Pure reading pleasure from start to finish … bitter-sweet, light and delicate as the kebaya, spiced with the tang of sambal belachan.
From the author of the award-winning bestseller Kebaya Tales comes yet another amazing collection featuring the colourful world of the babas and nyonyas. In Sarong Secrets, Su Kim tells more tales of passion and unfulfilled love, of innocence lost, greed and betrayal, of loneliness and the search for a sense of belonging – all of which harken to the unique Peranakan culture, a heritage teetering on the brink of extinction. Filled with humour, wit and vivid details, her compelling stories will delight and excite.
Interspersed amongst her stories are pictures of beautiful sarongs, accessories and artefacts from a unique community renowned for its love of colour and sumptuous material culture.
Lee’s love for the unique multicultural aspects of our country and its myriad cultures prevails in her storytelling. Her tales are more than just stories of the Peranakans; they display a yearning for the nostalgia of a more innocent bygone era. The Malay Mail. (16th January 2014)
Su Kim cocoons each moment with pathos, deftly reminding us that all too often, our lives are truly charted at moments we would much rather forget. The strength of her writing is its gentle but unremitting candour in revealing often painful scenes. Emeric Lau, The Peranakan (2014, Issue 2)
Here is the much awaited sarong match for Nyonya Lee Su Kim’s earlier Kebaya Tales collection of short stories depicting the unique Peranakan lifestyle and culture (2011). It’s as much a must-have complement to the first book as the vibrantly patterned Nyonya batik sarongs from the Javanese trading port of Pekalongan are to the typically delicate Nyonya kebaya blouse. …Lee is at her most powerfully expressive when delicately embroidering the minute details of an authentic Nyonya lifestyle. Options, The Edge (19th May 2014)