Content area
Full Text
Agnes Khoo , Merlin Press, Monmouth, Wales, 2007, 326pp.,
ISBN-13: 978-0850365634
, £16.95 (Pbk)
Suria Atom was born in 1951 and spent her childhood years in a village in Thailand, near the border of Malaysia. From a very early age she worked at home, carrying out household chores. She suffered violence and abuse from her father, and later, from her husband whom she married at the age of 14. She was 19 years old when she first met the communists, and later joined the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) that fought for the liberation of Malaya from the colonial rule. In the army, she was taught to read and write in Chinese and Malay. She spent 20 years in the guerilla army in the mountains, where she also worked as 'barefoot doctor', practicing traditional Chinese medicine.
Lin Guan Ying, born in 1923 in China, is an old and senior Party member, married to a high-ranking member of the CPM. She joined the Party at the age of 18, together with everyone else in her village, as part of the resistance against the Japanese occupation - 'I joined because the Party stood for the poorest of the poor' (p. 57), she says. She was involved in the struggle against the Japanese and the British. For Lin Guan Yin, the Communists were both about fighting imperialism and about the liberation of women.
Lin Guan Ying and Suria Atom are among the sixteen ex-guerilla women from Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand whose life stories make Life as the River...