Soo King's Love Letters
Sarah Ma
We meet thousands of people in our lifetimes, but the one person I have longed to meet is Soo King Sye 薛淑钦, my late maternal grandmother. She is someone who I can only begin to uncover through stories passed down over time. I found myself teary-eyed at the mere mention of her and watching my mother long for her presence.
For a majority of my grandmother's life, she would wake up at the crack of dawn in Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia to provide for her family. One task was to bake hundreds of fresh “love letters," an egg roll pastry, to sell.
The journey I have partaken in of getting to know my grandma has resulted in a space for my family to grieve and remember the great impact she made, tricking down the generations. I reimagined the once repetitive task of making love letters and turned them into a tin of letters, filled with messages my family members wish we could say to her. Each love letter features a postage stamp that commemorates the little parts of her I have been able to meet, and I have to thank her for bringing my family closer as we reminisce the life she lived all those years ago.