She Never Rode That Trishaw Again tells the story of Loo Ngan Yue, a woman widowed by the British war against anti-colonial forces in Malaya — a 12-year conflict that became a template for other counter-insurgency campaigns. Artist and author Sim Chi Yin juxtaposes vacation photographs of Loo — her late paternal grandmother — with oral history excerpts on the family’s trauma. This intimate volume, using vernacular photographs to create a filmic experience, takes us inside the emotional world of a family shattered by geopolitics. It is the first in a trilogy of books Sim is making on the “Malayan Emergency” of 1948 to 1960, painting a picture of anguish, loss and, amnesia — an allegory for Southeast Asia's lingering traumas as a Cold War battleground.

Title: “She Never Rode That Trishaw Again”

Format: 140 x 200mm, 144 pages

ISBN: 978-981-18-1144-9

Language: English and Chinese text

Self-published

Publication date: June 2021