A rich reading experience -Shoma Mittra reviews 'The White Amah'

It was raining thick sheets of water. The sound was deafening as it hit the tiled roofs and slid heavily through the gutters into the ground. As I made my third cup of coffee that day, I was longing for a good book I could dig into, curl up in my favourite chair and lose myself in another world. It took me only a few minutes to find and download The White Amah on the Kindle and I was set…

The White Amah by Anne Massey weaves a tale around three women connected by a single mistake. Like a haunting melody that peaks and troughs, this book has some stunning writing without being trite. It will take you traipsing through the night life of Singapore, launch you into the deep rain forests of Borneo and scoop you up and put you down in the streets of London.

Tuff is a chartbusting pop singer with a dubious past. She has created a carefully contrived image around her persona and the public are ga-ga over her every move. But when confronted with some unpalatable truths from her past, Tuff loses her cool and makes one wrong move which will prove to be very costly for her.

Seventeen years earlier, a young Australian called Crystal Brooke finds herself abandoned in the big bad world in Singapore. Her dreams of becoming a pop star come crashing down when she finds that she is pregnant. There is no question about returning back to her family in Australia. Crystal knows that her father would never accept her. Frightened and alone, there is only one option – Crystal puts her baby up for adoption. The infant is adopted by an expat family in Malaysia. The couple engage an amah (nanny) to look after the baby, Mei-Li. Rubiah, the amah is herself a young girl and although she loves and cares for the baby, her sights are set on a good life. ‘Good life’ comes in the form of nightly visits from her employer who piles her with gifts and baubles –until the wife finds out. Then all hell breaks loose and the expat dumps Rubiah and flees the country with his wife. Rubiah is left holding a baby she doesn’t want. She realises that she is only a young girl herself and her dreams of a slick city life with all the riches will remain a distant dream if she has an infant in tow. So Rubiah takes the baby to her native village in a remote rain forest jungle in Borneo where she leaves Mei Li under the care of her parents and returns to the city to make a life for herself.

In the deep forests, Mei Li is brought up as a traditional Dayak tribal woman. She has no ambition except to lead a good peaceful life in the jungle she loves. But fate has other things in store for her and no one is more surprised than Mei Li at the turn of events which catapults her into an environment she has never dreamed of. She becomes the white amah.

Anne Massey’s book The White Amah plays on many different levels. It is like peeling off the petals from an exotic tightly curled bloom – the more you peel, the tighter are the curls beneath- enticing you to lift yet another layer. Beautiful prose, accompanied by a plot with surprising twists and turns, this book keeps you hooked to the very end. The White Amah shows how much Massey’s work has matured as a writer after the The Biocide Conspiracy which was her first novel.

The White Amah is a treat to read and I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a rich reading experience.


Purchase from http://www.amazon.com/White-Amah-Ann-Massey/dp/1456578065/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

Centuries way of life is on the way out

It is estimated that there are approximately 100 tribes still living as hunter gathers, mainly in Brazil, Peru, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

But these stone-age people are in grave danger of being forced off their land by multi-national timber logging companies that plunder and destroy the precious environmental habitat and centuries old way of life.

In The White Amah by Ann Massey an impoverished Dayak tribe has no chance against a Chinese timber baron. And neither, I fear, does the lost tribe recently discovered in the Amazonian jungles of Brazil.

And the Winner is ...

An ex-pat who lived for 5 years in Miri recalls her adventures and misadventures. In today’s episode, she concludes a recount of life with Jelimah, a teenage Iban amah.

I’m not a big believer in fate. I lean toward: ‘I am the captain of my ship and the master of my destiny’ philosophy but sometimes, it seems like fate is determined to wreck your dreams. Take the day of the beauty pageant - everything that could go wrong went wrong, starting with a burst water pipe in the upstairs bathroom.

I had intended driving Jelimah to the beauty parlour – she was having the works, hair, make-up and nails. Later the plan was to collect her after she’d morphed into a beauty queen but I had a flood on my hands, soon to be followed by another, because Jelimah turned on the waterworks too.

Sending Jelimah still weeping off in a cab, I spent a frustrating hour trying to find a plumber who understood English. By now water, was dripping through the ceiling into the living room below. Fortunately, the floor was tiled. Alas, that wasn’t the case upstairs. The bathroom was fitted with a thick Wilton carpet, mulberry, and the exact shade of the commercial-size spa and wall tiles.

It was dusk and I was still mopping up after the plumber and hoping the landlord wouldn’t blame me when Jelimah, exquisite in heavy Asian makeup her long glossy hair piled on top of her head, secured by jewelled clips, returned. She was accompanied by a stranger, a cousin skilled in the art of folding the traditional kebaya, the intricate blouse, dress worn by Dayak women. The girls disappeared into the bedroom. Their tinkling laughter came to an abrupt halt when ten minutes later the power went off.

Power black outs were a part of life in Miri and I was prepared. I found the candles and gave two to Jelimah. Deep channels in her inch thick make-up wouldn’t do and she bravely held back tears that sparkled in her brilliant eyes, I must admit I’d have cried too if I’d have had to get ready a big night in the dark.

I never have been keen on driving at night and Mary-Grace, an ex-pat like me was just as eager to cheer on Jelimah. She picked us up about seven in her car. The power was still off. ‘But that doesn’t mean it will be off in Krokop too,’ I reassured Jelimah, with a confidence I was far from feeling, considering the way our luck was running.

As expected, the building was in darkness. We parted company, Mary- Grace and I to a gloomy, stifling hall, Jelimah to hot and airless cramped upstairs room, where the humidity played havoc with the entrants’ makeup and hair dos. It was 2 hours before the lights came back on.

Surprise! The beauty pageant wasn’t the only entertainment provided. The main event was preceded by a Malaysian song contest. It went on interminably. Possibly I would have enjoyed it more if there’d been a selection of songs; instead I sat through at least twenty presentations of the same song … in Bahasa.

It was midnight before the pageant began. All the girls were utterly gorgeous, none more so than Jelimah. She didn’t win though and yes, there were tears. Jelimah insisted the contest was fixed. Maybe she was right, the winner was no prettier than the other girls but she did have the advantage of being the judge’s niece.

To crown off a catastrophic night - when Mary-Grace and I got back to the car, (Jelimah had gone to a night club with a party of friends and was spared this final calamity), the lights had been left on and the battery was as flat as a pancake.

Two blondes 3.00 am in the wildest part of the wild, wild East and not another ex-pat to be found. We walked back to the hall. Luckily, the manager was still packing up and he generously drove us back to Pujat.

Next morning Jelimah told me she was quitting and she was in a hurry; her friends were waiting in the car. ‘Have you got another job,’ I asked, hovering as she packed? Although I felt slighted, after all I’d treated her more like a daughter than a servant, I didn’t begrudge her bettering herself

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I’ve got my old job back at the dry cleaners.’

How sharper it is than a serpent’s tooth to have a thankless child!

Enter Miss Miri

Recollections of a working class Australian adjusting to ex-pat life in Miri.

I saw that the 60th annual Miss Universe 2011 beauty pageant will take place on September 12 and will air live from Sao Paulo, Brazil and, immediately I was transported back to Borneo when I sponsored my amah, Jelimah in her attempt to win the title.

Borneo, the third largest island in the world, is a land of steamy, rain-sodden jungles and home to the Dayaks, fierce tribes who worshiped pagan gods and spirits and whose name is synonymous with headhunting. But Jelimah, a thoroughly modern Dayak Miss, had turned her back on the centuries old tribal way of life for the bright lights of Miri.

Miri, a boom town, where a pretty girl could live in a house like a palace, and wear a different dress every day, not made with cloth she'd woven herself but purchased from glitzy shops crammed with jewels, creams and perfumes, shops with every delight imaginable to make her beautiful for the parties where she'd laugh and dance all night.

Jelimah was in a shop when my partner first met her - but serving, not buying. An assistant in a dry cleaners, she had swapped the steamy jungle for an even steamier environment and communal life in the longhouse for a cramped dormitory above the shop, shared with a dozen other starry-eyed wannabes.

There was no plumbing or power laid on in the jungle village in the back blocks of Sarawak, where every drop of water for drinking and cooking was drawn from the river. From as long as she could remember, it had been Jelimah's responsibility to fill the family's water pots at the riverbank and tote them back to the longhouse on stilts where she lived, at the end of a steep and winding jungle track.

She didn't have to go as far for drinking water in her new home. Just as far as the toilet. The only available water for washing and drinking was scooped from the cistern - the water tank that flushes and fills the toilet.

Paranoid about coming down with dysentery or, ... worse, from the moment I'd arrived in Miri, I boiled our drinking water for three minutes, always said an emphatic no to ice and only drank Coke from cans. I was appalled when my partner recounted how Jelimah was living. Even now, I shudder at the thought of dipping a cup into a slimy tank and I was easily persuaded to offer her a job as a live-in amah.

For both of us it must have been equally mind blowing. At the time, I felt I was doing something special by opening up my home to her. Heck it was a palace ... so different to what I was used to in Perth ... the deprived jungle girl had to think she'd died and gone to heaven.

I mean, it wasn't as if she had anything to do. Apart from some token dusting and sweeping, I continued to do 99% of the household chores. Some people have a way with servants. Not me! For the best part of a month, I pussy-footed round Jelimah treating her like a young relative I'd never met, over here on holiday who required entertaining.

I think Jelimah would have up and left her gilded cage sooner if she hadn't set her sights on entering a beauty pageant and needed a sponsor. I didn't hesitate and for the next six weeks everything took a backseat to winning Miss Miri.

More about Miri's answer to Miss Universe next time ...

Ann Massey

http://www.annmasseyauthor.net/

Author of:

The White Amah, a mystery set against the backdrop of the timber logging industry in Malaysia. Sample or purchase: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456578065

The Biocide Conspiracy, a Young Adult thriller that sweeps readers into the world of biowarfare. Sample or purchase; http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456503367

Thou shall not wash dishes- - a green ex-pat struggles to come to terms with life in Borneo and the demands of her young amah

Two months into a relationship and my partner, a petroleum engineer, whisked me off to a life of luxury in Miri, on the island of Borneo.

For the wives of oil field workers like me, life is one round of shopping, bridge, golf and tennis. For the most part, children are at boarding schools back home - paid for by the company and husbands are on rigs in the South China Sea, so for women, life is one big social whirl! We didn't even have to clean up after ourselves. Why should we? We had our amahs. Like Curly Locks in the old nursery rhyme:

'Thou shalt no wash dishes nor yet feed the swine ...,
our amahs took care of all the household chores.

An amah is the Asian name for a servant. All my married friends, had amahs, most of them were older Malaysian women who worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for a pittance. Back then in the 90's the going rate was MR$250 a month. Converted to Aussie dollars, that's about 35c an hour.

Wives of men earning $10,000 a month plus free house, free car, free utilities, first class flights home for holidays and school fees paid for, at the best and most expensive schools, saw nothing wrong with this. As Mary-Grace from Calvary (not her real name), said to me,'They don't need much. I mean how much is a bag of rice."

The women who worked for ex-pats weren't complaining. They knew they had it good compared to the foreign girls who worked for the locals. The Chinese family who lived next-door to Mary Grace employed a Filipino. The first thing they did when she arrived was confiscate her passport so she couldn't runaway. Sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs - poky, stuffy,without a window and filled with the family's clutter, her duties went beyond housework and baby sitting - the male of the household took it as a given that she would sleep with him.

Not that the locals were the only ones to enjoy their amah's favours. Hundreds of single men and married men, (temporarily available), flocked to the oil town. I noticed their amahs were always the beauties, the delicate, ultra feminine Iban girls, straight from the jungle longhouses.

A lot of these men formed relationships with their amahs and, many of them married.and took their sweethearts back home. But, many others, just used them as pretty playthings and forgot about them when their contracts were finished.

I've written about a girl who was exploited by an ex-pat in my latest book The White Amah. You can read an excerpt and reviews on my website: http://annmasseyauthor.net/

For three years, I was the only ex-pat, in my circle of friends, who didn't have an amah until I employed Jelimah ... more about this Iban Cinderella in my next blog.

Ann Massey

http://www.annmasseyauthor.net/

Author of:

The White Amah, a mystery set against the backdrop of the timber logging industry in Malaysia. Sample or purchase: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456578065

The Biocide Conspiracy, a Young Adult thriller that sweeps readers into the world of biowarfare. Sample or purchase; http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456503367

Post a Comment new!

Blogs this Year
• Thou shall not wash dishes - Saturday, January 15, 2011
• Enter Miss Miri - Thursday, January 13, 2011
• Click to Save the Rain Forest - Wednesday, January 12, 2011
• Borneo's Tropical Rainforest is Disappearing Fast ... So What! - Saturday, January 08, 2011
• Sweetest Things Turn Sourest By Their Deeds - Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Borneo's Tropical Rain Forest is disappearing fast: so what?

Trees are vital to human existence because they are the lungs of the earth. Man can survive for months without food but without oxygen life ceases within minutes.

When you destroy a blade of grass

You poison England at her roots

Remember no man's foot can pass

Where evermore no green grass shoots.

I first heard those lines from 'To Iron- Founders and Others' by Gordon Bottomley over fifty years ago when I was a pupil in Mr. Worthington's English Class at Hayward Grammar School.

Over the years I have read articles in newspapers and magazines, listened to lectures and viewed documentaries about the far reaching effects of deforestation but I cannot quote from a single one. Who says poetry isn't relevant in the twenty-first century? Bottomley's warning is indelibly stamped on my conscious and my conscious .

Today I recited this poem to my students and then went on to tell them about what is happening in Borneo. How proud, formerly self-sufficient Dayaks have been forced off their ancestral lands by rapacious loggers and forced to live beggarly lives because they lack the education and skills to adapt to a changed environment. This led to a heated discussion about Develoment vs Conservation: such is the power of poetry.

Ann Massey

http://www.annmasseyauthor.net/

Author of:

The White Amah, a mystery set against the backdrop of the timber logging industry in Malaysia. Sample or purchase: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456578065

The Biocide Conspiracy, a Young Adult thriller that sweeps readers into the world of biowarfare. Sample or purchase; http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456503367

Review of The White Amah

It's fab when friends tell you they love your book but a glowing review from someone you've never met that's something else! This is what Wendy O'Hanlon of 'Click, A Cultural Connection' had to say: -

Delving into The White Amah is like eating a rich dessert - layers and layers of delightful surprises. The story begins so innocently in Australia and then follows so many hard-edged surprising turns that the reader's head is spinning - in a most delightful way - through Malaysia and then onto London.

And just like a many -layered dessert, you simply can't dally in savouring the different offerings - all must be impatiently revealed.

The Author, Ann Massey, introduces us to the main characters one by one - like the many layered dessert. At first we are rapt in the dancing, rocking Crystal - an ambitious teenager who secures a dancing contract in Malaysia. Our attention then turns to the impoverished Rubiah who schemes her way out of the drudgery of tribal life in a Dayak village. But then we are immersed in the the battle of little Mei Li - a girl who believes she came from a Dayak village but feels somewhat of an outcast because of her fairer skin and height.

Behind these personal stories is the backdrop of the timber logging industry in Malaysia which makes multi-national companies rich while plundering and destroying the precious environmental habitat and centuries old tribal way of life.

Massey has crafted an unforgettable novel full of the curious twists and turns of fate. A very satisfying read and delicious to the very end.

Ann Massey

http://www.annmasseyauthor.net/

Author of:

The White Amah, a mystery set against the backdrop of the timber logging industry in Malaysia. Sample or purchase: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456578065

The Biocide Conspiracy, a Young Adult thriller that sweeps readers into the world of biowarfare. Sample or purchase; http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456503367

Sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds

When I first started to think about a title for my novel one of the ideas I jotted down was Lilies that Fester. Fester,with its connotations of rot and decay, met with universal dislike from my long suffering family and friends who have been marvellous about reading my drafts - offering encouragement while showing restraint in the advice department - so I felt I had no choice than to drop my notion of giving my 'first born' a literary name. Anyway there's no two ways about it, I was reaching high for a sordid story about self-centred girls behaving badly.

For interest,the quote is from the Shakespearean sonnet about corruption, a personal favourite. The final powerful lines are spot on. I do believe the tall poppies of the world should lead by example. The greedy, corrupt practices of high flyers like Alan Bond, Steve Vizard, Martha Stewart and Ray Williams leave a bad smell as does Crystal, the anti-hero of The White Amah, as I ultimately christened my newborn.

'The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,

Though to itself, it only live and die,

But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity:

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.'

I wasn't being original in looking to the sonnets for inspiration. H.E. Bates did the same when he called his novel about the wonderful Larkin family: The Darling Buds of May.

'Rough winds do shake the darling buds of may,

And summer's lease has all too short a sway.'

Set in the idyllic Kentish countryside, the fresh faced farm girls are as far removed from Crystal as Raggedy Ann is to a Bratz Doll. But then, the Larkins lived in the fifties, at a time when television programs reflected values like honour, respect, love, trust and self sacrifice. Bland by today's viewers' standards, programs like Skippy, Ivanhoe, Leave it to the Beaver and Dixon of Dock Green modelled old fashioned values. Robin Hood might have worn tights but no one ever doubted Maid Marion was still virgin intacto, along with the greater part of the single female audience.

There has been an about face from the saccharine programs of the fifties to gritty realism accompanied by a decline in old fashioned values. Is repeated exposure to men and women behaving badly a major factor? Think of Survivor that promotes winning at any cost and rewards bullies and betrayers; consider housemates on Big Brother openly copulating on national television and the foul mouths of the doll- faced ladettes and then look around you. Am I wrong in thinking that the media normalises bad behaviour and encourages a cult of self interest?

I would be interested in your thoughts.

Ann Massey

http://www.annmasseyauthor.net/

Author of:

The White Amah, a mystery set against the backdrop of the timber logging industry in Malaysia. Sample or purchase: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456578065

The Biocide Conspiracy, a Young Adult thriller that sweeps readers into the world of biowarfare. Sample or purchase; http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456503367