The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds begins in 1878. It is the story of Chye Hoon, born in Malaysia. She is being brought up in the Nyonya culture, a mix of Chinese and Malaysian customs. The book follows her life as she grows up, gets married and has 10 children. It focuses on the day to day life in Malaysia, and her struggles to raise her children and provide a good living for them. Her children grow up and become parents themselves. The book concludes with her death at age 63.

This book is not action packed by any means. Instead, we see the world through Chye Hoon's eyes, as changes come to her town. There is the colonization by the white men, the advent of the automobile and electricity. The small mining town of Ipoh, where she moves with her husband, becomes a large city as more and more people move there looking for work.

One of Chye Hoon's biggest worries is that her children are seduced by Western ways. She tries to teach them the Nyonya culture, but they want to be modern. The girls want to attend school, and the boys want to attend University in Europe. It is sad to see a way of life disappear. Chye Hoon is very distrustful of the white people, and tries to prevent their influence on her children, but she is ultimately unsuccessful as the years progress.

My biggest problem with this book is the way it is written. The author makes a point in the beginning to explain that the characters that are uneducated will speak in a grammatically unordered way, while the characters who have attended school will speak as we are used to. This makes for very difficult reading at times. Having to rearrange the sentences in my head until they make sense really took me out of the story. I think the book would have been better if this language device had not been used.

I picked up this book because I am trying to read more books about cultures other than my own. It was very interesting seeing how people lived in Malaysia at the turn of the century. Still, the book was not very exciting, and because of the grammatical differences mentioned above, I give this 3 out of 5 stars. ( )

Quite good!

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I loved the main character a lot and the world building is excellent. ( )

More like 3.75 stars. Could easily have been 150 pages shorter by cutting repetitions, but the style was engaging. Convincing voice. ( )

The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds A fascinating story that was a incredible relatable despite the cultures and times being radically different my own.
Let me start off with how interesting the author herself is. This was the debut novel of Selina Siak Chin Yoke, I had gotten it free from Kindle First. Before sitting down to the write review, I checked out the author and the blurb on her was interesting and so was her blog (linked on her Goodreads profile). Check out her profile and blog, you won't regret it. She's chronicling her "journey as a writer" on it but before this month it had been about getting to that point where she would publish her first novel. Now here it is!!!
Like I said before, this story is incredibly relatable. It focuses on Chye Hoon, who is a great protagonist. She isn't another modern woman thrown into a historical world but she also isn't the picture of her historical world that we often get in the US. She's actually the definition of why it's great to read diverse books, especially by own voices.
We get to experience her disappointments, the things out of her reach because she was a girl and then her decision making process with whether or not to make the same choices for her own daughters. We get to experience her hesitation with introducing the West and it's education with her children. We also get to experience her initial racism toward the whites and her concerns about what they were doing with her culture. Still, not all of her problems are caused by the white people. This is not a story that presents a utopia that was ruined by the white people, though you may see ruining. She has her own ways of dealing with the problems that were always there.
It's also a great look at the colonization of the East from the point of view of an Eastern person. I loved watching the changes, for good or bad, of the people as they embraced, or didn't, the white people in their town and what the Western influence was doing to it. I also loved the pace with which the West and Western ideas mixed into their culture. It reminds me of the way cell phones and then smart phones and then social media changed the way people interact in this century. I exist in that strange middle ground where I remember making mixed tapes and having dial-up but have also had a cell phone for almost all my adult life. I feel like I would be Chye Hoon's eldest daughter in this scenario, having done things the old way already and watching a sibling press for the new way.
Still, things must change, and it's all about how you deal with it and that brings me back around to how great a character Chye Hoon is. Her attitude toward life and the way she deals with disappointment and tragedy are so practical I want to call them inspiring, though I don't think they were meant to be. She just doesn't have time fret or wallow or do anything other than figure out what to do about it. She reminds me a lot of Scarlett O'Hara in that regard. She's going to make it work, even if it's unladylike, but she's also going to remember the long term impact on the family and reputation, which Scarlett never does.
She has the kind of personality that makes me wish I knew her but I also kind of feel like I was raised by her. I've long since gotten over what I thought of as bad calls that my mother made in her decisions for me, but it still gave me an interesting perspective to work with, despite the different culture. When a parent turned out just fine with the old ways, it can be hard to adapt to the new for your children. What if it didn't turn out as good? And when a parent didn't turn out just fine, than it's hard to stick with what you knew but that doesn't mean the new choice is the best either. Parenting is hard enough without having to deal with what women like Chye Hoon did.
Then there's the other parts of her life that I'd rather not spoil. Let's just say that her decision making process on how her life pans out is interesting and leads to what sounds like a great life despite some pitfalls and tragedies. No one can get through unscathed by pitfalls and tragedies, but it doesn't ruin a life either.
This is the first in series, so I'm looking forward to the rest of them, but it only came out this month, so I imagine I'll be waiting a little while too. ( )

Either this needed a really good editor or it's an ingenious attempt to capture the long-winded narration of a simple, uneducated woman. I enjoyed the inclusion of trivial, day-to-day happenings but it did start to feel like the litany of disasters would never end. ( )