the woman who breathed two worlds by selina siak chin yoke

As a Nyonya woman, she expects to run the household, and indeed, her husband although a Chinese man, obliges by giving her his entire salary every month and leaving the household and family finances in her hands. This novel tells us that Chye Hoon is brought up strictly and modestly, in the tradition of Nyonyas, taught to sew well, to cook their intricate dishes, not sent to school, expected to marry young and marry whom her parents choose for her.

We are really champor-champor, a mixture of things. p33Īs Chye Hoon tells her friend in her particular mix of languages typical to so many Baba Nyonyas and indeed to Malaysians at large: She ate with her hands like we did, but several of our dishes surprised her, as did our penchant for drowning vegetable salads in lime juice. She spoke mainly Hokkien, while we spoke more Siamese and Malay. Chye Hoon’s family moved from Songkhla to Penang when she is still quite young, where she discovers there are many types of Baba Nyonyas, the people of mixed race and culture, Malay and Chinese.īefore Penang, I had assumed all Nyonyas and Babas were the same meeting Hooi Peng taught me otherwise. The novel describes the culture of Penang Baba Nyonyas with faithfulness to detail, particularly their culinary aspects.

The first person narrator, the woman of the title is Chye Hoon, second daughter of a Nyonya household in Penang, born in 1878. Better editing would have made this a better read. The novel is not always gripping because there is not a plotline as such Siak seems to be trying to stay faithful to the life-story of her great grandmother, and therefore, sometimes things are related which go nowhere and which don’t necessarily tie back in, but which happened and therefore are included. Siak writes in the first person, but the first person narrator in the novel is actually Siak’s great grandmother whom she never met. However, it turns out that that the second, third and fourth sections (of the five sections of the novel) grow in strength and interest, drawing the reader in, the writing voice growing in confidence and earthy charm. At first, the sentences read rather flatly, pedestrian in their construction, and even the local cadences of the non-English educated (or non-educated) Nyonyas coming across as a little awkwardly rendered.

~ The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds, by Selina Siak Chin Yoke ~

The woman who breathed two worlds by selina siak chin yoke