“I was homesick a lot and in those days I didn’t have access to video calls, plane tickets were not so affordable and international phone calls were super expensive. She was born in Kelantan and grew up in Penang. When she was abroad and missing her family and home in George Town, Penang, Kopi Soh started putting these stories together. They were initially written as her personal recreation. Without a deadline, these stories grew naturally as the author found her momentum. It goes beyond the Malaysian folklore, and offers real-life familial bonds retold with a “creepy” twist. Looking After The Ashes offers a glimpse into a Malaysian Peranakan family's past, with the dialogue and incidents not entirely fictional judging by some of Kopi Soh's inspirations. Looking After The Ashes (published by Penguin Random House SEA) was a project that Kopi Soh had been working on for over a decade, although it was not initially meant for publication.Īpart from writing, she is also a crisis counselor and self-taught artist, who is known for her positive healing doodles. I think this was sort of my father’s version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff,” she says. And secondly, I didn’t want to be caught and never let go. For one, being offered some strange lady’s breast milk was not an appealing thing to me. “The thing is, he never told me which was the right choice! But because of this tale, I dutifully stayed away from the drains for the longest time. Kopi Soh shared her childhood and family memories with KULit Baru, who later translated them into black and white drawings for the book. He said if I made the wrong choice, she would never let me go. “I have memories of my dad warning me that if this infamous lady with humongous breasts who lives in the longkang (drain) were to catch me, she would ask me which one I wanted, the breast with sweet milk or the other one with sour milk. In this book, she recalls many of the taboos and superstitions she grew up with, for example the “Hantu Tek Tek” tale her father used to tell her. Unsurprisingly, this has stuck with her throughout her life, alongside other gems like asking permission from the spirits before relieving yourself behind a bush or by a tree in the forest, or while swimming in the deep blue sea. “I experimented a few times and yes, my ears almost always get cut when I point at the moon and I don’t know why!” she says. Well, Kopi Soh (aka Cheah Swee Lian) still has both her ears but they have felt the wrath of whatever it was she angered, when as a kid, she pointed at the moon.
How many times have we heard from our parents or older relatives not to clip our nails at night, to finish all the rice in your bowl lest you end up with a pockmarked face, or to not point at the moon or risk getting your ears chopped off? Author Kopi Soh’s Looking After The Ashes might be a work of fiction, but for readers who grew up with the superstitions, old wives’ tales and stories mentioned in this book, it will feel like home.
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