Prior to Looking After the Ashes, the author penned the self-help book Oh, I Thought I was the Only One and its sequel, with the first book being Kopi Soh’s personal attempt at creating and spreading awareness about common psychological issues.Įxplaining that while all three books differed in subject matter, they were nonetheless drawn from Kopi Soh’s own educational background, profession and personal experiences. I wrote to them, attached the first three chapters of my book as a sample, and their associate publisher Nora Nazerene Abu Bakar replied, telling me they were interested in my stories.” “What better legacy than a published book.

Later on, Kopi Soh felt that she wanted to leave a legacy for her son, one that involved sharing with him tales of her Malaysian childhood. So, I began to write down stories to accompany me,” she explained. As mentioned earlier, after migrating, I was homesick a lot. Initially, the manuscript for Looking After the Ashes was written more ‘For My Eyes Only’. I never thought that would happen in my lifetime.

“Publishing under Penguin was a dream come true. My blog was my sanctuary and I guess, perhaps my ‘sharings’ also made people feel less alone”.Īs the nickname stuck, Kopi Soh’s decision to remain anonymous even when publishing Looking After the Ashes was respected by the publisher, Penguin Random House SEA. A coffee and makan place for people to hang out and so it progressed to a point where they started calling me Kopi Soh, a term used to refer to the lady who serves coffee and owns the cafe. “The atmosphere on my blog was very much like a kopitiam. Unsurprisingly, Kopi Soh is as mysterious as her book, as the author operates under a pseudonym and has kept her identity secret for a very long time, beginning with her blog when she migrated years ago.įeeling homesick and lonely, she used her blog to post about Malaysia, and naturally, it attracted a Malaysian readership, which eventually became an online community of sorts. The selection process wasn’t a conscious one, I just let it all pour out of me,” she said when explaining how she selected her stories. In order to respect one another’s culture, we had to first learn what they were. “Growing up in Malaysia, I am also naturally surrounded by Malay and Indian tales, superstitions and taboos. In tandem with the aforementioned, this region of Asia has no shortage of stories concerning the unknown, the shadows in the trees, and the voices in the woods.Ĭollecting tales from her formative, younger years, Malaysian-born author Kopi Soh recently released her third book, Looking After the Ashes that compiles old wives’ tales, taboos and childhood superstitions peddled by adults. AS a melting pot of cultures, ethnicities, beliefs and religion, Malaysia – and the rest of Southeast Asia – has been rich with history for thousands of years, or even longer.

Looking after the ashes kopi soh