Before I ever called myself a writer, I carried a Kadazan writing voice — shaped by hills, harvests, and the ache of memory.
Kadazandusun — you’ve probably never heard of it.
They are an indigenous people, primarily located in Sabah, Malaysia, and are recognized as the largest ethnic group in the state. Often grouped with the Dusun under the collective term Kadazandusun, the name reflects the deep kinship between their cultures, languages, and traditions.
My mother was Dusun. My father, Kadazan.
And I was born from both — a daughter of the hills and the harvest, carrying two legacies braided into one.
The Two Lives of a Kadazan Daughter
Before I ever called myself a writer, I was a daughter of hills and harvests — not just by blood, but by the stories passed down through my mother’s line. I grew up on myths murmured in kitchens, ceremonies held in homes warmed by firewood and the faint scent of rice wine.
It was in my mother’s hometown, in the cadence of her people, that I first learned to listen deeply — not just with my ears, but with my bones.
As a child, I lived two kinds of lives.
In Penampang, I was raised surrounded by comfort — the result of my father’s success. It was a life filled with air-conditioned silence and soft beds, one that felt far from struggle.
Tamparuli
But my mother made sure we didn’t forget where we came from.
Whenever she had the chance, she took us back to her hometown in Tamparuli.
It was a world away — slower, harder, sun-drenched and earthy.
It smelled of rivers and sweat, of rice fields and smoke.
Humility wasn’t something she spoke.
It was something she worked.
She led us barefoot across the land she once knew.
We learned planting by pain, weaving by patience,
and harvest by reverence.
And I, the soft child from Penampang, often complained — that it was too hot, that I was too tired.
I didn’t understand what she was trying to root in me until much later, when life stripped us of everything.
She didn’t teach humility with words.
She taught it with labor.
She made us walk the land she once walked barefoot.
She showed us the ache of planting, the patience of weaving, the ritual of harvest.
And I, the soft child from Penampang, often complained — that it was too hot, that I was too tired.
I didn’t understand what she was trying to root in me until much later, when life stripped us of everything.
What My Father Taught Without Speaking
My father, on the other hand, taught humility in quieter, more habitual ways.
Despite his wealth, lavish meals were rare. He didn’t believe in excess.
We ate what came from the land — mostly humble, traditional dishes.
Many of our meals came from his farm, where he raised Sambar Deers (Payau), Mouse Deers (Pelanduk), and Muntjacs (Kijang).
He taught us to respect what we had, to understand that sustenance came from care, effort, and patience — not convenience.
During hunting season, he would leave for days, returning with wild boar — meat earned, not bought.
When our mother was alive, my brother and I didn’t eat wild boar — we followed her faith. She was a Seventh-day Adventist, and dietary restrictions were part of her belief.
But after she passed, we chose to follow our father’s path instead.
He wasn’t a religious man at the time — not yet — but somehow, aligning ourselves with his way felt like anchoring to what remained.
This wasn’t about rebellion.
It came from grief — raw and unspoken.
It was simply survival.
And maybe, in some quiet way, it was our attempt to stay close to him —
to keep something familiar in a world that suddenly felt fractured.
I didn’t inherit my Kadazan writing voice from a classroom. I inherited it from silence, from rituals, from the grief stitched into family meals.
The Silence That Spoke
I never sat cross-legged at my father’s feet and heard him say, “Let me tell you a tale.” Our traditions didn’t work that way. They weren’t packaged into neat fables or bedtime lore.
Instead, they came disguised — in warnings and wisdoms, in the placement of offerings, in the names of trees.
If you didn’t listen closely, you would miss them.
If you didn’t live them, you wouldn’t understand.
And my father — I must admit, he had one of the toughest shells out there.
Hard on the outside, silent more often than not, but there was softness buried deep within him — and I only ever saw glimpses.
Sometimes through the food he shared, or the stories he didn’t tell, but lived.
And though they were never spoken outright, they stayed — the gestures, the quiet rituals, the way silence often said more than speech.
My Kadazan writing voice holds space for what was never said — shaped by emotion, softened by reverence.
Ink as Inheritance
My father was a man who wore his emotions openly — not always gently, and sometimes to the point of annoyance.
His feelings came fast, unfiltered: in his voice, in his silence, in the way he responded to the world.
Some saw it as a flaw, but now I see it for what it was — raw humanity.
He didn’t always know how to hold his emotions softly, but he never hid them.
And unknowingly, I inherited that — not in outbursts, but in ink.
My writing holds what he often spilled: the weight of feeling, unguarded and true.
Kadazandusun culture — like many Indigenous traditions — has its own ecosystem of expression.
We may not always speak loudly, but we speak deeply.
Our people carry knowledge in our hands, in our rituals, in our silence.
We grieve through harvests. We express love through work. We remember by doing.
It took me years to understand that my writing didn’t come from classrooms or certificates.
It came from growing up with parents who lived their traditions — not through formal lessons, but through everyday rituals, unspoken values, and stories carried in silence.
This inheritance attuned me to the invisible.
It taught me to write with breath, not bravado.
Writing, for me, became the vessel for my Kadazan writing voice — carrying stories my people whispered but never wrote down.
Between Two Tongues, Two Selves
I used to feel a kind of shame — that I couldn’t speak fluent Kadazan, that I couldn’t recite proverbs or sing the old songs.
What right did I have to claim this heritage if I couldn’t articulate it?
What voice was I writing with — and was it mine to use?
But I’ve come to understand that language is more than vocabulary.
I write in English, yes.
But the cadence, the mourning, the resilience in my voice — they’re inherited.
They come from generations of quiet strength.
From my mother’s eyes as she wove fish nets with an unspoken grief.
From my father’s back, bent in work but never in surrender.
To be Kadazandusun and to write is to hold contradiction.
You speak in a colonial language, yet carry ancestral fire.
There’s grief for a heritage you didn’t fully learn — and a fierce desire to protect it anyway.
Even when the story is older than your lifetime, you still feel compelled to write it down — even if imperfectly.
Myths, Memory, and the Literary Mind
I often think about the stories I never got to hear — the ones my parents didn’t have time to tell, or didn’t think were important, or perhaps had forgotten how to share.
So much was swallowed by the wave of modernity:
English-medium schools, the quiet abandonment of certain rituals, the silence that comes when tradition slips through the cracks of daily survival.
What was once spoken in the kitchens and fields became quiet.
And I — a child rooted in the village yet shaped by a shifting world — began to listen for what was no longer said.
But here’s what I know:
My father believed in omens.
My mother believed in spirits.
And I believe in the sacredness of a story — even one whispered too late.
When I write fiction, I don’t write fairytales. I write hauntings.
When I reflect on grief, I don’t rush toward healing. I stay in the ache.
When I draft memoir, I hold space for silence — because that’s how truth speaks in my world.
My culture taught me that the veil between worlds is thin.
That dreams matter.
That death isn’t an end but a shifting of form.
These beliefs bleed into my writing like water through roots.
The Loss of Land, the Rise of Voice
Our people are no strangers to loss — of land, of language, of visibility.
But we’re also no strangers to memory.
To write as a Kadazan woman in a digital age is to speak into both the past and the future.
I carry grief not just for personal loss, but for collective forgetting.
That’s why I write — to document, to honor, to remember.
The land where my father once raised his deers?
It’s quiet now.
But in my writing, I walk it again — tracing the worn paths, remembering the stillness, honoring what once lived and breathed under his care.
The rituals my mother once performed?
I may not know them all, but I recreate their essence in my metaphors, in my reverence.
I’ve stopped trying to prove myself fluent in a culture.
Now, I simply live it — word by word.
A Quiet Power
There’s a quietness in my writing.
Some might call it soft — but to me, it’s something older.
It feels ancestral — moving like stone, like mountain.
It knows how to hold space.
It’s not urgent, not loud, but it stays.
And in staying, it speaks.
My Kadazandusun roots shaped that.
They taught me not to speak unless it mattered.
Observe, before offering.
Speak from the wound — never for pity.
Love, even in forgetting.
Remember, even what was never taught.
The Voice I Carry
Writing and heritage — I no longer hold them in opposite hands.
One taught me how to speak.
The other taught me why.
What I write now — whether fiction, reflection, memoir, or dream — carries the heartbeat of a people who loved the land, feared spirits, whispered truths, and survived anyway.
I write not to impress.
I write to remember.
And to leave a trail for others like me —
searching, longing, wondering if they too can still belong.
The answer is yes.
You already do.
This is what it means to carry a Kadazan writing voice — to speak from ancestral memory, even when the language has changed.
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