life rattle show no. 1183

Presented on Sunday, December 18, 2011

Hosted by Virginia Ashberry

featuring

Fong Hsiung reading her story
"Alfie"
and
Tin Ling Chung reading her story
"Three Brush Strokes"

tonight's Show

Tonight, Life Rattle Number 1183, features stories from two new writers Fong Hsiung and Tin Ling Chung.

Over the past 3 weeks we’ve heard stories from Kwai Li, drawn from the stories you will find in her collection titled The Palm Leaf Fan.

Kwai introduced us to the intricate structure of the minority Hakka community in Kolkata India where she grew up. The background for her early life is this small community perched at the edge of rival national politics. This Sunday we introduce two new authors from this very same heritage.

Fong Hsiung is a wife, mother, accountant and, now, writer. The eldest of five children, she was born in 1958 to Hakka Chinese parents in Kolkata, India. At eighteen, she immigrated to Canada where she married and raised three sons. Hsiung returned to school after her first child was born and by the time she was thirty earned an accounting designation. Ten years later, she added an executive master’s degree in business administration to her resume.

Fong Hsiung now spends most of her free time writing blogging, travelling and is a volunteer instructor for spinning, a form of studio cycling, at her local YMCA where she works out every day.

With her story “Alfie,” Hsiung takes us to Tangra, where Hakka operate many tanneries. Hsiung paints a metaphor for the striving of the whole community by focussing on one young man’s determination to overcome personal adversity.

Tin Ling Chung was born in 1970 in Calcutta, India. She went to a missionary school as a World Vision sponsored child in her early years. Her parents owned a restaurant before moving to Toronto, Canada. Chung met her husband Henry in Toronto and was blessed with a son, Nathan. Tin Chung is a member of Toastmasters International. When she is not writing, she works as an emergency planning coordinator and a realtor.

Tin Ling Chung transports us back to Canada where a young woman comes to truly recognize all the sacrifices of her mother’s life in Kolkata, which have made her own life in Toronto so rich with comforts and love that “Three Brush Stokes” will communicate.