AN Ealing author has published a book on the experiences of Southeast Asian women in a changing world more than 100 years ago.
Missy Big Bungalow tells the story of author Jean Brewster's grandmother as European men arrived in Siam and Malaya from 1900.
This, however, is told from an Asian woman’s point of view.
Chalerm, poor but beautiful and resourceful, resolves from the age of 15 to escape poverty, by becoming the paramour of a Dane, then a Scot. Marriage is out of the question.
She lives a fairy-tale life, hence her nickname, Missy Big Bungalow. However, that comfortable existence is later punctuated by dark episodes, especially after the Japanese occupy Malaya in 1942.
By war’s end, although a survivor, she’s bitter and disillusioned.
https://troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/missy-big-bungalow
