood were in this house.
And then my dad lost his job and it all turned to shit. I remember being five years old and moving to the slums, to a suite that resembled a closet. The kitchen was barely large enough to hold the dining table, which you had to squeeze yourself through just to sit on. The bedroom was the size of a twin bed. The living room, not much larger. The bathroom was only a little larger than the toilet and had no light.
The neighbourhood was interesting. Coming from a subdivision, I think I still carried the aura of being a “rich kid”, so I became a bit of an outcast. That still didn’t stop me from running through those cramped streets, falling into sewers, chasing after stray cats, catching dragonflies, climbing up on rooftops, and basically having the most fun in my life–much to my parents’ disapproval. Because it was dangerous to be outside, I was encouraged–sometimes even forced–to stay indoors.
Every day life was a bit inconvenient. We didn’t have running water, so my mom had to put me in a cart along with a dozen gallon-sized water containers and push all of us several kilometers to the nearest water pump about once a week. The kitchen faucet was attached to a metal drum outside, where we put this water. My dad had to work abroad, because he couldn’t find a job locally. My mom also worked at this time–in a demanding engineering job for the government–and sometimes was forced to leave me on my own in the house, with only the neighbours occasionally checking in to make sure I was still alive. There was no fear of getting calls from social workers in the slums–this was all normal, as far as we were all concerned.
Later, my parents were able to save up enough to get their own house (click for that other blog post!)–still in the squatters’ (i.e. we didn’t actually own the land) settlement, still with the same inconveniences and gritty surroundings, but this one was at least slightly bigger and gave us more breathing room. And that was where I stayed until we moved to Canada.
The next third or so of my life was spent in East Vancouver–in an immigrant/poorer part of the neighbourhood, about two years of which we had to spend in a one-bedroom apartment with my aunt and her husband…which was still no comparison to what I grew up with. Running water, computers, free books via libraries…I think I had culture shock for years. I got married pretty young–only a few years after high school, and after that, we lived in a trailer for another five years.
I’m going to skip ahead because this is becoming longer than I expected. Today, I live in a very nice neighbourhood. Some people call it “affluent”, as our neighbours have mansions and luxury homes–being one of the lower income families in the area, I don’t like riding on their coattails (our house is small in comparison, and we still have to live with family members just to get by). It feels kind of dizzying when we visit someone to remember that my whole world used to be the size of their wine cellar. I don’t think many people have that perspective at all.
Having this background is one of the reasons I like writing epic fantasy from the bottom rung of society. Even my more-traditional The Wolf of Oren-yaro still has Queen Talyien mingling with the common folk. It allows me to portray what it feels like to be in poverty, to be surrounded by others in poverty, and to find happiness despite all of that. In a lot of epic fantasies, poor people are described with the same broad brush…half-starving, toothless, and generally unhappy, ignorant folk who can’t wait to get out of their situation and sometimes would do just about anything to do that (as opposed to someone who is just trying to stay afloat). Or, they’re described as poor, but I’m not convinced. I remember a scene in Christopher Paolini’s Eragon where Eragon, described as a poor farmboy, tries to sell the dragon egg for steaks.
Steaks.
I also like showing a more realistic climb through the ranks of society. There’s a lot of subtle differences between someone who is born affluent to someone who had to work hard to get there. Lots of little differences in how people speak, what people think about, what makes them happy. And I like exploring these subtleties, over and over again. It’s one of the great things about this genre…it’s a great medium for exploring the human condition and how society can shape a person.
