Delicious Horror presents recipes paired with stories from Silk & Sinew: A Collection of Folk Horror from the Asian Diaspora, edited by Kristy Park Kulski. First up, please welcome Geneve Flynn!
Geneve Flynn is a speculative fiction editor, author, and poet. Winner of two Bram Stoker Awards and the Shirley Jackson, Aurealis, and Brave New Weird Awards; recipient of the 2022 Queensland Writers Fellowship. Her work has been nominated and short/longlisted for the British Fantasy, Locus, Ditmar, Australian Shadows, Elgin, and Rhysling Awards, and the Pushcart Prize.
Co-editor (with Lee Murray) of Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women, the dark fiction anthology which launched the grassroots movement in Asian women’s horror writing in 2020. Collaborator (with Lee Murray, Christina Sng, and Angela Yuriko Smith) of the internationally acclaimed dark poetry collection, Tortured Willows: Bent, Bowed, Unbroken.
Her work has been published by Crystal Lake Publishing, PS Publishing, Flame Tree Publishing, PseudoPod, and Written Backwards. Geneve serves on the Horror Writers Association’s Diverse Works Inclusion Committee. She is Chinese, born in Malaysia, and now calls Australia home.
Read more at www.geneveflynn.com.au.
Title of story in Silk and Sinew:
“If I Am to Earn My Tether”
Tell us briefly about your story and/or the inspiration behind it:
My story examines the choices our ancestors make that shape the lives we have: our privilege, advantage, perhaps even guilt. Some decisions are honorable, others less so, but virtually all, I believe, are made for the benefit of the next generation. The question is, how do we live with these choices and what do they say about who we are?
My story also involves sand piracy and colonialism.
Singapore is a glittering edifice of development and business. All this progress requires land. The city-state is also the biggest importer of sand globally, and has increased its landmass by twenty-two percent via land reclamation, sourcing sand from the sea beds and its poorer neighbors, resulting in untold environmental damage and population displacement. I wondered how the land and indigenous peoples might fight back. My answer involves the myth of the polong and pelesit: a tiny female homunculus born from the blood of a murder victim and her pet grasshopper.
What did you decide to make to pair with the story, and what from the story inspired your delicious food or drink?
There’s a scene at the beginning of the story where the main character meets with a sand broker. The two men are in an open-air market and the broker is enjoying his breakfast of coffee and coconut jam (kaya) slathered on toast. This is an iconic breakfast in Singapore, and usually includes a couple of creamy soft-boiled eggs seasoned with soya sauce and white pepper, for dipping. The coffee is sweet and strong and made with evaporated milk, and the warm kaya toast encloses a heart-stopping slab of cold butter. The combination may sound odd but it really works. It’s a dreamy amalgamation of salty, eggy, buttery, peppery, coconutty goodness.
Can you share the recipe or a link to the recipe?
Here’s the link and YouTube video for the overall recipe. You may be able to buy a jar of coconut jam from an Asian supermarket; if you can’t and would like to try your hand at making kaya yourself, check out the third link below.
Sara Tantlinger 