Discovering My Maverick Voice | #MaverickNotOutsider

9 MINUTE READ

For Author Across Cultures, Yang-May Ooi, like for many writers, a feeling of not fitting in played a significant role in shaping her life’s journey from scribbling little stories to becoming a bestselling author. In many situations, she felt like an Outsider – in her family, at school, uni and at work. But writing has been a constant and the one thing that helped her reframe her identity from awkward Outsider to Maverick, someone whose creativity and difference could be respected. #MaverickNotOutsider⁺⁺

The Little Princess Who Became a Tomboy

As the eldest child of an eldest daughter and eldest son in a Chinese family, I was born to much fanfare. I was also the eldest grand-daughter on both sides of the family and was doted on in my babyhood. As I got older, my mum let my hair grow, first tied in bunches like spaniel ears and then in two ribboned plaits. I wore pretty dresses and played the role of the perfect little princess – I was obedient to the grown-ups’ guidance and wishes. I was demure and lady-like as my grandma taught me to be.

But things changed when my kid brother was born. Suddenly, the spotlight shifted. He became the centre of attention, and I felt overlooked. It felt to me as if, in my family’s eyes, being a boy gave that little baby a special power, authority, and respect that I, as a girl, didn’t have.

So, I rebelled.

I became a tomboy. I wanted to wear T-shirts and shorts, and to have short hair. I loved the freedom of being a tomboy – I could run around, be loud and boisterous and full of opinions and ideas and energy. But my family didn’t know what to make of it all. They were disapproving but my mum mostly let me be, seeing that I was happy.

But I began to throw tantrums if I was forced to wear a dress for parties or special occasions. Christmas was no fun anymore when I had to endure a prickly frilly dress and uncomfortable shoes in the tropical heat, forced to sit demurely and not run around. I felt angry and hurt being labelled as naughty and disobedient. I started to do badly at school – and of course that made things worse in my high-achieving family. I was told I was lazy for not working at my studies.

I began to feel like an Outsider in my own family. I didn’t fit the mould of the “ideal daughter,” and I wasn’t sure where I belonged.

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Writing My Way Into Belonging

I loved reading. Over the years, my favourites were The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew. They transported me to worlds far away from Malaysia where children had adventures, solved mysteries, and were treated almost like adults. They were brave, clever, and resourceful—everything I wanted to be.

Inspired by these stories, I began to write my own. I had spare school exercise books where I would carefully bring forth my imagined inner life into words with my favourite fountain pen. The stories were heavily influenced by the books I loved. I created characters who were heroes—strong, brave, and clever. They outwitted the bad guys and saved the day. Often, I wrote in the first person, imagining myself as the male hero. It was a way for me to step into a role that felt powerful and respected, a role that I didn’t feel I had in real life.

Looking back – writing was my way of creating a world where I could be free to be myself. In my stories, I wasn’t the overlooked eldest daughter or the tomboy who didn’t fit in—I was the hero.

And for the first time, unexpectedly, my stories offered me a way to be seen.

From Outsider to “The Writer of the Family”

My family, who had been so bewildered by my tomboy phase, began to take notice of my stories. They praised my imagination for thinking up such exciting plots. They noticed my writing style, so mature for my age. They were impressed by my use of English.

More important than all that was that they were valuing my inner life. To them, the stories seemed to be just stories. But what they did not know was that the stories expressed the inner me that they could not see. For the first time, I felt a sense of recognition and respect—not for being the “perfect daughter,” but for being me.

I became known as “the writer of the family”. I was respected and valued. It was a way of finding insider status while still being an Outsider. It transformed me into a Maverick within my family – the creative one among solid, practical lawyers, doctors and engineers. I had a talent for words and written storytelling that no-one else had. Writing gave me a voice, a sense of identity, and a way to connect with others, even when I felt like I didn’t belong.

Writing Through the Years

As I grew older, my writing began to evolve. I moved away from action-packed adventures and started exploring more personal, real-world themes. I wrote about relationships, family dynamics, and the conflicts that arise between people who love each other but don’t always understand each other.

These stories were fictionalised versions of my own conflicts, of course. They weren’t always great pieces of creative writing, tending towards melodrama and lacking in psychological maturity. I was a teenager after all! I did not show these to my family or to anyone. These rather turgid writings allowed me to work through my teenage angst. They also helped me step inside the heads of different characters, and that was especially useful for trying to understand people who were different from me. I began to think about what motivated them, what shaped their actions and emotions, and how those things intersected with my own experiences.

It was the beginning of empathy and a lifelong fascination with psychology and the complexities of who we are as humans.

The Flame Tree and Mindgame

In my thirties, I wrote my novels that would be published by Hodder & Stoughton (1st editions) – and later Monsoon Books (2nd editions) – as part of a two-book deal. I wanted to combine everything I had learned about storytelling. They were big-concept thrillers, filled with action and high stakes conflict, just like my childhood stories. but at their core, the novels were about being true to yourself, the intensity of relationships and the complexities of human nature.

In my first published novel, The Flame Tree, I explored themes of love, loss, and redemption against the backdrop of a lush, tropical setting. The story was deeply personal in many ways, drawing on my own conflicted feelings about being from the East and living in the West, my love of the Malaysian landscape at a time of rapid development and the tension of Eastern values versus Western advancement.

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Mindgame, my second novel was a psychological thriller that pitted those very same Asian Values against individualistic, democratic and liberal Western ways of being. In the foreground was a personal exploration of what it meant to be gay in the conservative climate of Asia. In the background was the Haze blanketing South East Asia from the burning of the Indonesian forests for logging, a metaphor for a moral haze as a powerful conglomerate plotted to control the lives of ordinary Asians.

Both of these books allowed me to bring together the thrills and spills that I loved from my childhood reading with the emotional depth I had developed over the years. And in doing so, they helped me to further define my voice as a storyteller.

Finding Strength in Stories

I can see now that writing has always been my way of defining my own path as an Outsider a Maverick. It has been a way of creating a space where I could be myself, of working through my own emotions and conflicts, and of connecting with others – both writers and readers – in a meaningful way.

What about You?

Part of my mission through the #MaverickNotOutsider hashtag is to nudge us all to think of Difference as a Superpower:

>> For those of us who may be feeling like awkward Outsiders, what might we contribute if we saw ourselves as Mavericks instead?

>>For those of us who may be feeling confident in our Belonging, there may be someone on the periphery of our circle who has gifts we may not yet know – how might we unwrap those gifts by seeing them as a Maverick within our group instead of an Outsider?

Do add a comment or message me. I would love to hear your experience as an Outsider/ Maverick – or as a Champion of Outsiders/ Mavericks.

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⁺⁺About #MaverickNotOutsider

This story was first published as part of Maverick Thinking: The Gift of Difference on Substack, edited slightly for Belonging Across Cultures.

Difference is the Flipside of Belonging. By leaning into our Difference, we can find value that enriches our sense of Belonging. By re-imagining Outsiders as Mavericks, we can turn Difference into a Superpower – and unleash creativity, agency and empowerment in ourselves and others.

I will be cross-posting some of stories on Maverick Thinking here, especially those stories that may build on our discussions here on the theme of Belonging. Look out for these bonus stories under the playful hashtag #MaverickNotOutsider.

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Photos: from my personal album

More about my books: https://tigerspirit.co.uk/writing/

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