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. 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. 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. 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. Listening to other people debate your origins in your presence is a disconcerting experience, but it’s one that I’ve become accustomed to over nearly three decades of living in Europe. I’ve observed how these discussions have attempted to be more reflective, more self-interrogative, as people travel and read widely, and pride themselves upon being culturally engaged…trying to explain being Chinese-Malaysian to anyone in Europe is a curiously dispiriting experience in which the simplicity of one’s identity – which feels so clear and obvious – suddenly becomes torturously complicated, a source of confusion and even, in these days of cultural sensitivity, a cause of anxiety.’

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

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. The festival will take place at Foyles’ flagship store on Charing Cross Road in London on 23 September, during ESEA Heritage Month. 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. I found it insightful and interesting, with the essays 'celebrating' as the title says, but also delving deeper into issues at times, including legacies of colonialism and the realities of racism and xenophobia in Britain. There's a lot of authors and poets I've read with essays in the collection, which was exciting, but also other perspectives, like being a frontline nurse in the NHS.I continuously resonated with the different authors ‘essays’ and felt as if their anecdotes were about me. 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: Essays celebrating East and Southeast Asian East Side Voices: Essays celebrating East and Southeast Asian

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. A Changing Places toilet is located on Level 1 Royal Festival Hall next to the JCB Glass Lift, for the exclusive use of disabled people who need personal assistance to use the toilet. Gemma Chan’s father in 1975: ‘He told me how hard and lonely those years at sea were, how much he missed his family, and how dangerous it could be. Photograph: Courtesy of Gemma ChanThis 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. 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…

East Side Voices by Helena Lee | Goodreads

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. Ladyboy by June Bellebono was a beautiful essay and really highlighted the importance of the intersectionality with race when it comes to talking about LGBT+ issues. I discovered this book thanks to the actress Gemma Chan whom I adore enormously. She also wrote an essay for this book, so I bought it haha.Naomi Shimada is an influential model, BBC podcaster, and co-author of Mixed Feelings. She launched her newsletter Tender Contributions in January 2022. Will Harris is the winner of the 2020 Forward Prize for Best First Collection, poet and author of RENDANG and Mixed Race Superman.