One of the most fun parts of writing Unsong is seeing things come together that I didn’t intend. And so far the most impressive such “coincidence” has been Malia Ngo’s backstory. I usually don’t like revealing too much of where I’m coming from, but this one is too good not to share.

(spoilers ahead for Chapter 65)

I knew from the beginning that Malia would be some kind of well-intentioned demon who had found her nature allowed her to do good as long as it was in an evil-looking way. I designed the character to sound creepy and evil. In early drafts, her name was Melissa Nguyen, because “Melissa” sounds like “mal” meaning evil, and (no offense to Asians) the ng diphthong sounds eerie to me because of how unnatural it is for English-speakers. Later I learned “Malia” was a name in and of itself, and I shortened “Nguyen” to “Ngo”. This had the added benefit of sounding like NGO, ie the kind of organization she led, and of matching a later-discarded subplot where academic kabbalists were studying the klipot under the term “Non-God Objects”.

In terms of her appearance, I knew she had a Hawaiian first name, an Asian surname, and a white mother, so I pictured her as some kind of weird Hawaiian-Asian-white-panethnic mix. I had a female friend with a weird ethnic background, and I gave her photo as a model to the artist drawing the canonical picture of Malia:

Months later, I was looking for good material for interludes, and I remembered a livejournal entry I had written almost ten years ago presenting evidence that Barack Obama was secretly a demon  . It was so Unsong-like that I decided to work it in with a few edits. When combined with Malia’s Chapter 65 backstory (already written, not yet published) it strongly suggested that Obama was another entity similar to Malia - a half-demonic child of Thamiel who was repressing his evil nature in order to help mankind.

I added a throwaway joke to the evidence that Obama was a demon: “Who would name his firstborn daughter after the abstract concept of evil?” . This wasn’t even originally *intended* as a hint that Malia Ngo was Thamiel’s daughter, but in context and by coincidence, it obviously became this.

And then somebody pointed out in the comments section that Barack Obama had a Hawaiian-Asian-white half-sister named Maya Ng. And it was true.

She even kind of looks like a younger versin of Malia:

In the Unsongverse, it seems obvious to me that Obama and Ngo are half-siblings through their common father Thamiel. Both of them recognized the other as a kindred spirit, allied with each other, went to the mortal world together, and pursued parallel political careers. He became US President, she became UNSONG Director-General. When Obama got married, he named his firstborn daughter after her.

This all makes perfect sense. But I swear I wasn’t thinking of any of it when I designed the Malia Ngo character. I don’t even think I *knew* President Obama had a sister. Maybe I read about it once, a long time ago, and it sunk into my unconscious? But I had so many other reasons for naming Malia what I did… @luminousalicorn can even confirm this; I discussed the character with her a lot.

I didn’t want to make all of this explicit in the book, because I think it’s more fun as a weird web of clues for people to piece together. But I couldn’t resist giving one tiny hint. In Chapter 65, Malia says that she got her position thanks to help from “family members in high places”. The Hebrew word for “high places”, as discussed in Interlude Shin, is “bama”, and various Biblical references to high places have been interpreted as Obama references.

Also possibly related: real-world Maya Ng mostly does academic work, but she’s also written a children’s book, Ladder To The Moon, where a little girl climbs a ladder to the moon and discovers Weird Multicultural Heaven there. The kabbalistic implications are immense.

Also also possibly related: Ng’s maiden name is “Soetoro”, and while young Barack Obama was living with Ng’s father (his own stepfather), he went by “Barack Soetoro”. I don’t know what Soetoro means in its own language, but it bears an obvious resemblance to “sotero”, a form of Greek “soter” meaning ‘Savior’ (cf. “soteriology”, the theological study of salvation). “Barack” is Arabic (and more or less Hebrew also) for “blessed”. So “Barack Soetero” translates “blessed savior”. People complained in 2008 that there was a messianic aspect to his candidacy. But kabbalistically, treating him as the Messiah is exactly correct.