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

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This series of essays about Asian Identity in Britain, features not just writers, but actors, chefs and individuals in other professions writing about their own personal experience. Edited by Helena Lee, there is the common thread linking the essays, but each stands alone, and can be read in isolation. A wonderful book – so timely and much needed. I loved the collection and I hope everyone will read it’ Elif Shafak Gemma Chan’s father in 1975, during his time in the merchant navy. Photograph: Courtesy of Gemma Chan In fellow actor Katie Leung’s essay ‘Getting Into Character’, she describes her refusal to play a character who was assigned a Chinese accent for seemingly no good reason. Her persistence paid off, and she played the character with a British accent. I was reminded of some recent work my mother had done – a voiceover piece for a well-known NGO – for which the producers had requested somebody whose voice had a ‘foreign twang.’ They didn’t tell her why. 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, edited by Helena Lee review - The Guardian

I’d love to read something simmer form a Middle East viewpoint because believe me, it’s be very different but also very similar.HL: I really wanted a diversity of voices within the collection, to learn about areas I wasn’t especially familiar with, who could draw us into their worlds with their strength of storytelling. So, we had writers like the gal-dem contributor June Bellebono, who showed us the experience of a trans spirit festival in Myanmar, and how that changed the way they saw themselves. There are untold narratives brought to the fore, such as the actor Gemma Chan’s essay on the Chinese Liverpool seamen, who were secretly deported from Britain, and the writer Claire Kohda’s devastating piece on how her Caucasian grandmother erased Claire’s Japanese heritage in an acrylic painting she made of her. Claire Kohda is a literary critic, violinist and the author of WOMAN, EATING, a literary novel about a young, mixed-race vampire trying to navigate the London contemporary art world.

East Side Voices: Celebrating ESEA Identity - Southbank Centre

Showcasing original essays and poetry from well-known celebrities, prize-winning literary stars and exciting new writers, East Side Voices takes us many places: from the frontlines of the NHS in the midst of the Covid pandemic, to the set of a Harry Potter film, from a bustling London restaurant to a spirit festival in Myanmar. In the process we navigate the legacies of family history, racial identity, assimilation and difference. These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community. 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.A couple of weeks later, I came across an article written by the journalist Dan Hancox in the Guardian. I had thought I was pretty familiar with the long history of anti-Asian racism and discrimination in the UK and elsewhere; the shifting stereotypes, the scapegoating, Yellow Peril and the like, and the erasure of the contributions of the 140,000 men of the Chinese Labour Corps who risked their lives carrying out essential work for the allies in the first world war. But this was a story I had never heard before. 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 | personal stories of Gemma Chan, Katie Leung

Many of the essays discuss the unseen but inherent racism toward the Asian community in art, and media…which I rarely see discussed but is important that it is. The essays were compiled recently and there were frequent references to covid and the impact that prejudicial misinformation has had on Asian lives. The group was founded in 2022 by publicity director Maria Garbutt-Lucero, who works at Hodder & Stoughton, and commissioning editor Joanna Lee, who works at independent publisher Atlantic Books. Its aim is to amplify the voices of east and south-east Asian writers and promote ESEA talent working across the UK publishing industry. It is a testament to the quality of each author’s writing that despite the brevity of each account, I became deeply invested in their stories. I also found myself reflecting on my own experiences and difficulties as an Asian immigrant with greater clarity and understanding.Slowly regretting putting this off for so long because this was amazing and it took me less than a day to finish.

East Side Voices by Various, Helena Lee | Waterstones East Side Voices by Various, Helena Lee | Waterstones

Reading this book was so therapeutic. I often feel like I'm in between cultures, not Chinese or Malaysian enough to be either, but also not fully British or English. Reading essays from people who have also experienced life like this was very enriching and validated a lot of feelings I've had while growing up. Purcell Room is located in Queen Elizabeth Hall. For step-free access please use Royal Festival Hall JCB glass lift to Level 2 and enter via Riverside Terrace.I realised that farming was the link to everything. Food and the making and growing of the food were the thread that tied so much together: the rhythms of farming, the myths of farming, the spirits and gods and souls of everything in the jungle. And so I learnt that I am from the jungle, no matter how far I am, the rituals and rhythms of the soil of the jungle sit within me.’ 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.