Today, Feathered Quill reviewer Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr. is talking with James A. Wolter, author of The Life of Lee Lye Hoe: An Unsung Woman Hero.

FQ: In your novel, we learn about the character, Lee Lye Hoe; however, it seems like you have some form of personal connection to this protagonist. Who is Lee Lye Hoe really, and why did you decide to write this work from a first-person perspective?

WOLTER: Lee Lye Hoe is a real person. Her family name is Lee, her generation name is Hoe and her given name is Lye. I knew her as the Nanny in Finding Miss Fong. She was the Nanny to my wife, Moke Chee, and subsequently to our two children. I wrote The Life of Lee Lye Hoe in the first person for three reasons. First, while Amahs (servants) were ubiquitous in the urban areas of former British Malaya, they were personally unseen and virtually unknown as individuals as long as they did their job and knew their place. Therefore, it was important for this remarkable woman to tell her own story. Second, I wanted the reader to feel they were with Lye Hoe as she navigated the challenges and experienced the joys she found in life. Third, selfishly I wanted to get closer to Lye Hoe, to enter her mind and experience her emotions by writing her story through her eyes.

FQ: The book, on some level, seems like it is deliberately two novellas about the same central character: when Lee Lye Hoe lives, works, and eventually owns farmland in Canton; and, when she (along with Yang and Meow) leaves Canton because to the Communist invasion, to become an Amah in Malaya.  Why did you make the choice to go in that direction with the text?

WOLTER: The Life of Lee Lye Hoe was written as one book but I can understand how a reader could read it as two novellas or even as a three act with the Canton period, the 70c Irving Road, Penang period, culminating in the post 70c Irving Road period of Lye Hoe’s life. It was her desire to remain in Canton where she was a respected landowner, a self-sufficient person of standing in her community able to care for herself and make her own decisions. All that is changed when she is forced to escape China and ends up in Malaya as an Amah, a person with no standing in the community, dependent upon her employer for food and shelter, and unable to make her own decisions. In the Malaya she is viewed as, and treated as, an Amah but in her mind, to maintain her self-respect, she views herself as a Canton landowner with the desire and intention of retiring on her farm to spend the rest of her days. She is a person who lives two lives but, in the end, she realizes her dream was just a dream that served its purpose in its time but what she has is far beyond anything she could have dreamed of, much less wished for.

FQ: In the beginning of the book, Lee Lye Hoe’s father walks out on her and her mother, leaving them both to fend for themselves. He even steals the rainy-day fund the family had accrued to help them out of sticky situations. Can you speak to the problematic nature of this, specifically as it pertains to Cantonese culture? In other words, can you speak to the dynamic between men, women, and children, and their understanding of family finances, within the culture?

WOLTER: At the time Lye Hoe was in Canton, it was a paternalistic society. Children were part of the workforce. Women, wives in particular, were subservient to their husband who made all decisions for the family and controlled all finances. Lye Hoe’s father would view the family rainy-day fund as his to do with as he saw fit. He also would view Lye Hoe’s mother as being a disobedient wife for not selling her farm and following him to Hanoi. Lye Hoe’s mother was an unusually strong willed and self-sufficient woman and that was likely a significant factor in developing Lye Hoe’s character.

FQ: Lee Lye Hoe does not want to get married and she never does throughout the entire work.  One can assume the reason is because of her family history, but there seems to be more to it than just that.  Can you delve a bit more deeply into Lee Lye Hoe’s understanding of herself as an independent woman in a time of arranged marriages and female subservience?

WOLTER: Lye Hoe idolized her father. He was educated, sophisticated, and handsome. He was an unusual man for his time in that he played games with her and turned work into play as he did when he taught her his family’s secret recipe for sponge cake. His leaving the family for Hanoi, particularly the way he did by tricking her during a game of Hide and Seek, likely initiated her distrust of men. Besides, flawed as he was, no man other than her Boss in Malaya, could live up to her image of her father. Also, she saw that it was her mother who managed the farm with no help from her father. When he departed, she learned to manage the farm with her mother without a man. She knew her value, her self-worth, and refused to become subservient to any man. She held that belief even as an Amah.

FQ: Throughout the work, there is discussion about the concept of “bad joss.” Can you speak more about what this is, and how it is important to the narrative as a whole?

WOLTER: In a culture where superstitions and evil spirits lurking about are taken as fact, one can think of “bad joss” as bad luck on steroids. It is an attempt to explain unfortunate occurrences for which an uneducated community has no rational explanation.

In my grandmother’s time, she would throw a pinch of salt over her right shoulder if she accidentally spilt salt to ward off further bad luck. Most “bad joss” practices in China and Malaya, like my grandmother throwing a pinch of salt over her shoulder, were harmless.

FQ: No doubt, the book is an “autobiography” of Lee Lye Hoe’s life; however, it is also an historical novel, spanning decades. What makes this time period in world history so significant, in your estimation? Why use this as your backdrop, other than the fact that you have a great deal knowledge about the subject matter?

WOLTER: First and foremost, I wanted to write a story that portrays the personal life of an Amah, a person of low status in society who is ignored and overlooked because Amah’s are not political power brokers, financial tycoons or military leaders. They are considered disposable nobodies. But they aren’t. The Life of Lee Lye Hoe was not intended to be a historical novel. It just happened that Lye Hoe’s life spans a period of significant world events that changed the world and whose effects linger today. It portrays life in rural China at the onset of its civil war and before China became an industrial powerhouse. It shows that the invincible British Empire’s hold on Malaya was very fragile and the invincible Japanese’s hold on Malaya, while brutal, was even more fragile.

FQ: This novel is not just about gender issues; it also delves quite a bit into issues surrounding caste, stereotyping, and biased perceptions of what it means to be a viable human being in that area of the world, during that time period. Can you speak to this a bit more as it pertains to the narrative and to Lee Lye Hoe’s character arc?

WOLTER: Lye Hoe shows that a woman in a paternalistic society, even if she is an Amah navigating unending challenges with grace and dignity, can do so when she knows her value. She also knows her lack of formal education was not necessary to manage her farm but that baby Moke Chee is born to a different world and must become an educated woman of the world able to care for herself and not be reliant on the whims of some future husband.

Moke Chee’s father is the type of man Lye Hoe would marry if she were to marry. He is tall, handsome, well educated, and refined much like her father. She respects, admires, and possibly loves him but, when he determines Moke Chee should marry a wealthy man rather than go to college in spite of her receiving a scholarship to study in England, Lye Hoe intercedes and forces Moke Chee’s father to allow Moke Chee to attend college in England.

In later years, Moke Chee is an educated woman of the world who purchases two houses for Lye Hoe in Malaysia (formerly Malaya) so that Lye Hoe is once again a landowner and no longer needs her dream of returning to her farm in Canton to spend the rest of her days.

FQ: Mothering, or the lack thereof, is a central focus of the book.  Lee Lye Hoe becomes an Amah to her bosses’ new daughter, who then figuratively becomes Lee Lye Hoe’s daughter because her real mother is not motherly enough.  She also becomes a surrogate mother to Yang and Meow throughout the work.  So, what is the significance to this storyline as it pertains to the entire narrative?  

WOLTER: Lye Hoe, while a strong, competent and assertive woman, is at heart a loving and nurturing person. When her Boss is imprisoned and beaten nearly to death, she nurtures him back to health, feeding and changing him as a mother feeds and changes her child.

Further, scores if not hundreds of young Chinese women, left China forsaking their opportunity of having their own families to become Amahs and raise the children of wealthy parents in the British Colonies in Asia. In some quarters they were called “The Sisterhood of Sor Hei” because of the way they combed their hair back and up in a bun at the top back half of their head. With their hair worn like that and dressed in loose fitting mono-colored blouses and slacks, they gave no hint of sexuality. Indeed, some Sor Hei made vows of celibacy. Not enough is written about the personal lives of these amazing self-sacrificing women. The Life of Lee Lye Hoe is one step in righting that situation.

FQ: You recently published your first work, Finding Miss Fong, and now followed it up with The Life of Lee Lye Hoe. Is there a third book on the horizon, making these works into a pseudo-trilogy of sorts?

WOLTER: Thank you for that observation. Readers of Finding Miss Fong will recognize Lee Lye Hoe as the Nanny in that story. Some of Lye Hoe’s life as the Nanny’s in Finding Miss Fong was in the initial draft of The Life of Lee Lye Hoe but was edited out because I didn’t think the reader would appreciate a repeat of that aspect of her life and prefer moving on to her life beyond that period and seeing her reaction to being remembered by her daughter Moke Chee and Moke Chee’s two children calling her Paw Paw (Grandmother in Cantonese). In that way her dream of being a landowner and surrounded in love by all the children she nurtured was realized.

I started a third book called The Mistress of 70c Irving Road. It is an elaboration of the Finding Miss Fong story in that the protagonist is the Mistress of the household. Readers with a psychological bent will recognize the Mistress is plagued by untreated schizophrenia. In this book she commits the same act of violence but her actions will be presented from the viewpoint of a person with schizophrenia. She is portrayed as more sympathetic.

I’ve taken a brief break from writing that book because it was causing me great emotional distress and have started writing a novel called Salamander Man. It too takes place in Malaysia. It’s about Idris bin Ibrahim who contracts polio as a youth, is ostracized by peers and townsfolk. He is teased and called Orang Chicha (Salamander Man) by other children. He wants to be accepted as one of them, but most of all he wants, as he matures, to find that one special person to love who will love him in return.

FQ: As a final inquiry, I would like to ask you a more general question as it pertains to this work: What would you say the moral of the story is?  One can look at this novel as a long parable; what would you say is the final takeaway, so readers can read the work and move on in their contemporary lives?

WOLTER: This question pleases me. There are several morals in this story.

Even the lowliest person has a personal story worthy of knowing.

All people have value and are worthy of being treated with dignity. I hope The Life of Lee Lye Hoe is read by mother/daughter book clubs because of Lye Hoe’s persistence in knowing and expressing her value regardless of her gender or circumstance. Also, while she believes fate must be lived as it is dealt, she shows that it is also possible to bend fate.

A subtheme is the will to survive. Lye Hoe experiences the devastation of war and aggression up close and the havoc it creates with both innocent civilians and ignorant warriors being slaughtered and lives being upended. Through it all, she preservers with grace and dignity.

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