Early Life
Hicks was born in 1968 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to a British father, Ron Hicks, and a Cantonese-speaking Singaporean-Chinese mother, Betty Soh. Hicks' parents separated soon after her birth and Soh relocated to Singapore in 1969 with her infant daughter. There, Hicks' formative social environment was multi-ethnic and multi-lingual, and included Malays, Indians and Chinese of various dialect groups. Although she was multiracial, she identified as Chinese during her early childhood, speaking Cantonese and watching Chinese-language television at home.
When Hicks was twelve, her mother accepted a job as a caretaker of a bungalow in Sentosa, Singapore, and they relocated to the island away from a Singaporean Housing and Development Board flat in Toa Payoh. Throughout her teens, Hicks lived with her mother on Sentosa Island, and intermittently with her porpor (grandmother) with whom she enjoyed a particularly close relationship. At one point, aged sixteen, Hicks successfully traced her father through the British High Commission, with whom he was stationed on Singapore during Hicks' conception. Now married with children and likely keeping his past muffled from his new family, he returned word via fax to Hicks that he wanted nothing to do with her. The two never met. Despite her joking whenever publicly questioned about it, her father's rejection remained painful to Hicks throughout her life.
Read more about this topic: Bonny Hicks
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