THE PERANAKANNyonya Lee Su Kim shares the personal insights gained through crafting her debut novel, ‘Run, My Daughters, Run’
January 1942 – I was just seventeen when they came. Battle-hardened, sun-baked men with stocky physiques and eyes that could have passed for Chinese, except they didn’t speak Chinese. It was a foreign language – a strange guttural tongue which came out in bursts of anger, invective-loaded spats, punctuated by blows and kicks, and at times, the steely cold edge of a sword on one’s neck.
This is how my debut novel begins. In 2021, stuck at home in the second year of lockdown, with the pandemic still raging, I decided it was time to take up that challenge – to attempt a novel. Something I had not given much serious thought to for the longest time, an undefined shadow hovering on my bucket list because it was too bold, too challenging a dream.
Just how on earth does one go about writing a novel? A terrifying prospect. The only way to find out was to start writing one. Now, five years later, it is finally completed.
‘Run, My Daughters, Run’ is inspired by the stories told by my late mother, in her early twenties in 1942 when the Japanese forces occupied British Malaya and Singapore. She lived with her family in a bungalow in the heart of Kuala Lumpur. Harrowing tales of how Japanese soldiers came knocking on the door looking for young girls to serve as “comfort women”, how she and her three teenage sisters had to disguise themselves as boys, how they had to flee and hide from the Kempeitai raids, and how her parents had to use all their wits and wiles to protect them and to survive.
My mother was a great storyteller (right)
Sa Ee, my Third Aunt, 99 years old this year, was an important source, spinning out factual details and snippets of everyday life during that era, her long-term memory simply astounding. More insights came from friends and acquaintances, all in their 80s and 90s – some shared fragments of memories of a time long past, some recounted vivid details, all seemed very pleased, that finally, here was an interest, a documenting of their stories of a painful era which nobody wanted to talk about, which everyone wanted to forget and bury.
Mama and Aunty Guat pose in samfoos (left)
Set against the harrowing backdrop of the Japanese Occupation of Malaya, the story follows a Baba household in Kuala Lumpur, as they struggle to survive a brutal new reality. It is told through the eyes of a young 17-year-old Nyonya, whose dreams of further education are upended, interspersed with perspectives from her mother, a feisty, indomitable matriarch. The head of the family is Baba Henry Lee, whose character is inspired by my own father: kind, brave and strong; a man of few words.
Whilst the setting is wartime, it is not a gory, ghoulish tale, but one of resilience, courage, twists and turns of fate, secrets, and even love, told with touches of dark humour. There are nuances of life in a Peranakan household, cultural insights, whiffs of the supernatural, flamboyant colourful personalities, and references to Nyonya food which inevitably crop up in the narrative.
After five years of writing, reworking, editing and creating a world of my own, it is time to let go. I loved visiting this world in words, spinning in my head every day, with characters tenderly and lovingly created. It is hard to let go but it is time to share my work for the world to read!
‘Run My Daughters Run’ will be launched at the Baba Nyonya Literary Festival, 25-26 July 2026 at the National Museum of Singapore. The launch will take place after the panel session ‘Voices of Peranakan Women: Stories, Memories and Legacies’ on 26th July, Day 2. This debut novel will be on sale at the Literary Festival, and Su Kim will be available for book-signing.
Su Kim’s debut novel will be on sale to the general public from 1st August. In Singapore, the book will be available at Kinokuniya, Popular, Book Bar, Littered with Books, Amazon Singapore, Epigram Books (online) and other major bookstores. The price in Singapore is S$22.90 (inclusive of 9% GST).
Dr. Lee Su Kim is a bestselling, award-winning Malaysian author and cultural activist. A sixth-generation Nyonya from Kuala Lumpur, she is the author of a trilogy of short stories on the Babas and Nyonyas: Kebaya Tales: Of Matriarchs, Maidens, Mistresses and Matchmakers; Sarong Secrets: Of Love, Loss and Longing; and Manek Mischiefs: Of Patriarchs, Playboys and Paramours. She is also the author of two nonfiction bestsellers – Malaysian Flavours: Insights into Things Malaysian’ and Manglish: Malaysian English at its Wackiest’. Su Kim is a founding member and the Founding President of the Peranakan Baba Nyonya Association of KL and Selangor, 2005-2014 (PPBNKLS). She was the Chair of the Organising Committee of the inaugural KL Baba-Nyonya International Convention in 2013.
