Talisman, mediums and fortune tellers were a part of everyday life.Īuthor: Kopi Soh s the pseudonym of a Malaysian author and illustrator best known for her book Oh, I Thought I Was The Only One. A world where mental disorders and illnesses were believed to be caused by malevolent spirits. She used to live in a world where clipping finger nails at night was strictly forbidden, pointing at the moon would result in one’s ears getting chopped off, and children were forced to stay indoors during sundown for fear of collision with evil forces. Growing up in a large extended Taoist influenced Peranakan family filled with strong women, Kopi hears these words of ‘wisdom’ daily. You won’t regret it.Synopsis: Looking After the Ashes is a semi-biographical fiction of Kopi Soh’s childhood stories. If you can do add this book to your 2022 reading list. Apparently by an American sailor who had requested a South Asian hawker to make him a hamburger. Oh last but not least I learned that the Roti John (a food I had no idea existed till a few years ago) was invented in the 1970s.
Overall I truly enjoyed reading this book. Eat pork… pray to Chinese gods but act like Europeans.” This historical fiction also brought forth to my attention the existence of the 1932 Mui Tsai Ordinance which prohibits the acquisition of Mui Tsai. Eva’s description of the Peranakans made me smile, it was funnily accurate “the wealthy ones stick to one another like flies to rotten meat. And than there was the dreaded chicken place where the necks of the chosen chicken was slit and thrown into the defeathering machine still squawking. Transporting me back to when I was a child holding on to my mother’s hand tightly as we maneuvered the busy wet market. I especially liked the description of “pintu pagar” in the Peranakan household and what was its purpose. “The House of Little Sisters is full of very familiar cultural elements. Through a twist of fate, Ah Mei finds a solution that will keep her and Hassan together, at the same time gaining agency that will secure her own future as an uneducated servant girl in British Malaya. She becomes Hassan’s Polar Star, and the young lovers must find a way to stay together. Ah Mei also meets and falls in love with Hassan Mohamed, an Indian-Muslim and an aspiring poet, breaking every clause in the rule book of love in 1930s British Malaya. Through Ah Lian, Ah Mei discovers the plight of the mui tsai, who are both helpless and powerful, and uncovers a shameful secret lurking in the shadows of the Lee house. There she encounters the spirit of Ah Lian, a mui tsai, who paid the ultimate price for her mistake. At the Lee household, Lim Mei Mei’s life education begins. She has been sold to the family as a mui tsai, an indentured servant girl. It’s August of 1931 in Singapore, sixteen-year-old Lim Mei Mei (Ah Mei) arrives at the home of Eminent Mister Lee on the eve of the Hungry Ghost Month.
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