Missy Big Bungalow

The early 1900s introduced many European men to life in Siam and Malaya - what implications arose for local women? On reading Elephants, Tigers and Tappers, set in colonial Malaya, Jean Brewster was struck by Michael Thorp’s words on the local women many British men lived with: ‘It would be an incredibly interesting task to try to document the lives that some of these women had.’ She immediately thought ‘I can do that. That’s the story of my grandmother!’

Missy Big Bungalow, based on the nickname her grandmother Chalerm received, is an eye-opening saga spanning nearly one hundred years of four generations of a family of mixed European and Asian heritages. ‘Exotic beauty ‘in Chalerm’s Chinese-Burmese family proved to be an important asset, allowing Chalerm and her relatives to collide happily with French, Danish, Polish and British cultures. Fascinating turns in her life provided both highs and lows, although survival in colonial times for local women also taught her hard lessons, made more brutal by Japanese occupation. Chalerm was able to use her beauty to save her family but at a high cost. This astonishing panorama focuses on mixed-heritage families striving to establish their own identities and flourish in times of war and a fading Empire.