As the Lunar New Year celebrations arrive, Asians marking the festivities will be expecting to receive money in red envelopes, feast on delicious food and attend reunions with relatives and family friends (where Covid-19 social distancing restrictions permit). Among the many characters at those reunions, there is likely to be one that stands out for her inquisitive nature, sharp powers of observation and – quite possibly – her thoughts about your love life and all that weight you’ve been gaining recently: the “auntie”. Unlike Western “aunts”, Asian “aunties” need not be blood relatives; people use the term loosely to refer to women who are a decade or two older and are afforded some form of seniority in the family’s social circle. Aunties are famed for probing younger generations about their love lives. Singles can expect a grilling about why they don’t have a partner yet and whether they will ever get married; newlyweds can expect questions about when they are having children; parents will brace themselves for questions about their weight. Indonesian-Chinese writer Jesse Sutanto knows this all too well, having grown up with what she describes as a reliable, if nosy, network of aunties in her life. Her experience was shaped by moving from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta to Singapore when she was eight years old. It was there, in the city state, that she experienced first-hand the awesome networking power of the Auntie. Her parents did not live in Singapore with her, yet they would often find out about the things she and her cousins did. “I slowly found out it was because of the aunties and uncles network,” said Sutanto, 36. “If I went to Orchard Road with a guy, then an aunt’s friend would see, and she would tell her friends. Then suddenly my parents would be like ‘oh my god, you went out with a guy on Orchard Road’.” Another thing that shaped her experience of Singapore was how kiasu , or competitive, the environment was. “Singapore is so different from Indonesia even though it’s so nearby … I think Indonesia is a bit more relaxed. I feel like a lot of Chinese-Indonesians, including my family, are more like Singaporeans, very kiasu and very competitive. “I remember being compared a lot to my parents’ friends’ children. They’d be like ‘Look at these children of my friend, they’re very smart and just got accepted into a prestigious school,” the mother of two recalled. Are you crazy? Rich Asians vs Kevin Spacey is no morality tale Dial A for Aunties Memories of meddlesome aunties and the sense of competition were what influenced Sutanto as she wrote her debut adult novel Dial A for Aunties , released last April and soon to be made into a Netflix film. It follows the story of California-based Chinese-Indonesian wedding planner Meddy Chan, who seeks help from her aunties after accidentally killing her blind date. In November, the book won Sutanto Britain’s Comedy Women in Print prize. Judges described Dial A for Aunties as a “delicious frantic comedy caper”. The book was packed with “absurd situations, hilarious dialogue, wonderful family dynamics and crackling with comic energy”, chair of the judges Joanne Harris said, reported The Guardian . Sutanto lived in Singapore until she was 17, then she left for the United States to attend UCLA Berkeley, before moving to Britain to pursue her master’s in creative writing at Oxford. Asked why she wasn’t interested in portraying her uncles for her novel, she said aunties were “more interesting” as they played an important role in Asian cultures and families and life without them would be less lively. “It’s very interesting that in the Western media, Asian women are portrayed to be very quiet and submissive, whereas if you actually go to Asia and you meet the Asian aunties here, they’re very loud and very domineering and they do what they want. They control everything. And so I wanted to show that actually Asian aunties are such a powerhouse in Asian cultures and families.” Charlotte Setijadi, assistant professor of humanities at School of Social Sciences at Singapore Management University, echoed Sutanto’s assessment, saying that in Asian cultures aunties generally had “influential” roles because “the kinship and social networks are still very much family based” and society was usually more “collective, more communitarian” than in the West. “You can say that aunties, perhaps more so than uncles, have been portrayed to have more to do with the maintenance of the family’s social standing and social network,” Setijadi said. “And that’s why the stereotypes that we have, of the matchmaking aunties, or the gossiping aunties, have to do with the maintenance of the social status quo in the family.” If you actually go to Asia and you meet the Asian aunties here, they’re very loud and very domineering Aunties’ characteristics were formed by the society they belonged to, Setijadi said. In most societies, paternalistic cultures in which women were responsible for child rearing contributed to aunties’ meddlesome reputation. “While aunties exist in all cultures, specifically within Asian societies, where gender roles are more defined compared to other cultures, aunties are even more ubiquitous,” she said. In Asia, it is also common for multiple households to live in one big house or family compound. This has led to another stereotype for aunties, in which they are seen as being a “second mother” – “disciplinarians [and gossipy] because they’re so close to the bringing up of a lot of Asian children,” Setijadi said. Aunties need not be blood relatives. In Indonesia , for example, it is common for people to refer to the female friends of their parents as “tante” – which means auntie in Dutch and Bahasa Indonesia. “Tante”, however, would not be an appropriate term for older females who are not known to the speaker. These would commonly be referred to as “Ibu” or “ma’am”. However, in Singapore and Malaysia , any middle-aged woman can be called auntie. The auntie stereotype does not belong exclusively to Asian cultures. “What’s really interesting is that since Dial A for Aunties was released, I’ve actually received a lot of emails and messages from people from different cultures, such as Mexico, Jamaica and Nigeria who say their aunties are exactly like that. I’ve received messages from Jewish, Filipino, and Indian readers, too. It brings me so much joy to know that across so many different cultures, aunties seem to be very, very similar,” Sutanto said. She added, though, that “a lot of my Caucasian readers have written to me saying, ‘I wish that my family was more like that’.” Diversity push For Sutanto, the year ahead will bring exciting and “intense” months, as she has sold the rights to Dial A For Aunties to Netflix . The movie script will be written by Kourtney Kang, a producer on Fresh off the Boat and How I Met Your Mother . Sutanto estimated the movie would wrap in 2023. She also has four novels coming out this year: two young-adult novels, a fantasy novel, and a sequel to Dial A For Aunties that is coming in March and will be set in Oxford, England. One of the young-adult novels is called Well, That Was Unexpected and will be set in Jakarta and Bali. She hopes it will help put a “focus on Indonesia” and “open the door for fellow Indonesian writers”. Ultra-rich Asians eye Singapore luxury homes amid Covid-19 pandemic “I feel like Crazy Rich Asians has opened a lot of doors because up until then, when you thought of Asian stories, they were mostly just East Asian stories like Chinese-American or Japanese-American, but then suddenly Crazy Rich Asians happened and people were like, ‘oh Southeast Asia also exists’. I really hope that Dial A For Aunties also gives Indonesia a bit more recognition,” she said. Sutanto hopes that none of her real-life aunties recognise themselves in the characters in her book. “I was very careful to disguise a lot of the characters to the point where my mom didn’t know which auntie was based on who, so I’m not in trouble with any of them,” she said. “I think that they’re all very proud. My mom has had a lot of old friends reach out. My dad also. They were like ‘oh my gosh I saw your daughter in the newspapers’, so they’re very proud, thank goodness.”