Fragile Creatures by Khin Myint is a powerful and thought-provoking debut memoir.
Opening in the narrative present, Myint introduces readers to key aspects of his story: his sister Theda’s illness, the euthanasia drug locked away in a box under her bed, and his departure for America to sort out his relationship with his ex-partner. The following chapter steps back in time to his childhood, including the family dynamics at home and early experiences of exclusion and racism.
Subsequent chapters alternate between the present and the past, with each storyline equally compelling while also serving to create narrative tension and suspense. For example, while readers know from the outset that Myint finds himself in court after arriving in the US (it’s in the book blurb) the reader is never sure of the outcome until the moment the legal ruling is made. The dual timeline also speaks to the way the past impacts who we become and how we show up in the world today. Myint not only attempts to comprehend this in reference to his life, but in the lives of those around him as he seeks to understand their choices, behaviour and actions even when he disagrees with or is hurt by them.
Born to a Burmese father and an English mother, Myint reflects on living in, and between, multiple cultures – at times literally after his parents separate and the family home is divided in two, with a ‘fence down the middle of the garden’ and an internal door nailed shut. He conveys the pain of growing up in the southern suburbs of Perth against the backdrop of Jack van Tongeren and the Australian Nationalist Movement, and later Pauline Hanson, during the 1980s and 1990s. He also explores notions of masculinity and what it means to be a boy raised in Australia: ‘I’ve come to think of masculinity as a shadow. Growing up, I didn’t have a word for it, but I understood it as a pressure that follows you around. It shames you if you step out of line’.
Myint writes particularly movingly about his sister, Theda, and her illness as well as her conversations around euthanasia and his own mental health struggles, which lead to self-harm and suicide attempts. He wrestles with the uncertainty of her medical diagnosis and the complexity of chronic illness: ‘Theda was suffering, but experts disagreed on why, and her right to sympathy hinged on the cause. If it was physical, she got compassion, exemptions and affordable treatments. But if her condition was mental, she was a hysteric.’ As Theda’s health continues to deteriorate, Myint questions the mental/physical illness binary offered by medical experts. However, this causes tension with his mother and sister, who want to believe the approach of a particular doctor, and so he must choose between challenging the status quo and his relationship with his family.
Myint skilfully and eloquently weaves together multiple narrative threads, themes, timeframes and research. He writes with vulnerability, sensitivity and nuance, resisting easy answers and acknowledging his own subjectivity in his retelling. Ultimately, Fragile Creatures is a memoir that draws readers into the life of another, inviting us to ask, as fellow memoirist and writing teacher Patti Miller does in Writing True Stories, ‘What is it like for you to be in the world?’