November 15, 2017 · 12:38

Ruminations on Food 1: Malaysians & Food

Hello again, it’s great to be back! I know I’ve been away for a while. I promise I’ve been busy! At one point I was writing so many publicity articles that everything blurred, and I didn’t know my right hand from my left. In between radio interviews – the highlight of which was my appearance on the BBC World Service – and speaking engagements, I was mad enough to carry on writing my third novel.

Thankfully there was a spurt of rest, when I took a short trip to Malaysia for a family celebration. That’s where the idea for this series of blog-posts came from – because as usual, I ate copious amounts. And with the trip lasting only 10 days, the eating was intense.

In fact, after 6 nights of dining out like crazy my partner announced: ‘You haven’t seen drama until you’ve watched a group of Malaysian-Chinese discussing menu choices.’

When I thought about it, I realised she had a point. There’s always a kerfuffle at the start, when we’re still trying to decide what to order. In a Malaysian-Chinese restaurant you don’t place your order with an ordinary mortal, such as a waiter or waitress, no! You summon the head waitress herself. This head waitress is usually a middle-aged woman who has worked her way up the ranks. She knows everything about the menu and how things should be cooked, and makes recommendations accordingly.

Of course, diners around the table – who are invariably food connoisseurs – will have their own ideas. The result is operatic drama, lasting a good 10 minutes on average, during which we talk about which soup to have, which type of poultry, what fish, should we order another seafood dish or another meat dish, what about vegetables and which ones – all before we’ve even come to the finicky point of how each dish should be cooked.

The discussion takes place in one or other Chinese dialect, in our case Cantonese. This means that the conversation is loud: we Chinese are noisy when we’re excited, and we’re always excited where food is concerned. Everyone around the table chips in, sometimes all at once. Ideas are tossed about and there’s much to-ing and fro-ing, especially when it comes to cooking methods, since the conversation often gets down to precisely how the fish will be steamed. In the heat of those moments, the difference between silver pomfrets and black pomfrets seems a matter of life and death.

It Took Us a Long Time to Choose You!

The conversation is always full of passion, it’s never a competition of egos. Everyone truly wants the best possible version of any dish we’ve ordered – that’s what we’ve gone for, after all. And because there is so much outstanding food in Malaysia, people have lots to say.

Apparently, the two groups who spend most time talking about food are the Malaysians and the French. (A verbal anecdote I heard somewhere.) The French, I’m sure, regard themselves as foodies, but having spent a good chunk of time in France I have news for them: we Malaysians are even bigger foodies. And we love all food – not just Malaysian food.

We’re totally obsessed, you see. I believe that this obsession, for Malaysian-Chinese at least, must stem from some primeval fear of famine. Not so long ago – as recently as my childhood – we would greet one another with ‘Have you eaten yet?’ instead of ‘How are you?’ If you had a full stomach, it was assumed that you were well; how could it be otherwise?

A Queue for Moon Cakes

For us, fear of hunger is ingrained. Even though we now live in Malaysia, a country so fertile that a seed only has to drop to grow, and despite having lived here for several generations, we still behave as if we might starve tomorrow. Because who knows, there might just be a war, right, as happened in When the Future Comes Too Soon?

Therefore, we go to great lengths to discuss what to have for lunch while munching our breakfast, what to eat for dinner before we’ve finished lunch, and so on. Our meals are mapped out days in advance. We will battle traffic and thunderstorm; we will drive miles for the sake of the juiciest mangoes, the freshest fish and the best moon cakes. In case you’re wondering what these look like, the photos below were what the people above queued for.

Moon Cakes: Were They Worth the Wait?

Some street food vendors have become so wealthy, they’ve sent their children to study overseas. This is what my protagonist does in The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds. One American reader who reviewed the book was sceptical that this could ever happen – she obviously doesn’t know Malaysia.

Potential famine aside, food is wonderful because it’s safe. There’s nothing controversial about satay or fried chicken or soupy noodles. No one will criticise you for posting photos of your lunch on Facebook; in return, you can comment on your friends’ dinner meals and everyone is happy.

Delicious Noodles: Soupy and Safe!

There’s little doubt that Malaysians love food, but there’s also little doubt that we prefer avoiding conflict. Who doesn’t? It’s a question of the lengths to which we will go.

If our talented cartoonist, Zunar, stuck to drawing happy scenes of Malaysians chomping through plates of nasi lemak, he wouldn’t be suffering from a travel ban today. At present he can’t even come to London for an upcoming exhibition at the Westminster Reference Library, one that has been organised by the UK’s organisation of professional cartoonists and suitably called Gagged – all because he dares lampoon our esteemed Prime Minister.

Zunar’s Tweet: He’ll be on Skype

Of course, strong democratic societies were not built by avoiding inconvenient discussion. Sometimes, conflict will result – this can’t be helped. There’s no other way. Democracy is about speaking up and trying to reach accommodation, especially if we disagree with one another. If we don’t find our voices, food itself could become a political tool.

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July 18, 2017 · 09:56

Publication Day!

It’s publication day again! I’m really excited that my second novel, When the Future Comes Too Soon, is out today – July 18, 2017!

I dedicated When the Future Comes Too Soon to my late maternal grandmother, Chang Kim Eng. More than anyone else, she bore the brunt of my curiosity about the war and Japanese occupation. I know how much she shared with me because on my last visit to my parents’ house, my mother dug out sheets of notes in my childish handwriting, which must have been taken during one of the many conversations I had with my grandmother.

She passed away in 1993, when I was already in England and did not get the chance to say goodbye. While writing this novel, I thought a lot about her and about grandparents everywhere, who have so much to offer younger generations. Unfortunately they usually leave this world before we have the chance to have truly meaningful conversations with them. Much of what my grandmother told me, I was too young to understand at the time. I console myself by imagining how proud she would be today.

When the Future Comes Too Soon is an emotional story of a woman trying to save herself and her family in a time of war. It blends the exotic setting of Japanese-occupied Malaya with eternal questions that cross cultures and time. The following comment from an early reader has really touched me:

“…this should be read by women who have felt silenced. Silenced by fate, by bad company, by circumstance. I was moved to crying twice while reading it, and that is not something that often happens.” (From the book blogger with the wonderful moniker of Literary Dust).

As part of the publicity campaign for this new book, I’ll be interviewed on British and European radio and will appear in newspapers, magazines and blogs! I will also be meeting with book groups in London, where I live; in New York City which I’ll be visiting in October; and in Orlando, Florida in December. If you belong to a book and/or women’s group and would like to meet me, please contact my publicist Angelle Barbazon at JKS Communications (Angelle@jkscommunications.com). You can also get in touch via the Contact Form on my website www.siakchinyoke.com.

If you haven’t pre-ordered your book, here are some of the outlets selling it:

Amazon USA                      Amazon UK             Book Depository

Barnes & Noble                 Foyles                        Kinokuniya

And after reading, please do leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. Even a few words would mean a lot to me. Happy reading, and stay tuned for details about my future media appearances!

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June 23, 2017 · 18:16

Less Than Four Weeks to Publication

In less than four weeks my second novel, When the Future Comes Too Soon, will be published! And I can tell you that publication is as exciting a prospect the second time round, and in some ways even more challenging!

When the Future Comes Too Soon is set during the Japanese occupation of British Malaya and continues where my debut novel, The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds, left off. Like the first book, this sequel is fictional. No character is real. But since the characters reflect ordinary Malayans, they go through experiences that many in the country would have gone through. This was my intent: to show what happened through the eyes of an Asian family.

You may think that things are easier for an author on her second book. Believe it or not, they aren’t! On a debut novel no one knows what to expect, but I now feel the burden of expectations. I want readers to love this second book as much as they loved the first, and am terrified they may not.

Secondly, because I have publicists on both sides of the Atlantic working to promote When the Future Comes Too Soon, I’m busier than ever. The more publicity that JKS Communications and Midas PR generate, the more work I have to do! In case you’re wondering how this works, here’s the two-sentence elevator summary. The job of book publicists is to promote books, and they do this by speaking to journalists and media editors in order to land people like me – the authors whom they represent – media slots: in newspapers and magazines, on radio shows and TV programmes, and on blogs. Each slot they succeed in getting me requires preparation, in some cases many hours of work (for instance, when I’m invited to contribute articles). I’m not complaining: this is a great problem to have! But the juggling that’s required is not that different to what I had to do in the business world. At present, while promoting this second novel I’m continuing to promote the first novel and to write the third novel at the same time. Between all of that and trying to retain some sanity, there are simply not enough hours in a day!

For me, When the Future Comes Too Soon was an emotionally charged work. Like many Malaysians, when I was growing up I heard a lot about the Japanese occupation. Each time my maternal grandmother visited us, I would pester her to tell me more stories. I somehow had a sense of unfinished business, that what happened during the war has lingered and we in Malaysia have still not fully come to terms with the wounds. I felt this even more intensely while writing When the Future Comes Too Soon. It’s a book that means a huge amount to me, and I really hope you’ll like it.

You’ve already seen the book’s front cover; below I share its back cover, too.

The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds is the first book in The Malayan Series, but if you haven’t read it yet, don’t worry! Although When the Future Comes Too Soon is the second book in the same series, it can be read on its own. This was exactly what the two prominent authors who praised the book did. Maria Duenas and Musharraf Ali Farooqi read this second book without reading the first and had no trouble following the story.

In less than four weeks, you can read When the Future Comes Too Soon! Meanwhile, if you’re a Goodreads subscriber, please add the book to your To Read shelf. Your feedback after reading the book – thoughts and feelings, questions raised – would all be very welcome! Needless to say your review, whether on Amazon or Goodreads or even your blog, if you have one, would be very much appreciated.

Please pre-order from the outlets below:

Amazon USA                        Amazon UK              Book Depository
Barnes & Noble                  Waterstones             Kinokuniya

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May 31, 2017 · 17:23

I Have a Dream

Martin Luther King once began: ‘I have a dream…’

I, too, have a dream. In my dream racial discrimination in Malaysia is a thing of the past. In this dream my homeland, Malaysia, has transformed into a country known for good governance. In my dream Malaysia is a beacon: a multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural country in which I, though largely of Chinese descent, am treated as an equal citizen.

With each passing day this dream recedes further into the abyss. Racial discrimination in Malaysia is now entrenched. The country’s governance gets from bad to worse. And its list of scandals grows longer.

When it comes to corruption, Malaysia competes well with the likes of China and Mexico – a staggering feat for a country of only 30 million. According to Global Financial Integrity, the developing countries with the largest illicit outflows between 2001 and 2010 were China, Mexico and Malaysia. No surprise, then, that US$1.2 billion found their way into the Prime Minister’s personal bank account in the scandal known as 1MDB. How such an astounding amount arrived there is something which Najib Razak, Malaysia’s Prime Minister, has still not explained properly, yet the man remains Prime Minister and looks unlikely to be deposed!

Hand-in-hand with corruption have come increasing Muslim fundamentalism and concomitant attacks on religious freedom, the latter always carried out under the guise of ‘protecting Muslims’. Several years ago the word ‘Allah’ was proscribed for use by non-Muslims when referring to God. Emboldened by this poisonous atmosphere, extremists have attacked churches, cast aspersions on the adherents of other religions, and routinely made racist comments that would not be tolerated in a civilised country. These disturbing trends date back years. The culprits behave with impunity and with the connivance of the ruling political party – the United Malays National Organisation – or UMNO. This party, which has ruled Malaysia since independence in 1957, uses Islam as an electoral tool with which to acquire the Muslim vote.

A new low was reached recently. Now activists have begun to disappear. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) finally took note and placed Malaysia on its Tier 2 list, alongside such luminaries of religious freedom as Afghanistan, Cuba and Turkey.

How did Malaysia, a once tolerant and moderate country, get to this point?

First, if we strip everything away, I believe the crux of Malaysia’s problems lies in something we are not supposed to discuss: its racist policies. The country’s descent has been gradual. But the slide actually began a long time ago – with the principle that not all Malaysians are created equal.

The idea that some Malaysians, namely, those of us who are ethnically Chinese or Indian, are somehow ‘squatting’ on land that rightfully belongs to Malays is pernicious but long-standing. I first heard the idea expressed in Mahathir Mohamad’s infamous book ‘The Malay Dilemma’. In the blog-post Where is Home? I describe how being called a squatter made me feel. By 1973 when I learnt about Mahathir’s book, the concept had already been codified into so-called affirmative action policies with no time limitation. The beneficiaries are a special breed of Malaysian, one who deserves extra rights, not through merit or because of need, but because the ancestors of this type of Malaysian arrived in the country earlier. The logic is so spurious that a special term had to be invented: bumiputera, or the prince/princes of the earth. (See The Malaysia We’ve Lost.)

Imagine the first pilgrims to the United States calling themselves the ‘princes of the earth’ and giving themselves and their descendants ‘special rights’, over and above those enjoyed by all the other waves of immigrants who helped build America. Bumiputera ‘rights’ in Malaysia are eye-watering; they include: entitlement to a disproportionate share of university places, discounted property, quotas in government departments, 30% equity stakes in companies and government scholarships. At one point, there were even universities reserved for bumiputera! This has been the situation in Malaysia since the 1970s, when the concept of the bumiputera was written into government policy.

The question of who is a bumiputera is a minefield, because there are people who are truly indigenous to Malaysia. Even in the Malay language they are called Orang Asli, or the original people. Naturally Orang Asli have bumiputera status, though this is more lip service. The crucial point is that Malaysians of Malay ethnicity, who are believed to have come to Malaysia from Yunnan in southern China and more recently from India and Indonesia, are all deemed to be bumiputera.

Why is this important? To start with, there is the issue of moral dubiety. In Malaysia it’s well-known that part of Mahathir Mohamad’s own family came from India. Ergo, the man who calls me a squatter in The Malay Dilemma is himself squatting on land which belongs to Malaysia’s original people, the Orang Asli. Then, there is the groundswell of resentment which the creation of the bumiputera has caused. How can you have a unified nation with such blatantly racist policies? The answer is that you can’t. A million Malaysians have left. I am part of that exodus. I left with a heavy heart – and anyone who has read The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds will know that my love for Malaysia remains strong.

What do you think happens when a government tells one section of its populace – the bumiputera – that its members have rights over and above others? It’s almost inevitable that those who are mollycoddled become spoilt. They start to feel as if they’re above the law and can do whatever they want.

Worse than that, dishing out special rights anaesthesises those who are privileged – in this case, the bumiputera population, the Malay recipients who form the country’s majority. UMNO, the ruling party, has been purchasing their acquiescence for decades and in so doing, has fundamentally distorted the democratic process. For as long as a majority in the electorate is numbed by handouts, UMNO can do whatever it wants.

Except… it’s now harder, even for UMNO. After nearly sixty years in power there is discontent, especially among urban Malays. UMNO’s excesses have become so electrifying, they’ve hit world attention. Part of its electorate is restless. Some bumiputeras recognise the harm which Malaysia’s racist policies have done. A columnist, Wan Saiful Wan Jan (a bumiputera), with two friends (also bumiputera), began the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) several years ago. In a recent article, Wan Saiful pointed out the immorality of Malaysia’s bumiputera policy. ‘Why not then steal from the rich and give to the poor?’ he wrote rhetorically.

Wan Saiful should be applauded. No one else has had the guts to be as blunt. He and groups like IDEAS and Bersih (the group that is fighting for clean, fair elections) – and all the people campaigning for an open, progressive Malaysia – must be supported.

And here’s the second part of my answer: Malaysia did not arrive at this point by accident. We Malaysians have allowed it to happen. We have allowed it through our collusion and our silence, and by our refusal to venture outside of our comfort zone. When I was growing up, how many times did I hear a fellow Malaysian-Chinese say, ‘Ai-yahh, why bother with politics? Let’s just make money-lah…’

Fast forward to 2017, when we can see where such attitudes have led us. Malaysia is poised at a crossroads, and what I hear now is a lot of grumbling. Mutterings too, along the lines of, ‘What’s the point? I can’t do anything. I’m not bumiputera.’

In this way, all blame is passed on to the bumiputera, as if we do not bear collective responsibility for the state of our country. As if our national obsession with food, gossip and shopping, to the exclusion of much else, is not a contributory factor. I know I’m guilty, too. I took the easy option and left, instead of staying on to fight. I now do what I can, by supporting Bersih and IDEAS and all the people who are willing to stand up for a better Malaysia. I also write. Both in this blog and in the novels forming The Malayan Series, which will carry on after the second book, When the Future Comes Too Soon, is published this summer. Fiction is a powerful tool, one which I intend to use. (Foreign readers don’t need to know anything about Malaysia. The Malayan Series is first and foremost an epic family saga, a story about people. What happens will be experienced through the characters themselves.)

There are plenty of Malaysians who tell me, ‘Malaysia is still a good place to live.’ And then they ask what I can find elsewhere that I can’t have in Malaysia.

Here are a few of the things I enjoy in the West. Equality in the law. The chance to compete on merit. A vote which counts. And when things aren’t right, I have the ability to protest, to get things changed. Anyone who has read The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds will understand that I have not been brainwashed by the West. No human system is perfect; both Britain and America have flaws.

Within the cracks of their flaws, however, lies a gem: the cliché known as freedom. In the West, I have the freedom to be whoever I want and to live my life exactly as I choose. This is so precious and priceless that once experienced, is almost impossible to give up.

To those who say that Malaysia is still a great place to live in, I have the following questions.

  • Do you think this is the country our predecessors fought for in 1957?
  • Is today’s Malaysia really the country you want to see?
  • Does this Malaysia make you proud?
  • And what are you going to do about it?

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April 18, 2017 · 15:51

When the Future Comes Too Soon

I’m thrilled to announce that my second novel, When the Future Comes Too Soon, will be published on July 18, 2017, by Amazon Crossing! The book’s stunning front cover is below.

This is the second book in The Malayan Series, but it is a stand-alone novel; in fact, all the books in the series will be stand-alone. In other words, every one of them can be read independently – you need not have read The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds before being able to enjoy this latest book!

In When the Future Comes Too Soon, Malaya is at war and occupied by the Japanese. The story follows an ordinary, middle-class family – the Wong family – through the three and a half years when their country is turned upside down. The narrator, Wong Mei Foong, who is a young woman on the eve of the Japanese invasion, must find ways to survive with her husband and their five children. For those who’ve read The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds, Mei Foong is the first daughter-in-law of the matriarch in that previous novel.

Every Malaysian family has its own memories of the Japanese era. As a child, I was fascinated by that period and clamoured to hear my family’s stories. I devoured these tales without fully understanding their implications, and it was only while writing this second novel that I have come to appreciate how profoundly Japan’s occupation of Malaya changed our country.

This novel means a huge amount to me, so I’m pleased that the book has already received accolades from leading authors. Here’s what María Dueñas, who wrote the New York Times bestselling The Time in Between, has said about When the Future Comes Too Soon:

“Selina Siak Chin Yoke has created an intensely visceral evocation of life in Malaya during World War II, when a young wife and her family confront the harshness of life under the Japanese occupation and the ethnic polarization it causes. Mei Foong is a hauntingly original character, torn between loyalty to her family and the risk of betrayal — a woman who fatefully defies the constricting conventions of her society.”

And from Man Asian Literary Prize-shortlisted Musharraf Ali Farooqi, author of Between Clay and Dust, has come the following praise:

“As Malayan society grapples with the changes brought on by war and occupation, Mei Foong barters away pieces of her existence in order to survive, and rebuild and reclaim her life. She must finally contend with the realization that one could only wholly reclaim oneself by acts of self assertion requiring greater courage than needed merely to survive. When the Future Comes Too Soon by Selina Siak Chin Yoke is an intricately drawn network of human relationships.”

Some of you must be wondering how it is that my second novel is coming so quickly! My literary agent, Thomas Colchie in New York, spent nearly two years looking for a publisher for my first manuscript, but when Thomas agreed to work with me, he knew I was planning a series. Naturally, he advised me to start writing the second book while he continued searching for a publisher for the first work.

I had already completed two drafts of When the Future Comes Too Soon when Thomas came bearing the sort of message every aspiring author wants to hear. At that point, I had to stop writing – life just became too exciting! As the process of preparing my debut novel for publication got underway, I went back to my second manuscript and continued polishing it.

When I finally felt that it was ready to be shown to the world, I sent it off to Thomas and his wife, Elaine, who approves all the manuscripts that pass through their literary agency. I cannot tell you how nervous I was! This second novel is quite different – necessarily so, since the country is ravaged by privation – and I had no idea how anyone would react. When Elaine’s response came through one night, I had to calm myself before daring to open her email. I then walked on air for the next few days because she told me how much she loved it.

And it is thanks to you, dear readers, who gave my debut novel – The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds – such heart-warming reviews, that Amazon Crossing quickly made an offer on the second manuscript and is bringing the finished book to you as early as they can. I hope you adore the front cover as much as I do – it presents a powerful image, as vivid as the first. For this superb art work, I must once again thank the entire design and production team at Amazon Crossing, plus the artist, David Drummond, and of course my editor, Elizabeth DeNoma.

There are now three months to go before publication. Am I nervous? Absolutely. Excited, but nervous, too; I’ve poured so much of myself into this book. I really hope that you, the reader, will like it. When the Future Comes Too Soon is already available for pre-order. Below is a selection of links you can use.

 

Amazon USA              Amazon UK                Book Depository

Barnes & Noble         Waterstones              Kinokuniya MY

 

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February 28, 2017 · 17:35

Ipoh is Among Top 10 Places to Visit in Asia!

Last year Lonely Planet, the world’s largest publisher of travel guide books, discovered my hometown. And its reviewer was charmed. Ipoh, the town in which my debut novel – The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds – takes place, was duly placed 6th in the publisher’s Asian destinations to visit in 2017!

There was special mention for Ipoh’s food, which has long been a favourite with Malaysia’s many foodies. One of Ipoh‘s specialities is bean sprouts and yes, I do mean that quirky-looking vegetable with a whitish stem and yellow head! Ipoh’s bean sprouts are special: fatter and crispier and therefore tastier.beansprouts

I’m told that this is because they are fed the limestone-infused water from the hills which my heroine, Chye Hoon, loved. Whatever the reason, Ipoh’s bean sprouts are so good that I once wrote a blog-post about them. Naturally, I was thrilled that Lonely Planet mentioned bean sprouts and good old Lou Wong, one of my favourite coffee shops.

lou-wong-from-outside

Lou Wong is an institution, a bit like the town’s Padang (the large field around which our British occupiers built their administrative offices. I had to explain this to the copyeditor when he tried to reduce ‘Padang’ to a small ‘p’). Like some of Malaysia’s best eating places, Lou Wong doesn’t look like much from the outside. But they serve delicious food! In case you doubted it, they have a sign telling you what they specialise in.

It’s not as if you need it, since the only things visible are barrels of bean sprouts (I kid you not) and arrays of chickens strung up, ready for the cleaver. a-tub-of-bean-sprouts

The chicken is steamed, the bean sprouts blanched, both are then doused in plenty of soya sauce and sesame oil, garnished with finely chopped spring onions and eaten with aromatic steamed rice or in a noodle soup. Simple and stunningly good! Lou Wong remains an old-style coffee shop, cooled only by ceiling fans and with relatively clean, tiled floors of light blue octagons interspersed with darker blue squares. The waiters move around in casual T shirts, sometimes fat-splattered, adding up your bill in their heads. I invariably eat more than I should. Once, the waiter who was totting up the bill stared in astonishment. ‘Wahh!’ he cried out, not believing his luck. ‘Three persons, eat so much!’ The same waiter is still there, and he smiles each time he sees me.chickens-being-chopped

Ipoh has more than food, of course. It was built on tin and is one of Malaysia’s most historical cities. Therein lies the rub: the town, created to serve British colonial interests, was built largely through Chinese effort – a fact which the Malaysian government does not like acknowledging. For years the most historical part of Ipoh, called Old Town, was left dormant. Beautiful shophouses became dilapidated and decayed. Ipoh’s recent renaissance – through private initiative, not the government’s largesse – is one of the reasons why the town has been noticed by Lonely Planet.

This is heartening to see. I would love for Ipoh, especially its old historical quarter, to thrive again. The limestone hills are still there, of course, fluffy as ever, as are many of the places I wrote about in The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds: the cave temples; Concubine Street, the narrow alley where the towkays, the business bosses, kept their mistresses(which has a real name of Jalan Panglima, or Panglima Road); the sturdy missionary schools; the Padang (large field); the railway station and other colonial buildings.

In my last post, I said that I would be putting up images of old Ipoh on my website www.siakchinyoke.com. I’ve now done this: if you’d like to have an idea of what some of the above places looked like in Chye Hoon’s day, go to the Chye Hoon’s World page of my site and click on the top left window. The images there are from vintage postcards given to me by my highly imaginative partner.

One of my dreams with the Malayan Series – as my publisher Amazon Crossing has called this historical fiction series – is to help put Malaysia and my hometown of Ipoh on the map. Many readers have said that they knew nothing about Malaysia before, and now they feel they’ve been there. One even wrote that “if I ever make it to Malaysia, this book will be a huge reason why” (referring to The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds). My message is simple: visit Malaysia! And make sure you go to Ipoh. If you’d like, you can ask me what to see! Who knows, there may eventually be tours around the places which Chye Hoon haunted.

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January 25, 2017 · 18:56

My New Website

Hello everyone! As promised in a video message late last year, I’ve had a website created – www.siakchinyoke.com – to give you more information about me and my books and also to (hopefully) answer some of the questions you’ve asked. There’s a page – Chye Hoon’s World – which is intended to help you explore the world my protagonist inhabited. As I’m continuing work on the Malayan Series, I’m afraid I’m only going to be able to populate this page very gradually; please bear with me…

Over time, I hope to include

  • Images of old Ipoh, with a focus on places mentioned in The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds;
  • Information about the cooking ingredients Chye Hoon would have used;
  • Photographs of the other mouth-watering Malaysian dishes she prepared;
  • A look at Nyonya attire, jewellery, shoes, practices and anything else you want to see!

Please take a few minutes to browse through the pages that are already up and let me know what you think! You can send a message via the website. I’d love to hear from you!

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December 19, 2016 · 11:07

My Second Book is on its Way!

This is a short post to let you know that the second book in the Malayan Series will be published during the summer of 2017. (And yes, I’m referring to the northern summer!)

At this time, I can’t give you the exact publication date nor can I reveal the book’s title, though there is one. What I can say is that the sequel to the multi-generational family saga begun in The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds (Book #1 in The Malayan Series) will continue to follow the Wong family, so that anyone who has read my debut novel will recognise many of the characters. The characters themselves, however, are about to enter a world which nothing in their experience could have prepared them for.

Stay tuned! There will be further news early in 2017, as well as the chance to pre-order! On that high note, I will sign off for this year and wish you all Season’s Greetings, be it Happy Hanukkah or Merry Christmas or simply the very best in the year ahead.

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December 7, 2016 · 23:16

Video Messages to Tempt You With!

In this short blog-post I’ll share two videos of me. Those of you who also follow me on Twitter or my Facebook Author Page may already have seen these – they were shot in my home library. The first video is a simple but heart-felt Thank You to people who’ve already read and loved The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds, my debut novel (Book #1 in the Malayan Series) which follows the life of a courageous woman in British Malaya.

In the second video, I read a short excerpt from the book. Family, food, friendship and identity are key themes and this video contains pictures of the delicious kueh (or cakes in Malay) that are integral to the story, as well as images of old Ipoh, the town in which the story is set. Thank you to Cafe Rasa in Stratford, London, for supplying the kueh shown and to Dr. Ho Tak Ming for allowing us to use images from his book about Ipoh, When Tin Was King.

If you haven’t yet read The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds, I hope these videos will spur you on!

Order now at:

Amazon USA     Barnes & Noble USA     Amazon UK     Waterstones UK     Kinokuniya MY     Kinokuniya SG

Thank you for watching and for reading!

NB At the time of writing, all the above stores have my book in stock.

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November 28, 2016 · 17:10

Malaysia’s Rubicon Moment

On Saturday a leading political cartoonist, Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque, better known as Zunar, was detained under Malaysia’s draconian Sedition Act. He had been participating at the George Town Literary Festival, arguably the country’s best-known lit-fest. Zunar was arrested for criticising Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak. This is presumably to set an example: look what happens when you dare call a spade a spade! Zunar’s arrest has made international news, but what is less well-known is that he was also punched up beforehand by stooges of Malaysia’s dominant political party, UMNO, the United Malay National Organisation.

Zunar’s arrest is part of a string of troubling developments in Malaysia. The previous week, the chairwoman of a civil rights group, Bersih, was also arrested. Bersih (which means ‘Clean’ in Malay) has been campaigning for basic democratic rights for several years. Rights such as:

Free and fair elections. Clean government. The right to dissent.

Daring to demand an end to corruption is too much for the Malaysian government. After all, its raison d’être now is to cling on to power (and the nation’s coffers) by whatever means it can. Bersih’s chairwoman, Maria Chin Abdullah, was thus held in solitary detention – without charge, I might add – and not allowed to see her lawyer or family for a week. She has now been released, but not before the Malaysian police promised to crack down on people participating in vigils to have her freed.

Before Maria Chin Abdullah was detained, she had actually been threatened with ISIS-style decapitation. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism is a troubling trend in Malaysia – a trend on which the supposedly moderate government has remarkably little to say. Indeed, there was yet another attempt last week to table a bill in Parliament that could pave the way to hand-chopping in Malaysia. In principle, the bill was not the government’s and is supposed to apply only to one particular state in the country, but these are beside the point. The rubicon of hand-chopping, if crossed, will have consequences for the entire country and each and every Malaysian.

I left Malaysia many years ago. In the Malaysia I knew, a law proposing the chopping off of limbs as punishment would have been unthinkable. This is the country I want to remind Malaysians of in the books which will form The Malayan Series. I’m no fan of British colonialism – anyone who has read The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds will realise that – but there was undoubtedly a degree of tolerance in previous days which has been deliberately leached away.

Malaysia has turned into a country I barely recognise. It is now a place in which, as soon as you criticise the government, you’re either beaten up or threatened with death. It is a country where protest demanding good governance is viewed as a threat to government and if you have the courage to voice any discontent, you’re told, “If you don’t like it, leave.”

Is this the Malaysia we want?

It’s not the country I want, which is why I will do what I can to remind people about the Malaysia we’ve lost. It’s also why I will support those who are fighting for a secular, pluralistic, more inclusive Malaysia.

There are people who say that it’s already too late. I don’t believe this: it is never too late to change. There are other Malaysians like me, as this sane letter shows. The longer we leave it, though, the more entrenched attitudes will become and the harder change will be. It is up to us Malaysians: no one else can do the hard work for us. The Malaysia of tomorrow will reflect what we today are doing, or not, as the case may be.

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