East Side Voices: Essays celebrating East and Southeast Asian identity in Britain

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How long have you had this?” I asked in amazement. He shrugged. This was no ordinary plastic bag. Indeed, the bag was not of this millennium. Naomi Shimada’s ‘Ode to Obaa-chan’ (her grandmother). I found it incredibly touching, unapologetically honest, emotionally vulnerable and the relationship itself so beautiful. I'm really happy to have seen it "because an actress I like was talking about it" and that in the end, it was instructive and very important. Fluidity and Resistance - Ideas of Belonging in a Fractured World by Tash Aw was SO vindicating! They talked about British people's obsession with family trees and ancestry and how it's a way of reaffirming their sense of belonging more than any desire to celebrate differences. This articulated a thought I've always had so well.

East Side Voices: Essays Celebrating East and Southeast Asian

In the aftermath of the second world war, Britain forcibly deported hundreds of Chinese seamen who had served in the merchant navy, deeming them an “undesirable element” of British society. These men had helped keep the UK fed and fuelled on highly dangerous crossings of the Atlantic (approximately 3,500 vessels of the merchant navy were sunk by German U-boats, with the loss of 72,000 lives).Enjoyed reading most of them very much. Fab collection. Very surprised to see Tash Aw in it (pleasantly surprised). 4 and a little more but rounded off to a full 5-star rating. I like how different each story was. This just felt like something that needed to be published. Haven’t read anything quite like this collection before. Very well edited, and for the most part, very well written too. Might write a longer review later. Maybe… The festival will take place at Foyles’ flagship store on Charing Cross Road in London on 23 September, during ESEA Heritage Month. Drawing on her more than 10 years of experience working at Harper’s Bazaar – where she is responsible for the publication’s art and culture content, often collaborating and commissioning award-winning writers and artists, the collection brings together a selection of original essays and poetry from celebrities, prize-winning literary stars and exciting new writers. Featuring essays and poetry from new writers, celebrities and authors ranging from the likes of Gemma Chan, Katie Leung, Sharlene Teo and Zing Tsjeng, this collection explores the wide spectrum of experiences from the East and South-East Asian community. East Side Voices is a collection of essays written by people with East and South East Asian identity that lives in Britain. The themes and topics explored in this were very wide, which i appreciate. Every single essay is different from one another as they are all written by different people so it was refreshing to hear about each of their experiences but at the same time, the heart of the essays are the same which is about their journey of assimilating and accepting their identity and their experiences being Asian in Britain.

East Side Voices — besea.n East Side Voices — besea.n

I appreciate that this essay collection, not only is wide ranging in their topics and themes but also very much intersectional. My favorite essays are probably by June Bellebono who talked about the trans community in Myanmar; Anna Sulan who wrote about her migration story and her identity of having a white mother and an Iban father; and Helena Lee who talked about her guilt and experiences of wanting to belong that when she was little she distanced herself from her heritage, dismissing her parents' experiences of being immigrants and how she finally came to understand it as she grew older (there was a paragraph where she talked about how she realized how different herself is from her friends by all the enid blyton's books she has read and it reminded me of my sixth grade self). I also really liked the fact that these essays were written by various figures, ranging from journalists, actors, poets, and even chefs. Many pieces reference meagre cultural representation and insulting stereotypes in TV and film, such as the contribution by Katie Leung, the Glaswegian actor cast as Cho Chang in the Harry Potter films. A private school rebel turned art school cool girl, Leung is as far from the cringing, sniffling Cho Chang as it’s possible to be. Yet her success is racialised: “I was not considered [for roles] unless race came into it.”I am a huge lover of reading essay collections when it's about race, gender, and inequalities individuals face every day. And this book seriously did not disappoint. The curation of voices Helena was able to get for this book is amazing and I so hope another book is in the works. Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours. I did struggle a little with some of the essays feeling a little repetitive, and so short I struggled to really engage with them or the writers. I also felt that some of the essays were written for the purpose of promoting the writers’ non-writing activity rather than an enhancement to the collection of essays as there was little depth or exploration within them.

East Side Voices by Various, Helena Lee | Waterstones

Gemma Chan’s father in 1975, during his time in the merchant navy. Photograph: Courtesy of Gemma Chan One of the saddest stories concerns Claire Kohda, daughter of a Japanese mother and English father. As a child she visits her father’s parents, dreading the lukewarm reception she and her mother always receive. Surprisingly, her grandmother has painted a portrait of Claire, which is and isn’t Claire. Her grandmother has painted her as perhaps she would like to see her: her skin lightened, her features made more European. It is a devastating example of passive-aggressive racism. This is a wonderful collection of essays, stories, memories, poems describing what it's like to be East and/or South East Asian (ESEA) in Britain today although I feel it does have an even wider reach. I learned a lot by reading it, there are things that I didn't know completely. There are things that apply to all women unfortunately.

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Edited by Helena Lee, founder of the East Side Voices cultural salon and Acting Deputy Editor of Harper’s Bazaar. Featuring writing from: Romalyn Ante, Tash Aw, June Bellebono, Gemma Chan, Mary Jean Chan, Catherine Cho, Tuyen Do, Will Harris, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Claire Kohda, Katie Leung, Amy Poon, Naomi Shimada, Anna Sulan Masing, Sharlene Teo, Zing Tsjeng and Andrew Wong. Garbutt-Lucero, who co-manages and writes for Florence Welch’s book club Between Two Books and launched a Filipino food pop-up in 2018, said that while growing up she “felt the dearth of literature available by east and south-east Asians, particularly British voices”. The fact that there is a glimmer of resemblance between this anecdotal snippet from someone who frequently walks the red carpet and my own upbringing reminds me that we may all have shared pasts in some way or another, no matter our present or future.