Looking After the Ashes Old Wives' Tales, Taboos; Supernatural and Childhood Superstitions

If you eat while lying down, you will turn into a snake. If you don’t polish off all the rice on your plate you will marry a man full of pimples and pockmarks.
Looking After the Ashes is a semi-biographical fiction of Kopi Soh’s childhood stories. Growing up in a large extended Taoist influenced Peranakan family filled with strong women, Kopi hears these words of ‘wisdom’ daily. She used to live in a world where clipping finger nails at night was strictly forbidden, pointing at the moon would result in one’s ears getting chopped off, and children were forced to stay indoors during sundown for fear of collision with evil forces. A world where mental disorders and illnesses were believed to be caused by malevolent spirits. Talisman, mediums and fortune tellers were a part of everyday life.

About the Author:

Kopi Soh is the pseudonym of a US based Malaysian author and illustrator best known for her book Oh, I Thought I Was The Only One. She founded the Facebook community ‘Stick It To Me’, currently renamed ‘Kopi Soh’s Positive Healing Doodles’, an initiative centred around producing “healing art” for the terminally sick and needy, and organizes a group of volunteers to produce art for hospitals and charities. Her work with ‘Stick It To Me’ was recognized in the Digi WWWOW Awards 2015, winning an award in the Social Gathering category. She also served as the official illustrator for TEDxWeldQuay2013.
Kopi Soh was also a former manager with a women’s centre, training social workers and counsellors. She counsels victims in Domestic Violence situations and children who have been sexually assaulted. Being a crisis counsellor she was also a Sexual Assault Team Responder for the County of San Diego and in her spare time she teaches social media at a community school for the elderly. Her area of specialty is in working with children, adolescents, couples, seniors, refugees, rape victims, abused kids, victims of domestic violence and families.
Kopi Soh’s first book, Oh, I Thought I Was The Only One, published by Dawning Victory Consultancy in 2012, distributed by MPH, is a self-help book oriented towards creating awareness of common psychological issues, which manifest in daily life. In 2013, Kopi Soh published her second book, Oh . . . I Thought I Was the Only One 2, a sequel focusing on how children experience various stresses in their daily lives and teaching them skills on how to overcome them. Kopi Soh has been accepted into a doctoral program for the year 2020. Her proposed research will be about Flourishing, Happiness and Older Malaysian Women.