On May 20th, Under the Madness Managing Editor Helen Carle and Reader Ezra Lee met virtually with twelve teen authors from the British School in Tokyo, Japan, to discuss the process behind their writing and how their life experiences and languages impact their writing today. These authors’ work is featured in the Japan Special Issue of Issue 7. In this blog post, Helen and Ezra will share some of these stories with you, our readers. You can also find selected footage from the interview on Under the Madness’ social media pages (@underthemadnessmagazine).
Amelia and Sarah grew up in Singapore, and reflect on how the cultural diversity of Singapore influenced their world views. They recount walking down the street and seeing different holidays celebrated simultaneously, a blend of music from around the world, and a selection of international cuisine. Growing up in an environment with a wide variety of cultures helps Sarah write with a wider perspective, and more accurately represent characters from upbringings different from hers in her writing. Meanwhile, Amelia makes compromises in her writing to be able to express the Japanese culture she writes about in English, as some of the Japanese words she thinks of when writing lose meaning when they are translated to their English counterparts. Sarah overcomes this translation challenge by including Japanese words in her English writing, creating the additional benefit of incorporating her culture into her writing. She also prefers to write her poems in Japanese due to the stronger meaning she feels behind each Japanese word.
Iroha is Japanese and grew up in Japan: a different life experience than many of her classmates at the British School. She has gained an international perspective by attending the British School in Tokyo from the age of three and values being exposed to cultural diversity in school for the growth of a more culturally aware mindset. She expresses that although the English language, in her experience, contains a broader vocabulary, Japanese words contain more meaning. Iroha fondly refers to the Sakura trees as she explains how expressing nature is easier in Japanese than in English for her due to the difference in vocabulary. Overall, she finds writing in English easier, as she speaks English the most. She writes creatively in English and Japanese and enjoys reading poetry in Korean.
Pietro, who speaks English, Japanese, French, and Italian, shares his experience writing in different languages and the strengths each language offers. Holding great value to the new perspectives that traveling and learning new languages has given him, he explains how languages like Japanese or Italian provided him with a vocabulary that he might not have acquired only with English, allowing him to express more in his writing. Shivani takes interest in the English language’s diversity, specifically, with words having different connotations in different dialects and the evolution of the language through the internet and the diplomatic anglophone environment.
Arush, who is fluent in five languages, generally writes about serious topics in Japanese to improve his vocabulary and due to the construction of the language, but he feels most comfortable writing creatively in English and French, and writes poems in Hindi. He is conscious of his intended audience for each piece as he chooses which language to write in based on the topic of the writing, and which language sounds like it best fits the topic. He often thinks in his mother tongue when he is writing and finds himself translating into English or the language he is writing in. Although sometimes this leads to a challenge in keeping up with the language, he overcomes the mental language barrier seemingly flawlessly. Laia similarly expresses the freedom of writing in the ability to write about anything and take inspiration from everything, and being able to write about it in two languages. She writes in both English and in her first language, French, depending on how she feels on any given day. She notes how she writes more poetically in French, a common observation made by her peers about Japanese.
