Frog Under A Coconut Shell means in Malay, “Katuk Bawah Tempurong”, an idiom which likens someone to a frog that lives under a coconut shell, who believes the shell to be its entire world. It is a reference to the author’s own mother, who although herself uneducated and living in a parochial existence in a small kampong (attap village), believed in and struggled for a greater vision—the right to educate her daughter. The author beautifully evokes the experience of living with her family in rural Potong Pasir of the 1950s and 60s, and paints in heartwarming detail, her mother’s life journey from the bloom of her youth to her present affliction with Alzheimer’s disease. In part a nostalgic memoir of Old Singapore, Frog Under A Coconut Shell, is also, most wholeheartedly, a testament to the love and courage of a mother that changed the life of her daughter forever.
