No one ever think that a 29 years old woman from Pekaja Village, Kalibagor Banyumas, Central Java namely Sugiyani will be a cover story for a world selling book. This is all started from idea of Sim Chi Yin, a journalist of The Straits Time Singapore who was interested to the living story of Indonesian migrant worker.

Sim Chi Yin started to put his attention on Indonesian migrant workers since he witnessed that there are numerous migrant workers in Singapore who committed suicide, most of them are Indonesian. She came to question why does it happen so?

She wrote many articles with regard to migrant worker’s issue in order to raising awareness to Singaporeans, in particular those who employ migrant, about the bittersweet of migrant worker’s story of life in their hometown. She raise the phenomenon of female migrant workers who are also belong to a husband, left their kids at home, and the untold story about their beloved one. Sim Yi Chin wishes that her writing could get into the overlord’s heart, so that they would treat migrant workers as a mankind.

Her book titled “The Long Road Home” was published in English and Indonesian version with a heart-skipping cover, a woman with her slippers and hideous cloth walking around her village to sell “mendoan”, a traditional food from Banyumas which made of processed soybean.

That iconic woman is Sugiyani, a young mother with the outstanding story of her life story as migrant worker. That is why Sim Chi Yin, whose articles being published in The New York Times, International Herald Tribune and Los Angeles Times, chose Sugiyani, woman who struggle in the land of strangers, as her inspiration.